Friday, June 21, 2013

More from Tallinn, Estonia



More from Tallinn, Estonia
 
Saturday, June 15

We set out to explore the area around the town wall nearest our apartment. Usually, it’s Ardith that is driven up the wall by Jim, but Jim was the one climbing the wall today.



The stair risers were at least twice as high as normal – not a good place for a bad ankle.  


Jim got to see what the “real Tallinn” looked like and decided he wanted to go there later today.


We tried the cathedral at the top of the hill and saw that there would be an organ concert there later, so we planned on coming back when the crowds of tour groups would be less and getting to hear music at the same time.  We did enjoy seeing the Estonian parliament building’s exterior, but it isn’t open on weekends.


One section of the town walls is dedicated to artists displaying their works.


We enjoy good street musicians and usually toss some money their way.  There were many to choose from here.


Jim hoped he could go up the tower in the town hall.  It apparently isn’t open on weekends.  We browsed around more of the streets and Ardith went back to the apartment to help her ankle. (Sounds like helping your uncle).


The controls of the dishwasher and clothes washer were very interesting.  We figured out the dishwasher right away and managed to get the clothes washer to do our laundry nicely, but weren’t quite sure why.



 Jim headed for the other side of the walls – and escape!  Just inside the gate, he saw more orange.  This time it was on a pair of feet.  A husband and wife had new, very bright sneakers.  Jim loved them.  Their owners liked having their picture taken.


Just outside the gate was more orange, this time from Hare Krishna’s chanting and drumming.  Jim hadn’t seen any in several years, but remembers back in the 60s and 70s when they seemed to be in every public space.


Next, he needed to cross a heavily trafficked road and actually went to a crosswalk. He hesitated to cross in the face of oncoming cars, but noticed a pair of legs heading between him and the cars, thus improving his chances of safely crossing.


A few blocks into the city, he saw a building with the word Frida on it.  He snapped its picture since we had seen the movie of that title a few weeks ago and heard the music from it at the guitar concert.



Jim’s walk took him past several interesting buildings and many as boring as run-of-the –mill American ones.





He passed a small Orthodox church and saw that there was a funeral going on inside.  He resisted the temptation to go in – he actually shows restraint from time to time.  



There are various big chunks of concrete used in many places to tell folks where not to park or which roads are forbidden to cars.  Jim thinks he would like to put something like this at the mouth of his driveway where people are constantly knocking down the low set of blocks used to separate our garden from the road.


When we first entered the town in the taxi, Jim attempted to take a picture showing gas prices.  Despite the fact that humans see lots of digits across, only one is actually lit at a time as seen by a fast camera lens.  Jim slowed his shutter down and saw the all the digits at once, after a few tries.  Gas is roughly $6.50 a gallon, about the same as we saw in Helsinki.


Even though he was taking a somewhat random walk, he had 2 destinations in mind. He wanted to check the bus terminal to see what we would encounter tomorrow.  There was a grand old bus out in front.


He also decided that a men’s room would be most useful at this time.  Much to his dismay, he saw that it was necessary to pay – roughly 40 cents.  He fumbled through his pockets and found the right amount. He has been noticing pay toilets in many of the places where we have been.  In St. Petersburg, there was one that cost roughly a dollar.  Later in this walk he saw ones for a quarter and 13 cents.


His next destination was the big park in town.  He had to walk along a major roadway to get there.  He saw that the only safe way was to cross on an overpass.  The bridge had an interesting graffito.




When he got to it, he could either walk a longish way to get to its surface or climb up.  He thought that there was a nice rough surface, but on closer inspection, it was a cloth used to control erosion.  Up the steep concrete path!


When he got to the park, he encountered locked, rusted gates and hoped that didn't mean the park was closed.  He decided they blocked off areas used for sporting events and continued along the edge of the park. 
 


While he was there, he heard a chorus of beautiful bird songs and paused to record them.


He finally got to the formal gardens in the park.  As he guessed, there were wedding pictures happening there.


His watch told him it was time to head back to the Old Town if he was going to get to the organ concert on time.  Just outside the park, he saw a house with For Sale on a big sign in English.  Early in our marriage, we would see interesting fixer-uppers and think about doing so.  This would have been a great challenge.


Just a few doors away, he saw the biggest single family house he has seen on this trip, so the neighborhood is good, despite a building being torn down next door.


He noticed water ahead of him on the sidewalk.  It hadn’t rained the whole time we were here, so he paid attention to what was happening.  The water was coming from two guys who were washing windows on a tall building using long poles.  It must take a lot of muscle to control them.


He got back in time for us to go to Saint Nicholas church for the organ concert.  There is a huge candelabra inside that welcomes your entry to the building.



We initially thought the bluish structure inside was some sort of confessional, but it actually was a baptistery.


The church had a series of photos on the wall showing destruction and reconstruction.


There were many shields on the wall.  The English translations call these epitaphs, but we commonly use that term for a set of words.  These were commemorative objects for deceased merchants and noblemen.


There was a treasury room filled with silver and some gold, much of it communion ware.


The most famous piece of art there is called Danse Macabre (Dance of Death), done in the 15th century.  What remains is about 30 feet wide.  It was originally about 100 ft. but the ravages of wars and fires took away much of it.  It was a great challenge to photograph and Photoshop because it was covered with a non-glare plexiglass.  The explanation said that this was quite a topic at the time because of the prevalence of the Black Plague.



Tombstone in church

At last to the music.  The sound was quite wonderful, the playing excellent.  We didn’t get a program, so we weren’t sure what we were listening to.  It was modern, but not crazy.  We were glad we had the experience.


After we went back to our apartment and rested a bit, it was time for dinner.  We opted to go nearby.  Nearby meant the place we could see looking out our window – probably 50 feet from our door to theirs.  We had enjoyed the aromas from Grillhaus Daube. The taste matched the smell.


In our restaurants here and in Helsinki, servers didn’t bring silverware to the table.  There was a container filled with forks and knives already there.


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