Into Estonia and Finland

We left Liepaja bidding our farewells to Aldis and his family.  Driving away in our front wheel drive Impreza felt so good. Damn it was good to be in our own car again. We were ready rock Europe with an ultimate road trip. It only took a couple of hours to reach Estonia. Between Latvia and Estonia the border crossings are still really noticeable when compared to other EU border crossings. The buildings that were there were from the old controlled border crossings. They looked abandoned and are not in use anymore. We have decided to hop out of the car and take pictures of us at every border crossing sign. I am planning on making a cool photo album from these photos. As we crossed into Estonia the roads were clearly in a better condition than those of Latvia. None of them compared to the roads in Russia, or to the non-roads of Mongolia. I don’t think we will encounter any sort of road problems in Europe.

This is our new style of picture taking!

We reached Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, around the early evening and found our hostel, the Old Alur Hostel. Situated in the heart of downtown Tallinn, it was a short walk to tons of bars and restaurants. This was by far the largest hostel any of us had ever stayed in. Our room alone consisted of twenty beds. The hostel had about seven rooms on each of its three floors. In the basement was the reception, common area, kitchen, and stairs to an outdoor eating, drinking, and smoking area. In my experience most of the staff at hostels are natives, but at Old Alur, staffed by fifteen people, only three were Estonian. The rest were Guatemalan, Ukrainian, American (first Americans we had spoken with on the trip), and British. It was an interesting mix and provided for a lot of interesting discussions and stories. The main theme to the hostel was partying. Most of the foreigners working at the hostel had originally arrived while traveling only to get trapped in the “black hole” that is Tallinn.

With partying the main attraction we seemed to be in for a trip because the one night we were staying also happened to be the going away party for the manager. Our dinner that night consisted of pasta with sauce and bread. I was really excited because it was only the second or third time we had pasta sauce. Next to us at the table were a large group of Uruguayan students eating their marinated chicken breasts with side servings of mashed potatoes and salad. My happiness dimmed a little bit.

As the party started up we just followed everyone out of the hostel and started having drinks with the staff of the hostel and the manager. We met some super cute girls, and it was even better because they spoke English. We bar hopped for three or four hours and had a great time seeing the nightlife in Tallinn. However the “black hole” was not that enticing to us and we decided to head out the next day instead of staying another night.

The next day we had a slow start and enjoyed the company of fellow travelers in the common area as we decided what ferry to take to Helsinki. It is about a two-hour ferry between Tallinn and Helsinki and Finnish people to my knowledge primarily use it. Alcohol and generally everything else is very expensive in Finland so Fins take the ferry in the morning, buy copious amounts of alcohol, and take the ferry back at night. Usually the ride back involves tons of drinking. We took a ferry that left at two in the afternoon thus missing all the action I previously described.

I got in contact with a schoolmate from when I studied in Japan who was Finnish and studied in Helsinki. His name is Juha and he let us stay with him for our time in Helsinki. More to come on Finland later.

Juha!!

--Ezra