Tallinn at it's best

It's Monday. No courses taking place on Tuesday, considerations what about to do. Finally - an idea. Let's check the weather reports. Sunny all Tuesday and the rest of the week is supposed to be snowy, cold and grey. Sure, we have to seize that possibility:

GO TO TALLINN!

Only as a group of four, we decided to take the advantage of Eckeröline's special students' offer: 18 EUR for a daytrip to Tallin, that's a deal. Early in the morning we had to get up, leaving Pasila station at 6:49 - the ferry was supposed to leave at 8:00 and boarding closed 15min prior to departure. Of course, we were in the ferry already at 7:20, much too early - at that point I say "Hello" to my grandmother who definetely knows where I got that behaviour from ;-).

The weather was even better than I expected, I already could take a load of beautiful pictures on the way to Tallinn - the sunrise was impressive, except of the temperature of about -7°C, it felt like summer on a ship somewhere in the south.










































After almost exactly three hours on the ferry - having fun watching about 1.500 Finns trying to make the best of the lower prices on the ship and starting drinking early in the morning - Tallinn expected us with a wonderful day making us feel like in spring.


































First way after getting to the pittoresque oldtown was a restaurant - having lunch in Tallinn isn't only much cheaper than in Helsinki (and in Austria) but also much better than most of the "I can't decide between offering italian, american or spanish food so I offer everything"-restaurants in Helsinki. Shortly after finishing our meals, we started to discover the oltown; unexpectedly there wasn't that much going on in the city, not that many beautiful estonian girls as we expected were around.

The oldtown of Tallinn is mostly still unchanged, some places really have a medieval flair and this seems to be the USP for some restaurants and bars here: dining without electric light only with candles, dark bars down in the basements, some locations really offer the feeling of the ancient times.


































































It's unbelievable for me how fast Estonia could develop since their 2nd attempt to get indepenent in 1991. Still, the economical situation isn't really nice for most of the population, the per-capita-income it at about 10.000 EUR/year; but this doesn't really reflect the situation you can see on the streets. Nowhere before I could see so many luxurious cars compared to the total number of cars (Estonians seem to love Audi's S- and RS-series, Hummer and muscle cars while BMW isn't -unexpectedly - that popular).

In the sector of communication, every European country still has to learn a lot from Estonia. By law, every Estonian has to have free access to the internet. Unbelievable, everywhere in the city you can have free WiFi coverage and for those who don't own a computer (still, almost every Estonian does) you can find free internet terminals all over the city in post offices, cafes and shops. Under that circumstances it's no surprise for me that some users' favourite software (Skype) was created in Estonia by Estonians. They love communication, everywhere and anytime. No wonder that Estonia has one of the best-developed E-government-solutions worldwide.
















































After six wonderful hours in Tallinn, the ferry took us back to Helsinki giving us a marvellous view on the sunset over Tallinn. With us most of the Finns who came here in the morning went back, loaded with tons of cheap alcohol (to be honest: also we went shopping ;-)) and drunk (we weren't). Their party went on on the ship, including Karaoke singing (everybody), dancing (for those above 70 years) and the inevitable disco (for drunk Finns from 40 to 69 years). Disembarking in Helsinki, many of them weren't really able to walk in a straight line anymore.