Tallinn

Wed 2 June

After breakfast we walked along a small cobble stoned street beside the town wall to the top part of the Old Town. At the top of the street the imposing Alexander Nevsky Russian Cathedral filled the square occupying one of the highest parts of town.

We walked from the Cathedral to some viewing platforms on the walls which provided views over the Lower Old Town and across to the ferry terminals and harbour. Judging from the large number of people walking through the streets accompanied by guides there must have been some cruise ships in port, that’s the problem with these towns, they’re full of tourists, though the crowds are nothing like we experienced in Prague, two years ago, on May Day.

Across from the Russian Cathedral is Toompea Castle a large pink building now occupied by the Estonian Parliament. The original castle was a wooden fortress built in the 10^th or 11^th century and was thought to be the first structure in what is now Tallin. Outside the parliament was a protester wearing a large sign around his neck, he was protesting about the price of electricity, I thought that I should join him as is seems to be a universal problem.

The next building we visited was the Cathedral of St Mary the Virgin also known as the Dome Church, this is the oldest church in Estonia and was originally a Roman Catholic cathedra but now is Lutheran. The walls of the cathedral are covered by the most magnificent heraldic shields of the old Estonian nobility. These shields are covered with three dimensional carvings with all the emblems comprising their coats of arms, some of the shields were over three metres tall by a metre wide and in some cases almost 600 mm deep, we have never seen any thing like it before.

From the cathedral we walked along the inside of the old town wall, past many defence towers and on to the large Kiek in de Kok or Cannon Tower which we presume in times gone by, housed cannon on its many levels. We then arrived at a small square with a well, the only one we have seen but we suppose there must have been many through the town in early days.

After lunch we continued our walk around the Lower Old Town following the wall and at one corner in the street were houses with many styles of roofs, including iron, quiet a contrast. At the other end of town from the Cannon Tower was another town gate beside Fat Margaret’s Tower, obviously named before the politically correct idiots inhabited the world. This tower although it is not as tall as Cannon Tower was nearly twice the diameter, hence its name. Another tower on the corner of Toompea Castle was the tallest in the wall and was aptly named Tall Hermann’s Tower.

Many of the houses in Tallinn Old Town were built in the 15^th and 16^th centuries and it would appear that the facades must remain the same even if the interiors are modernised. One house dating back to the early 1400s was the House of the Brotherhood of Black Heads, the members were unmarried German Merchants, a similar group of married merchants was the Brotherhood of Swords.

The Black Heads are credited for having the first Christmas tree; in 1441 and again in later years, they erected a tree in the yard of their house in the period leading up to Christmas and on the night before Christmas they burnt the tree in the Town Hall Square. This slowly evolved into the decorated Christmas tree that Prince Albert introduced into England after he married Queen Victoria.

During our walk around town today we noticed a café with very cheap prices, around half the cost of nearby cafes so decided we would eat there tonight. Because of the low prices we thought the serves would be correspondingly small – wrong!!! We ordered mushroom soup, ham and cheese omelette and an apple pancake and custard and were shocked at the size of the serves. The soup was served in a large cereal bowl, very thick with large chunks of mushrooms, the omelette, folded, covered a dinner plate and had half an inch of grated cheese over it and shock, horror, the pancake was folded in four and covered a large dinner plate as well, before folding it could have been used as a bed spread. We were glad we didn’t order ice cream with the pancake as they were served with three huge scoops. All this cost the equivalent of $20, it must be the cheapest café in Europe.