I woke up at 5 in the morning, got in a plane and when I opened my eyes, after one hour of flight I was there, in Tallin. Another beautiful medieval city centre, a bit like Prague or Visby, to give some references, but still very unique. The center is so charming that you just want it to continue, to be bigger, but it has an end, like all the story tales and this end is more grey, like all big cities, with taxis, commercial centers and people in the streets. So we came back and wished we were living in the middle ages (just for the weekend). It helps that our Estonian friend took us to a "middle age restaurant" where they told us (a waitress wearing a typical old costume) that they haven't started to grow potatoes in these times, so we can't order that. Great food and music and even better home made beer, served in clay mugs. But yes, the city, I wouldn't mind getting lost there for days (probably in circular paths) just to see every hidden street and specially now that Hele showed us the best chocolate shops and the best cafes...
The next day we got to see the country side, for our surprise (or lack of it) it looks a lot like Sweden! Woods, lakes, not many people, which is not bad really, nice coast, and a beautiful waterfall with amber color and kids swimming under it. Then we saw characteristic fishing towns made of wood, german manor houses, communist time soviet buildings (you see, Hele, I remember everything). And we ate in a restaurant where they only had the one type of fish, smoked, but we could choose bigger or smaller. So we got a big fish and shared it between five, while the fisherman who caught it observed our faces of delight from a distance. It was the biggest fish of the day.
And of course, we had a lot of fun, walking around, eating chocolate, hearing our friend speak Estonian at supersonic speed and then translating, trying strawberry soup (and yes this is a dessert, they also had beer soup and borsch hmm) and pretending to dance old songs in an English pub.
We also got the Estonian latest hundred years of history spontaneously told by an old man in the museum, about how the Russian and German took over in different times and sent their people to fight in both fronts, against each other, fathers and sons, he said. The sad stories of yet another beautiful country. As my history teacher said in our first lesson at school," we learn the history in order not to repeat it", and even when we know that this is not always the case, at least we can't say we didn't know.
