Day 3: Eating candied lichen (it takes like shredded wheat).
Today began with difficult times. Well, it included them. Em and I ambled into the old town and had amazing lunch pancakes (big ones) in one of Tallinn’s classic places which looks sort of closed but actually isn’t. They were delicious, and so big that our brains stopped working as all resources were diverted to our stomachs. Evidence for this: the guy we are sharing the table with gets up to leave. He says, ‘Bye’ and Em replies, ‘You too.’ Then we went on, to the time of strife. Basically, the day before we’d had not much time before our tour and so had tea in the first cafe we saw – called Caffeine. On the way out we noticed the much more bespoke-looking Cafe Amore, and so this time we went there before our tour. We sat down and were horrified: tea was THREE EUROS 90! (I don’t know where my Euro button is on this keyboard). Obviously we were too embarrassed to leave, so we ordered a pot of some kind of black tea between us, which then arrived, and I waited for what I thought was a reasonable time, and poured. It was, essentially, water. Em asked about milk and I said, “Em, but look, it is so weak, with milk in it’d basically just be...warm very diluted milk!” We weren’t sure what to do now. But in the end Em was decisive, and also brave. She ordered milk, we waited a little, and she said, “Ok, let’s pour again.” She did this and I wailed, “It’s the SAME AS BEFORE!!!!” – to which Em replied, “No, look at my cup. It’s twice as dark.” After this I happily chomped down three more miniature cups of what was actually quite nice tea, and then I cheerily went on to the tour. Em was I think still slightly horrified by the cost – although I paid the lion’s share as I’d drunk...well more than that. But the hard times were over, and I had made it through. I was HAPPY. So this tour was the Communist Tour of Tallinn. It obviously had an unhealthy dose of horrific facts – thousands deported to Siberia, including lots of women and children...torture in the KGB offices.... The tour guide told a joke which we should have not laughed at: “Just after independence a British journalist was shown around the basement [where the torture took place] and he said, ‘I expect I’m the first journalist to come here.’ The KGB person said, ‘No, but you’ll be the first one to leave.’” I think I forgot to end the ‘How to end communism’ explanation of yesterday. Basically that tour guide’s point was that the tv shows showed all the things – like bananas – that people didn’t have in the Soviet Estonia. So people stopped believing the ‘it’s so much better here than it is out there’ propaganda. The tour guide today said that one of the propaganda films they made showed American supermarkets full of stuff and said ‘Look, in the US the people are really poor so they can’t buy anything that is in the shops. That is why the shelves are so full.’ The best facts he gave were about plastic bags and chewing gum. When Finnish tourists started coming, they brought plastic bags with them. In the USSR you had to bring net bags. Although these were obviously much better for the environment, in those less enlightened times, people in Tallinn went mad for the plastic bags. The cool kids at school wouldn’t bring their books in rucksacks, no, they’d carry them in plastic bags they had wheedled from the Finns. Similarly, if they were lucky, they could get chewing gum (other than the single, not very good, flavour they had there) from the tourists. A small part of this would be chewed immediately, and then the rest would be brought into school and (very kindly) shared around. But there were rules: two chews, teeth only – no tongue – and then pass it onto the next person. (Yes, gross.) Oh and now we’re in Rukis again, having cake and tea. One of the cakes had candied lichen on it. Em’s verdict was NO. Mine was NICE It's happened again. :( |
Tallinn with Em Day 2 |
Tallinn with Em |
Once I get home I will work out how to move this. |