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talvi > finland > jaunt > Node19

July 21: Tampere to Tallinn

Got up early as we had two more museums to visit before catching the 12.55 to Helsinki. Started at the Moomin Museum, stocked with lots of Tove Jansson's³⁸ original paintings and drawings from the Moomin books, as well as dozens of lovingly constructed, glass-cased models and tableaux. It also included Jansson's original illustrations for Alice in Wonderland and The Hobbit.

Next was the Lenin museum, devoted to the great man's life and particularly his period of exile in Finland.³⁹ However, many of the exhibits consisted of Russian documents annotated in Finnish, which didn't do us much good.

Managed (just) to catch the train to Helsinki, and continued to Estonia on a packed hydrofoil.⁴⁰ Estonia is a popular destination for Finnish daytrippers, for the same reason that France is popular with English daytrippers: a short distance and a big difference in alcohol taxation. Finland has one of the highest rates of alcohol tax in Europe, and Estonia one of the lowest.⁴¹

Having arrived in Tallinn we took some time to find our hostel, which was miles out of the city centre. Fortunately it is served by an excellent trolleybus service, but unfortunately we took the wrong trolleybus and ended up trudging for miles through the suburbs. Having checked in and dumped our stuff, we went back into town to find food and explore the city.

Tallinn is only 80 kilometres from Helsinki, but they're strikingly different. The most obvious difference is that Tallinn is so much older: Helsinki has just celebrated its 450th birthday (and has few buildings dating back even that far), but Tallinn is recorded as far back as the 10th century. The city is ringed by centuries' worth of fortifications and looks much more typically eastern European than anywhere in Finland. It reminded me of Prague.

After a tasty, cheap meal, we settled in a comfortable bar on the main square, absorbing the local ambience and beer. It was a pleasant evening until a globetrotting bagpiper struck up outside; we attempted to enudre it for a while, but after a hideous rendition of ``Scotland the Brave'' we could take it no more and went home to bed.

Footnotes

... Jansson's³⁸

The author and illustrator of the Moomin books. Obviously.

... Finland.³⁹

One of the exhibits is the couch from the library of Helsinki on which Lenin used to sleep when visiting his friends there.

... hydrofoil.⁴⁰

The people in front of us in the queue were in the company of five huge red setters.

... lowest.⁴¹

There was an attempt to discourage booze cruising by introducing a minimum stay (36 hours, I think) before the full alcohol allowance could be taken. The result is a lot of ferries that leave Helsinki, circle aimlessly in the Gulf of Finland for several hours, and eventually arrive in Tallinn. By the time they get back to Helsinki enough time has elapsed to allow their passengers to import vast quantities of alcohol. I don't know why Finns would rather circle aimlessly in the Gulf of Finland than spend a few hours in Tallinn, but maybe the Estonians appreciate it.