Spretnak The Blog: Ferry Cross the Gulf of Finland

Looking down on the Old Town Tallinn, Estonia.
I mean that in terms of elevation and camera angle. I'm not being condescending.

Today I took a ferry to a whole different country. Estonia. Specifically, its capital city Tallinn. This is my 38th country I've now been to, and my first country visited that was part of the old "classic line up" of the Soviet Union.

It was a two-hour ferry ride from Helsinki to the Port of Tallinn, Estonia. From there, it was only a 10-minute walk through part of the modern city to the medieval core of Tallinn.

Soon the gates of the old medieval city beckoned the tourist throng.

The great travel guru Rick Steves has described Tallinn, Estonia, as a "medieval theme park," and he's 100 percent right about that.

He also stated that, even with the touristy atmosphere, it is worth a visit. It definitely was worth the day trip from Helsinki.

To the left in the photo below is the "Old Hansa," one of those medieval themed restaurants that serves cuisine from the medieval era. That means: no potatoes or tomatoes imported to Europe from the New World following Columbus's discovery of the Americas. Back in the European medieval period, the New World was "beyond here be dragons" territory. (Yes. I know. America was there before Columbus arrived. Yes. It is proper to say he "discovered" it. Anything you or I or anyone else has ever "discovered" was there all along before we found it. That's what the word "discover" means. End o' rant.)

This is the huge Old Town Square of Old Tallinn, Old Tallinn being otherwise known as Vanalinn:

It was so big that walking around it necessitated having a snack. I chose a poppy seed bun.

My afternoon coffee break, "fika," came early today.

And nothing says tourist-friendly quite like a horse-drawn carriage, now does it?

Actually, the old, medieval city was not as filled with hansom cabs and horse-drawn carriages as I would have expected. Perhaps horses had not arrived in the Baltics at that point.

At this point in the walking tour we were climbing up from the Old Town Square to the "other" city that formed medieval Tallinn: Toompea. The lower part of the medieval city was known as "Reval," an old Hanseatic League trading port filled with merchants, money, and medieval disease. The upper town, Toompea, was the haunt of the noble elite.

And by "haunt," I don't necessarily means these figures.

These statues of friars with no faces, only empty hoods, are found along the trek up from Reval to Toompea in the old city. They are creepy.

"Creepy" as in the "Ghost of Christmas Future" from the old black & white version of Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," the one that would give you nightmares when you were a kid. Not that happy, pleasant Mr. Magoo version.

We are now in the Toompea part of our Old Medieval Tallinn guided walking tour. This is the most prominent, most ornate Russian Orthodox cathedral in town.

Aleksander Nevski katedraal.

No photography was permitted inside, otherwise I would have committed acts of photography inside. But when a church orders me not to commit photography, I do not commit photography.

This is the Estonian parliament building.

And this is a sea gull.

This is a nice viewpoint. You can even see the Gulf of Finland, part of the Baltic Sea, in the back of the picture. It's right undeneath the sky.

This is the house of one of old nobel families, one that still lives in Toompea, Tallinn.

And this St. Mary's Cathedral, or Toomkirk.

But Aleksander Nevski katedraal dominates the skyline in Toompea, Tallinn.

Did you ever photograph an interesting-looking old building and then forget why it was you were told that it was interesting?

Yes. I don't remember why the building above was sufficiently interesting as to be worth photographing. Oh well, it is interesting, even if it is not the least bit "medieval." And pixels are cheap, not like the old days of film photography, So click away with impunity.

And we are back on the Old Town Square. Back in the lower city. And at the end of my guided tour of medieval Tallinn.

I do have a couple of hours to wander the city on my own before I need to catch the ferry back across the Gulf of Finland to Finland. So let's wander a little.

My first stop of two on my solitary wandering in medieval Tallinn was to the Saint Nicholas Church. It was severely damaged during World War II bombing by the Soviet Red Army and, Estonia being a particularly non-religious country, it was re-opened as the Niguliste Museum.

It is primarily known for having a "Danse Macabre" in its collection. A "danse macabre" is one of those medieval paintings, generally from the time of the Black Death, in which all sorts of people are dancing hand-in-hand with skeletons, the dead. Yes, that not only was a thing, it was a "thing" that for some reason I enjoy seeing. So let's pay our admission fee and go have a look inside.

The first floor is primarily medieval religious art:

There is a tower you can climb into with commanding views of Tallinn old and new:

You can walk up the 200-plus steps or you can take the elevator. I compromised. Elevator up. Stairs down.

While the old church sanctuary is not packed with religious art, what it does have is interesting.

Primarily it is the hinged, wooden altarpieces, which are closed during ordinary time and are opened to spectacular displays during special occasions.

I liked this painting that depicted both the crufixion and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in one tableau.

And now for the star of the Niguliste Museum show:

The "danse macabre," or "Dance of Death." Let me take my place in the Dance.

What is interesting about this "danse macabre" is that it is the only surviving "danse macabre" that was painted on canvas. And it survives only as a fragment. Whenever you see these anywhere else in Europe, they were frescoes.

Next, I am going to attempt to walk the city walls of medieval Tallinn.