Tallinn, Estonia
We arrived in fine if brisk conditions at the bustling ferry port of Tallinn shortly before breakfast, with the Baltic Sea to our north and the dramatic skyline of the old city of Tallinn to our south. The latter was the object of our morning tour, a tour that took place simultaneously with the city’s annual marathon, which had closed the old town to cars and made a peaceful Sunday morning even more tranquil than usual. We began in the upper town, a “new” town which, as is often the way in Europe, denoted a later urban development than the mediaeval core. Atop the hill stands the majestically imposing Russian Orthodox cathedral, built in 1900 and still in active use by the city’s large Russian population.
A line drawn from Helsinki on the other side of the narrow Gulf of Finland to Tallinn in the south marks a significant cultural divide in the Baltic, where western Christian institutions begin to give way to eastern orthodoxy. Estonians became Lutheran at the time of the Reformation and the upper town also had the imposing Dome Church for the German Lutheran community, with fine box pews and memorials in German, reminding us that we were in another Hanseatic city. German and Russian have been heard on these cosmopolitan streets for centuries, as well as Estonian, a Finno-Ugric language not linked to other members of the Indo-European family of languages but with Hungarian, Finnish and the various Saami languages. The ferries running in and out of the harbor all day long were cementing that family link with Finland that the post-war era of incorporation into the Soviet Union had severed. The lower town exhibited some notable mediaeval buildings, including the Town Hall to one side of the market square and an intriguing apothecary close by that has apparently been in business for over five hundred years!
Our morning ended with a tour of the suburbs, built hastily after the war to meet the immediate demands of the population for housing. An afternoon shuttle from the ship to the city centre provided an opportunity for personal exploration and for some last-minute shopping, linen and woolen items proving particularly popular.
