more tallinn

So, anyway, about Tallinn: there's been a lot in the news in the last few years about Estonia and its efforts to transcend its Soviet past. It held the world's first online elections in 2005, and as in Finland, you can do a whole slew of things through SMS, like buying a bus ticket or ordering take-out food! As you see here, a modern skyline has risen in the past five years.


But it seems the story is more complex. There's a much larger Russian population than I had thought--Russian was the main language I heard spoken--and this huge population seems to live completely isolated from the tech-savvy and west-loving ethnic Estonians. Parts of Tallinn are indistinguishable from any other provincial town in Russia: the stinky, Brezhnev-era busses, the drunks passed out on benches, the crumbling pavement, the girls in stilettos and see-through clothes. The Inturist "beach resort" where I stayed--built beside the 1980 Olympic yachting vanue--was straight out of the Soviet 80s. Though it had a fairly decent view on the Gulf of Finland.

Right across the street, I found the ruins of the Pirita nunnery, which dates back to the 14th century. It was never rebuilt after it was ransacked by... Ivan the Terrible.