Central / Eastern Europe Trip — Estonia

I’m packing up for the second large trip. We leave tomorrow. Time to finish writing about this one.

Hungary
Slovakia
Czech Republic
Estonia

Our flight arrived in Tallinn at about 10pm. We had a bus take us to the hotel. Then we went to bed.

The hotel was alright. The room was small but nice enough. The TV programming sucked. I read a little of a Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. book that I had picked up in Prague for the flight. Good reading.

Sunday, October 9th, we were able to sleep in till a decent hour. We ate breakfast (this hotel probably had the worst continental breakfast of all of them, but it was still worthwhile) and then headed out for a city walk at 11am. The hotel was perhaps fifteen minutes from the city center, so it was a good location. The tour itself was very good. The women giving it was entertaining and informative. Throughout most of Estonia’s history, they’ve been ruled by some foreign power – Sweden, Germany, Russia, etcetera. So a lot of the tour centered around this history. Interesting stuff.

Following the walk we had a quick hour break for lunch. I walked around a bit with one girl from the group, eventually had a coffee. Then we all joined back together and took public transportation to Audentes University, where we had a lecture with a professor there, Ivar Raig.

This lecture was memorable, if not particularly useful or worthwhile. Raig is an outspoken eurosceptic who didn’t have too many positive words for the EU. It was mostly odd-ball ranting. Eh.

We got away from him at three thirty, and had the rest of the day off. I walked around the city some more, but since it was Sunday, not much was open. I eventually ate at a place called “The African Restaurant”. All of the servers were cute blonde Estonians, but in the kitchen they had a few Africans. Heh. The food was good, I forget what I got. Also had some sort of African specialty drink. It wasn’t quite tea, and it wasn’t quite coffee. It was enjoyable nonetheless. On the way back to the hotel, I ducked into a liquor store and bought a bottle of cheap and very bad wine. Drank a little and read some more Vonnegut back at the hotel.

Monday, October 10th, we had a little more on our schedule. We ate breakfast and were at the first meeting by ten. Three meetings, they were all pretty decent in hindsight. We also had a tour of the Estonian Parliament building, which was very nice. At six we had a finishing tutorial with one of the tutors. At eight we had the final dinner, which was on the study abroad program’s dime. It was a medieval-themed restaurant. It was fun, the food was alright, the company was better.

Students started splitting, and I ended up being with three or four others, the last to leave. We stepped outside and began to make plans on what to do next, when the people running the program stepped out, and invited us to a bar for a drink, on them. We went to this “white bar”, which was — you guessed it — very white. Walls, seats, lights, bar. Everything was white. And vinyl. This place was the epitome of the phrase “eurotrash”. Anyways, we had a round or two, had fun, and eventually headed back to the hotel. Made it back at eleven or so. Read a bit, drank a little wine, went to bed.

Tuesday, October 11th, we ate breakfast, checked out, and headed for the airport. Our flight departed Tallinn at noon, and we got back to Frankfurt at about one thirty. A bus brought us back to Freiburg, and I was back at my flat by five.

A wirlwind tour of Central and Eastern Europe. Guess you had to be there. I’ve left so much out. But jeez. I’m tired of writing about it by now!