Arriving Thursday mid-morning off the ferry from Tallinn I easily check-in with my AirBnB host Helena and spend the afternoon relaxing, getting some laundry done and catching up on some sleep…..damn ferry!! In the evening I walk the old town, resisting the many invitations and advances of restaurant hosts to come inside to try “Tallinn’s most famous traditional dishes!!”. Many of them dressed, often with wildly varying authenticity, in medieval costume tout pictures of cheap beer and huge plates of potato, cabbage and breaded pork - a difficult thing for a Waterford man to pass-up. Resist I do however and continue exploring, getting my bearings for a day of exploration tomorrow. I cross the railway lines to the north of town and find Balti Jaama Turg, a fantastic looking food market that’s unfortunately just closing and an area of small restaurants and bars whose clientele seem to be more local. At the F-Hoone (“F-Building”) I have a simple but delicious meal and retire for the night, the walk back home through the twilight of the Old Town, quieter now, the perfect end to an introductory day.
Friday is hardcore sightseeing and there’s plenty to see. At the food market I just missed the previous night, bustling now, I grab breakfast and coffee and afterwards I start walking the Old Town walls. I come across the Irish Embassy (closed Fridays - nice work lads!) and visit the famous soaring edifice of the orthodox Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. While the museums that I visit - such as the soaring tower of the “Kiek in de Kök" (given its name in Low German for its occupants ability to “Peep into the Kitchen” of the surrounding houses) - are excellently maintained, I find many of the display's descriptions are either poorly translated or too dense and somewhat opaque. Given I generally struggle to retain the majority of what I read on these visits anyway, and admitting to myself how I like books with lots of pictures, I shrug and move on, you can't help but glean the general picture of the medieval past here.
The evening is spent hanging out with my AirBnB host Helena and her friends, a night that starts late and goes on all too early into the small hours. They show and tell me about area’s of the city I’ve passed but didn’t notice and the people, places and happenings I encounter now is the part of cities that Lonely Planet and Rough Guides will always strive to, but never fully be able to deliver.
I found Tallinn to be everything these guide books describe and much, much more. I was to a certain extent expecting the tourist-teeming medieval town centre adorned by grand castle towers and cobblestone squares, contrasted with the drab gray concrete facades of a former Soviet state that are in evidence. The reality however is much more, it's a more vibrant, diverse and open city, seemingly expressing its desire to embrace a western leaning life via the evolving urbanity of its capital city.
Years before its acquisition by Microsoft, Skype was born here, financial tech and cloud based CRM firms TransferWise and Pipedrive are following in these footsteps and modern day Estonia prides itself on its rapid embrace and development of digital industry. The Tiigrihüpe, or Tiger’s Leap, a mid-90’s government project to heavily invest in the development and expansion of computing & telecoms infrastructure has clearly paid massive dividends and a little more than 10 years after EU accession, Tallinn is thriving.
A short stroll to the north-west of the beautiful old town are the Telliskivi Creative City and DEPOO areas, the product of a 2005 regeneration program that saw the transformation of the original mid-19th century central railway station there. Its former excess has been repurposed into energetic, functional and fashionable day time office & eatery spaces. As evening sets, the interwoven and neighboring units - Tallinn’s Hipster’s paradise - come to life. Random Thursday nights are as likely to offer the rambler scenes of post work office ping-pong championships and open air cinemas, as they are casual acoustic sets, pop-up eateries and the latest street art works in progress.
After a late start my Saturday is similar but I’m more relaxed in my approach, happy to stroll, sip coffee and take in the sights. I’m somewhat distracted with the logistics of how to watch the Waterford v Kilkenny hurling qualifier later that evening and ask at every Irish bar I find if they’ll be showing it. A number answer in the affirmative but I’ve very little confidence, having to clarify that it is actually a sport, that I’ll find a hoard of GAA heads gathering later that night. I profusely apologize and explain to Helena that me watching the game on my phone while eating with her & her friends at the cities best vegan place is simply not a good idea.
Mad Murphy's Irish bar in the Old Town square is happy for me to use their WiFi but later comes through for me (one up-side of GAA’s deal with Sky) and manage to get it on the big screen. The TV’s muted and I can’t get either RTE radios broadcast or the GAA GO app’s sound feed in sync so I retreat into my phone again. Just as the game hots up so too the bar fills and I’m a raving lunatic now, buried, screaming on my own at the little screen on the counter. Colin Fennelly’s leveling point has me on the verge of tears as I curse and slap the counter (sorry Ma), while extra time goals from Jamie Barron and Maurice Shanahan have me leaping out of the stool and into dream land. The bar staff laugh and other punters look on at me in mild bemusement…..its all good in the end however and we’ve finally taken the Cat’s in the championship - 58 years since the only previous time.
A 9pm throw-in, extra time and one last pint to calm the nerves means there’s not a lot of options in the way of food left on the way home. I sit happily with a McDonalds on benches atop a grassy mound looking onto the main gates of the old city. Taking in the people who's Saturday nights are just kicking off and thinking of the game I feel the emotion of the win and the first, very minor, sense of loneliness - its hard when you can't share nights like this.