Pond Impressions

It's summer, which means the water lillies are blooming and the dragonflys are buzzing around. Time to take a whole lotta pictures!

Estonia: Visiting the "Silicon Valley of Europe"

Time flies... when you're not flying. I'd not been in an Airplane, or outside of Austria, even, in such a long time, that booking a vacation felt really strange. But I was so glad I chose Estonia as my first "Back to travelling!" destination!

It is a really fascinating country, and much more than you'd expect, if your image of Estonia is only "Small, far away former Soviet state far up north". In fact, Estonia is super high tech. Far more high tech than Austria. They have lil robots that deliver food for you!! They just drive around on the walkway! There's a lot of tech start ups, for example, the app Bolt is from Estonia. And the prices really are not cheaper than Austrian prices. But I highly recommend visiting Tallin, not just for the cute robots.

Though of course, it is correct that Estonia is far up north. That means the daylight hours are quite different to Austria.

This picture was taken shortly before midnight!!

Putting the "hang" in "hangar"

My first major stop - after the journey to Tallin via Warsaw (because two flights were somehow cheaper than one?) - was the Seaplane Harbor Maritime museum. There's a bunch of ships and planes and stuff. It was extremely cool - mostly because there were several interactive elements, and you could go into some of the old ships!

The vibe in the hangar (where the boats were hanging) was really eerie. You entered the hanger on the second floor. Down on the ground floor, a bunch of kids were running around, having fun and also kind of screaming sometimes, which you'd think would be annoying, but honestly it really added to the experience. The large hangar with all the metal ships distorted their voices, so they didn't sound like kids, more like souls lost at sea, cursing the mortal sailors. Yeah I'm pretty sure they were just kids, though. I think. I hope.

There was also airplanes...

... and anti-aircraft weapons.

The best part was getting to actually climb down inside this ship.

The decent. I would NOT enjoy climbing down that ladder out at sea, when there's wind and waves and the boat is moving around.

Never again will I say "those steampunk chicks are overdoing it"

Yea the doors on board were like that. I almost fell several times with the ship completely still. Don't think I'd have made a good estonian sailor.

Looks comfy, doesn't it? Perfect for a nice rest after a long day of freezing your butt off in the Baltic Sea.

I mean... at least they had toilets with water flushing? Right?

They also had a huge aquarium with lil living sea creatures. Cute fishies!!

Those former Captain's Companions, however, are sadly no longer alive.

There were also a bunch of interactive Elements, for example you could have your hand squashed by water pressure or play with those lil remote controlled boats:

And a flight simulator where the plane actually moved! I totally did NOT crash the plane within a minute, okay. It was within seconds.

Pilot's license, here I come!!

Also I thought these were really cute:

Unfortunately, "cuteness" is not really that important for mines (which these are).

Overall, I loved this museum! It was extremely cool, especially climbing around in the boat. Though, that's not all! Outside the hangar, there's the actual old harbor, and there are also boats you can visit with the museum ticket.

Some were just outside and you could walk up onto the deck, but you could also go into one, that was in the water.

'twas a wee bit windy.

Well they had it better than the other ship's crew I guess.

Love the attention to detail, they even made the kitchen messy!

Hate the attention to detail, they even made the toilets absolutely vile!

The higher ups got nicer rooms and bathrooms.

All the engine stuff was especially fascinating to me.

Imagine navigating around there, knowing which crank to turn so the whole ship doesn't blow up AND the ship is getting shaken around by the waves AND if you slip you burn your entire skin on a boiling hot kettle.

From the outside parts of the ship, you also had a pretty nice view of the ocean and harbor.

I then walked around a bit. Even though it was a super sunny sunday, it was pretty much dead outside.

And I also found this insanely long foosball table. Who even has this many friends.

Walk in the Park

Then I visited the Kadriorg Park. It's pretty pretty!

You couldn't access this gorgeous little pavilion, though. You'd have to row there on a boat.

Guess we know why this dude has these markings.

In the park, there's also the art museum.

Following this street, you get to the beach.

The beach looked gorgeous. I was actually kind of suprised no one was even at the water. Sure it was pretty chilly, but I mean it's Estonia. You'd think they wouldn't mind a little chilly.

I took this picture because even by then, I had noticed a fascinating mismatch in archetectural styles in Tallin. The city reminds me of these hipster cafés where all the furniture is thrifted so nothing really fits together, but all in all, it's nice, a bit quirky, but also has personality.

In fact, because Estonia has been occupied for most of its history, there are only a few places in Tallinn where you'd say the architecture is traditionally Estonian. One of these areas is Kalamaja, one of the fancier parts of the city.

The buildings here - colorful, wooden houses, are Estonian archetecture.

The totally not fake oldtown

The next day, I took a tour through the oldtown of Tallin. But first, I had to battle a bunch of bastard birds. I think they were sparrows. I had bought myself some pastry things (one of which was somehow filled with mustard and a hot dog? But looked like sweet pastry? Why. Bad biting into a pastry suprise experience). And I have never seen birds this agressive. They flew up to the pastry literally while I was taking a bite. I had to constantly kick my legs up to not have the bird literally steal the food from my mouth.

Anyways. Tallin's oldtown is absolutely gorgeous. There is still a lot of medieval, Danish (they were occupied by the Danes by pretty much the entire middle ages) architecture. 

The Russian Orthodoxe Church. What's special about this church is that it's one of the few churches in Tallin where many people actually go, Russians and/or people with Russian heritage. Estonians don't really go to church. My tour guide said only about four percent of Estonians are church goers. There's still a bunch of churches in the oldtown, however. My tour guide said Estonians are kind of "the last pagans of Europe" - people are more likely to believe that trees have souls, they get married at the beach or in the forest. 

The streets in the old town are narrow, and the buildings super colorful. Almost too colorful They all looked like they'd just been painted last week. And like. This city is right at the coast! Don't they have harsh weather? Salty water that get's sprayed around and damages the buildings? It almost felt like Disney World, just a bit too perfect. No shade, but Vienna could never...

 

You may notice that there aren't many super high buildings visible. That's because Tallin doesn't have that many. For a capital, it's not a big city, they only have about 420 000 people. Then again, Estonia only has about 1.3 million inhabitants total. That means, Austria for once is a comparatively big country!!

I was absolutely fascinated by those gorgeous little alleys. Made me want to immediately shoot a medieval movie there. I mean, you wouldn't have to change a thing!!

This was a little courtyard, a bit removed from the busier alleys. It was super quiet, except for birds chirping (but luckily not harrassing me). I just sat there a fairly long time. It was beautiful.

One more maritime

There's another maritime museum in Tallinn, but it's a lot more underwheliming. There's less interactive stuff, less cool stuff. I guess it's more for the real boat history enthusiasts.

Some boat names

Untrapped Tourists

By the third morning, I had come to the realization that maybe the end of may was not the greatest time to visit Estonia. At least not this year. The reason being that there really was not a whole lot of touristy stuff. It's just been rough for Estonian tourism - the pandemic of course might still be a factor, but a huge number of tourists visiting Tallinn come in on cruise ships. And the tour highlights of these tours for many is St. Petersburg. And now, the cruise ships of course don't go to St. Petersburg anymore. So a lot fewer people want to do the cruises at all. 

That means that there isn't a whole lot of these typical tourist trap things. Not like I'm a huge fan of tourist traps, but sometimes, I missed the touristy stuff. For example, in the Tallinn bay, there are islands that you can, theoretically, visit. But there's no ferry that will just drop you off in the morning and pick you up a few hours later, if you wanted to visit them, you'd have to stay the night. Because there's only one boat a day. Not even every day. And I did not want to stay there too long.

You could just ride the boat to the island and right back though, and I decided to do that, even if I didn't get to actually go on the island Aegna. I mean it was still nice. A boat ride on a sunny day is always fun.

We quickly stopped at the island and dropped off the people who stayed at the island.

Tallinn from the bay

The virtual reality invention factory

After the boatride, I went to Port Noblessner. The port is not named after Alfred Nobel, but Emanuel Nobel, his nephew, and Arthur Lessner. The two businessmen from St. Petersburg established a submarine shipyard there. 

The architecture there is really cool.

But the coolest thing there: Proto.

It's not really a museum, it's more a theme park. The theme is inventions. And you experience many of them with VR goggles.

 

It was so freaking cool. I had chosen a good time to go there, because there wasn't a huge amount of people. On the weekends, I heard it is super busy. Because many people from Tallinn also go there, not just tourists. And I mean, if I lived in Tallinn, I'd do that, too. Especially for kids, it's amazing. Both a lot of fun and if you want you can also learn about the sciency background. 

Not gonna lie, if I was twelve years old, I don't think I would have left that place unless they threw me out. 

It was my first time wearing VR goggles. They work surprisingly well! I would not have thought the image would look that... real.

The effort that went into the designs of the attractions was remarkable. In this submarine, you wore VR goggles of course, but the real submarine is still really cool.

They went so far with the immersion as to install infrared lights at this hot air balloon simulation, so that you would feel heat - as if from the fire in the hot air balloon - on your head while playing. Okay Estonia we get it, you're a country of tech freaks.

One thing I'll say about Pronto though is that it's not ideal for solo visitors. Some stations require groups, and/or are just a lot more fun with more people.

Getting in touch with history

Then I went to the Estonian Open Air Museum. It's also in Tallinn, but it took a while to get there by bus. It's basically a huge park, with old farm buildings that have been transported there so you can look at them. Again, there were not a huge number of people. So that made the visit super calm and relaxing, I didn't see anyome for most of it, and there was a lot of pretty nature and scenic medieval-ish buildings.

I really have a thing for little wooden cabins tbh. Would move in immediately. If they had plumbing and wifi.

You could look into most cabins. 

There also was a yellow, much more modern farmhouse.

The baby's crib was hung on a stick.

You could also access the beach from the park.

There are also animals at the park, like horses. You can also ride around the park in a carriage.

I also had lunch at the park. Of course, it was very tradition and history themed. But tasted great!

So there's not a huge amount of traditional Estonian dishes. Because they have been occupied by other countries so much, they weren't really able to develope their own cuisine. They have some traditional, hearty meat dishes - like roast pork with potatoes and sauerkraut, but I mean, that's also a traditional Austrian dish. What is pretty special in my opinion is the bread. It is very black bread. They have some special way of fermenting it, it tastes very malty. They also have a special drink, made from fermented bread.

It's called Kali, which translates to Kvass, but I'm guessing that doesn't tell you much, either. It's basically fermented bread. So kind of similar to beer. It has alcohol, but only a little bit. It's considered pop, not alcohol, in Estonia. It tastes a little like beer, but a very malty beer, a little like coke, and a little like yoghurt. But not all that bad. Though, I don't think I'd casually order it at a restaurant often.

A deserted island

I didn't want to only see the capital of Tallinn, so I took a bus to the island Saareema. It's the largest island in Estonia. The bus ride took about four hours, including a ferry ride.

Right after arriving at the island's capital, Kuressaare, I visited the city's castle. The castle is also known as Arensburg, and it's really old. And exceptionally well preserved. 

A model of the castle

The castle is surrounded by a scenic park.

There's a museum inside the castle, with several exhibitions about multiple things.

An exhibition about Estonian wildlife

Several exhibitions about various time periods in Estonian history.

Of course, the castle itself was also an attraction.

You could also go outside at the defense structure and enjoy the view.

Though after I had been to the castle, I noticed that really, this island is not great for visiting without a car, especially during that time. There really weren't many people there, either. It felt almost deserted.

This ship, the hoppet, is kinda cool. You could look at it, and you theoretically could charter it, for groups, and then you can sail around, which would be really cool. But not exactly affordable for one person. Or most groups, really.

The food, however, was great.

This is meringue with buckthorn cream. A lot of foods include buckthorn there. It was really good!

This is garfish. You might be surprised when you cut into it...

... because the bones are green! I thought the waiter was kidding when he told me, but they're totally really green!

Goodbye, Estonia

Before I knew it, it was time to leave the cute little baltic slash nordic country. Back to Tallin, then to Warsaw, then to Vienna, then my home town. A lengthier journy than you'd expect. But I really enjoyed the trip, and I'm very grateful I finally got to travel a bit again. Can't wait until the next time!