Thursday, Friday, and Saturday

This will be a long one – did not write for 3 days. Still cannot figure out my schedule here. BTW, if anyone is reading, please feel free to comment. This is not the most exciting stuff so if it is really boring, maybe I could skip.

Thursday was St.John’s. We took trolleybus to the Zoo and from there walked to the Open Air Ethnographic Museum where festivities were to take place. There was a good number of families and older people. The museum is a bunch of buildings from the different regions of Estonia spread over a fairly large territory on in the forest near the coast. It is really beautiful area. Festivities involved lighting up several fires, music from several stages, programs in the different areas, and of course food kiosks.

Possibly because the territory was so large, the event really did not have much of the festive character. There were pockets of fun and the minute you walk away all the sounds die off and you are alone in the forest. Which was not bad by itself, but from the perspective of the holiday, kind of boring. I was expecting a kind of a huge pagan feast.  

Friday was very memorable. Georgia and I started the day at McD. We finally got to do her homework. The music was playing, people were going by… very nice and lively. Then we went for a walk around and got to an old Dominican monastery. It was founded some time in 1240s. Beautiful old building was armed with a fake nun in white who was kind enough to point the highlights out to us. The place was tiny and had an interesting architecture. Current entrance is through a steep staircase to the large room that served as a bedroom to 8 monks. Next to it is the 2 story library/bedroom to the main monk. Downstairs, reachable by narrow internal stairs, was the chapel. Outside the window we saw another old abandoned monastery that we put on our radar for the next time.

Next, in the same courtyard we saw the sign saying that this cellar is the entrance to the oldest building in the city, that was now a gallery run by Alexander (did not catch his last name). A sign next to it said “Closed.” We figured that people make mistakes and walked right downstairs. Alexander was inside vacuuming. He stopped when he saw us and waited for a few minutes trying to figure out what nerve we had to disregard the sign upstairs. He finally asked what language we spoke. I said English and Russian and asked if he had preference for any other. He said “Ukrainian.” I said “maybe a little” in Ukrainian. He was sold. Apparently he is originally from Lvov. He is a character, funny and a little crazy. Tried to convince us to baptize Georgia in the Ukrainian church. The cellar, with the fireplace sized like “it came from hell,” was covered in Alexander’s works done is a wide range of media – ceramic, oils, metal. He is very talented. The works are great but also the presentation and attention to detail is amazing. We had a great time talking to him. Learned a little fact about Georgia’s name that warms my heart. Will have to come back. Just as we were leaving, he was quite rudely showing the way out to some tourists who spoke only English. A little Ukrainian saves the day J

After that we decided to climb the wall into the upper town on Nunne street. The way up partly through the giant old steps and partly the dirt path along the wall looked pretty innocuous and we kept going until Georgia scraped her hand. She started crying and I rushed her up hoping to find a staircase down once we get to the top. There was no staircase down. We walked around and found a door that led to the other section of the wall. But we would have to jump down from 3 meters to get down. So we had to go down the same way we got up. And it looked a lot steeper from up here. Georgia was complaining about her wound and I was upset with myself to having made a five year old take the trip. But we had to get down. So I asked Georgia to concentrate and she did. We walked down holding on to the gaps in the wall. She was not crying, she was following the instructions and we got down OK. She is amazing.    

But her adventures were not over. After lunch Irina, Isabella, and her went to the Zoo. When they got to the elephants a really bad thunderstorm had started. They held out as long as they could but eventually had to head home when Isabella started running out of food. Even with their rain gear on they got completely soaked. Meanwhile we had a productive afternoon at work in the comfort of a Magic coffee shop inside Viru Mall.

But we all had a relaxing evening. Went to Viru supermarket to get pizza that we ate right there, while shopping for some other stuff. And then we walked around the entire old town on the outside of it. In one section there is a really beautiful park with sculptures. In another you can see a separate castle within the walls of the upper old town. It is pretty interesting. We never saw it when inside the upper town. Maybe it is concealed behind some other buildings there. Pretty cool!

A couple of funnies for Friday.

Georgia said "I am a righty" and here is my righty - and showed her right hand. In Russian it is funnier: "Vot moya pravsha."

When we walked around at night, Georgia was telling some story about princesses. In the end she showed how princesses bow to the queen. Isabella immediately repeated the gesture. Only in her case she put her head down and her butt was up to the sky. We laughed. She figured it is a new game and repeated her bows every couple of steps. We were dying laughing and people around were laughing too. In the end she got tired and decided to go home on her butt. Sat down on the ground and tried to move. It was successull but pretty slow. In a few minutes we got tired of waiting, picked her up as she was squealing in protest and carried her home.  

Finally Saturday!

Today we went to Lahemaa National Park. It is a giant national park 70km east of Tallinn. It features beautiful forests with bloodthirsty hoards of mosquitoes, water stone parks, old manors, and a very nice Viru Bog.

We had the most awesome, incredible Cheese Danish. Dan had 3, I had 2. We contemplated a return trip.

Stone parks formed when receding glacier left large boulders along the way and a bog were a special highlight. Mosquitoes were something else. We were covered in the insect repellant, and yet they found the most creative places to latch on. If you stop moving for a second, they figure its their only chance and went for all parts covered in repellent anyway.