Hotel Comfort Oru Tallinn

... amazing and full of interesting stories from an underground Homeless City to warfare from the 1600 to roughly the 1950's. In the evening it was someone's birthday at the hostel also, so we all played table-football and the Wii whilst having a few social drinks.<br><br>(31-10) We had gone to bed at a reasonable time the previous night as to be rested for our longish journey to Russia, but were rudely awoken by a Finnish teenage boy and an Estonian girl who he had ...

... to the skill of the chef, who we affectionately nicknamed big momma. Over dinner we decided to do the trip to Riga the hard way&#8230; <br><br>The hard way included a 05:45 wake up call for the 3-hour local stopping train (20 stops) to Tartu in the south east of Estonia, approx. 189km from Tallinn. Tartu is the second biggest city in Estonia but had a sleepy small town feel to it. We walked the 2km from Tartu train station to the main ...

... väike vidin, mis loeb pulssi, kalorit ja teeb veel mitu imet. Äratab ka, mis ongi vidina peamine ülesanne ekspeditsioonil itta. Telefoni võib seega rahus koju jätta. Loodetavasti püsib vidin järgmised poolteist kuud hinges.<br>Osta.ee on täiesti hämmastav leiutis...<br>

... and the Alexander Nevsky Russian Orthodox church - which possesses the most impressive peal of bells that I have ever heard. Nineteen bells pealed in a complex mathematical pattern that is truly amazing to hear. The church is unmistakable - looking like a refugee from Moscow - with ornate exterior and onion domes, and serves the sizable Russian-speaking population. It isn't very popular with Estonians, and is one of the ...

... Linda mägi, i.e. Linda Hill, named after the Linda Monument, a graceful sculpture by Estonian sculptor Amandus Adamson. According to legend, Linda was the wife of the giant Kalev, some kind of national hero here. The story goes that Kalev was buried on Toompea, and Linda was mourning her tears there. During the Soviet times, when you could earn yourself a prison sentence just by laying flowers, it became a symbol of collective grief for victims of Soviet oppression. The Linda monument ...

... started looking & then noticed I could hear some English commentary - broken English, but understandable. A very elderly volunteer in the museum was explaining what happened to Estonia in WW2 to a young English female tourist. I edged over & asked could I join them. That was an excellent move! The old man had a sort of understatement in all he said, but then would sort of pause & let the sadness ring on. In 1941, when Russia was occupying Estonia, they conscripted 36,000 Estonians ...

... because of it, and there is a language barrier, and a currency barrier... we were told they would take Euros, but not everywhere does. [SIGH] I headed to the loo and let them sort it out. By the time I returned, it was straightened out, I was relieved, and we were on our way out the front of the Cruise terminal and to the tram stop up the street. Again, the Day Pass Tallinn Card came to the rescue, saving us a ton of money ...

Finally we were able to grab the plane to get to Estonia... We had to wake up at 4 oclock, take a flight to Berlin and wait over there for 5 hours till we got our final plane to Estonia. As you can imagine it was a long journey. It was funny that next to our plane in Barajas I found the plane of Getafe Football team which had beated ...

... the only part I found remotely interesting. <br><br>Back to the old town to use the internet. Pricey, at 4 Euros per hour. Another example of tourist-gouging - there are many cities with higher costs of living than Tallinn that have internet for anywhere from 1-3 Euros per hour. <br><br>We chilled at the hostel for a bit and then went for dinner. We managed to find a slightly less-tacky place than the norm in Tallinn. It ...

... parece mas avanzado que con el espa#ol... Por ahora no hemos tenido que llevar nuestra enorme mochila a cuestas por mucho tiempo, solo el suficiente para darnos cuenta de que pesa muuuuucho!!! Y, viendo la enorme y buena acogida que ha tenido mi poncho seguro que os alegrais al saber que vendra conmigo todo el viaje, asi que lo vereis de nuevo!