We left in the morning. We didn’t really have that much to eat because we had to go to the bus station shortly after we woke up. Cormac said he knew the way so we went with him and ten minutes before the bus was supposed to pull out, we made it there. We had our tickets but had to put our bags under the bus. The man there, who was not very helpful, did not like the fact that he had to put our baggage tickets on our bus tickets as we would soon learn soon that we would have to give our bus tickets (with our baggage tickets on them) to the bus people. We got on the bus and sure enough, we gave up our tickets.
We sat close to the back with a group of Spaniards who only spoke English. It was really bizarre but didn’t have the energy to spark conversation and figure out the reasoning behind their motives to speak English.
When we arrived in Tallinn after four hours, we tried to get our bags. The same man that gave us our baggage tickets asked us where our baggage tickets were. We said, “you put them on our bus tickets.” Apparently that wasn’t good enough for the man because he threw our bags back on the bus. So we waited until everyone else got their tickets. All over my bag, my name is written in permanent marker, so I got my passport out and went back over to the man. In the five minutes we were gone, he forgot who we were and didn’t realize there were only two bags in the bus. He asked, “which are your bags?”. I didn’t know if I should take this guys seriously enough and gave him probably the dumbest face of shock I could muster. Anyway, after lots of pantomiming and frustration, I said, “there is no one else here, my passport matches with the name written all over the bag.” He finally relented.
We walked down the street with our bags and got on the tram. Our fearless leader Mike walked us all around and told us to get off the tram way too early so we walked way past where we needed to go, just to walk back. Finally I stopped and in my broken Russian stopped someone and asked “excuse me, do you speak English.” The guy just looked at me and said “What?”. The guy apparently spoke English so in my excitement of not having to use Russian, asked him if he could help us out. He was from Greece and was very happy to help out lost Americans (us).
Arriving at the hostel, we learned that the amazing smart British hostel owner didn’t book three rooms, but just two. (I should say beds instead of rooms…). After waiting for about 30 minutes and walking through turtle pee (they had a turtle free-roaming in the living room of the hostel and walked right into it), they said that they had an open apartment and would not charge us extra. We took it. We went there, and three hours later, were able to put our things down. We all took naps and then went out and walked around the old town of Tallinn. Not that great. We got sushi. Really great. Then we walked back and watched “Defiance.” The Daniel Craig movie about militia men fighting Nazi Germany. Really good watch.
The next morning we woke up early and took our bags to another hostel. The guy working there was super nice and said that we could leave our bags there. So we left our bags behind one of the couches and walked around the Old Town some more. We went to a church and paid the two euro to go up the really small cave-like pathway up the million spiraling steps to the spire of the church. Russians drive me crazy sometime because we were standing there waiting for the line to move and the Russians came in and just walked between the people waiting to go in and the people coming out, basically pushing everyone out of the way. It was ridiculous. The view however, was totally worth it. It was amazing. You could see all of Tallinn and over the Harbor to the other side. I have picture of that and I will post those.
We then went down the street and found a place that rented bikes, so we rented bikes and went along the coast a ways to the other side. It was probably about 4 miles one way. That was a lot of fun. We stopped and took a lot of pictures and then rode back. By this time it was around 3:00, so we dropped off our bikes and found a place to eat pizza. It was gross, but really good at the same time because I was starving. We went back to the hostel and checked email and the weather and talked to the people staying at the hostel. They were nice enough. We then left around 6:00 and carried all our bags to the harbor. We found a place to sit and just hung out for about an hour and a half before getting on the boat. After we got on, we found a large couch and just staked out our area.
The boat ride was really nice. I mean the actual ride. The waters were calm, the people were not. We saw people wheeling around six 24-case boxes of booze around because the alcohol in Finland was ridiculously expensive. The people on the boat were out of control. I went up to the top deck and was trapped because two skinheads decided it was smart to get drunk and then wrestle in the middle of the cruise deck. So I watched, with a dumbfounded look on my face and then went downstairs. Two hours later, we were in Finland, at the Helsinki port.
We got our things and made our way to the public buses. At the city center, we changed buses and continued to Cormac’s place which is a good distance outside of the city.
I will write about Finland in the next blog but will leave you with some pictures.
Until next time…
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