Cecilia’s dad dropped us off at the Helsinki seaport about fifteen minutes before our ferry left to cross the Baltic Sea.
Tallinn, Estonia would be our first stop on a three to four week trip that would take us through the Baltic states and into Poland. We had just completed a little under a month in Finland between Vaasa, a wedding in Kaskinen and a few days in Helsinki.
The Tallink Silja Line offers six to seven scheduled two hour trips from Helsinki to Tallinn, Estonia (and vice versa) each day at about 30 Euros per fare on big, comfortable boats like the above.
Tallink’s ferries make for easy travel. They have comfortable seating, free wifi, and… slot machines?
What’s the legal gambling age in international waters? Fourteen?
We landed in Tallinn on schedule at 3:30 PM. I had my passport at the ready as we disembarked, but nobody bothered to ask for it. There was no border protection, no passport control, no time consuming queueing, and (sadly) no passport stamp. We headed toward the city center.
Almost every shop inside and surrounding the seaport sells alcohol (and nothing but alcohol) for lower prices than high-tax Finland offers. Finns regularly take the boat over, buy alcohol in bulk, and return with enough spirits to inexpensively supply an upcoming wedding reception or end an existing marriage.
Getting from the seaport to Tallinn’s old city center is easy. Three ways to do it:
- If you prefer to stay on foot, just walk west. You’ll see the steeples and towers of the old town. It takes about 20 minutes and you’ll walk about two kilometers. This is not a daunting walk, but if your bags are unwieldy or you’re in a rush, see the below options.
This is the walking route we took to from seaport terminal D into the old city. 2 kilometers, 20 minutes. Click for a link to Google Maps step-by-step directions.
- If you want to take public transit, take public bus #2. It should come by about every 20-30 minutes, and will take you into the center, to the main bus station, and terminates at Tallinn’s airport. The bus stops at seaport terminals A and D – ask a local where to find the stop.
- The third, and easiest option, is to take a taxi. You should have no problem finding one outside the seaport, and the ride into town’s not so long that you’d get hit with a backbreaking fare.
Tallinn has a reputation for its UNESCO protected medieval old town, and tourists come in droves to see what’s to be seen. This place is not a hidden gem the way guidebooks insist it is. No. It’s on the map. Accordingly, it’s not a mega-bargain backwater – prices are normalizing.
That said, Estonia is far, far cheaper than Finland (that’s probably why there are so many Finns there) but for the budget backpacker, it’s still not as cheap as one might expect. Tallinn isn’t suffering from much of a Soviet hangover aside from some of the ugly concrete block buildings that show up outside the old center.
We arrived in Tallinn on August 1st, on the tail end of summer high season. We hadn’t booked a room prior, and the place was busy.
HELP THEY’RE EVERYWHERE
All we wanted was a quiet private room for our time in Tallinn, but after lugging the backpacks back and forth to a number of hostels and guesthouses in our price range and winding up empty handed, we compromised, booking two dorm bunks in Tallinn Backpackers, a Lonely Planet-recommended budget lodging. Now, for a quiet night of… hard drinking at a party hostel? Oops.
we failed to check the website before arrival.
Our hostel beds at Tallinn Backpackers were about 13 Euros per person (about $17 US). So $34/night for the two of us, for beds in a six-person dorm.
DATELINE: HAVELOCK ISLAND, MARCH 2012. What comes to mind when I’m paying $17/night for a hostel bed: five months prior, in March of 2012, I spent 17 straight nights in one of these tiny windowless cabañas in the Andaman Islands for $8/night (which could have split in two that if I had a bunk mate) and loved every bit of it – including the short walk to the beautiful beaches, the whole fresh fish grilled in banana leaves for $4, and a million other things that trump any medieval old town. But things can get far worse than $17/night: most hostel beds in Helsinki (for example) cost $30 or more.
Happy hour in the Tallinn Backpackers common room started at around 7:00 PM, so we went down to make some friends and to nurse a beer. I mean, bong a beer. The party had started without us.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Australia.
It was Wednesday. Wizard Wednesday. The idea is this: during drinking hours at the hostel, if you can consume enough tall boys to stack them above your head, you can write your name on the common room wall in honorable mention. The beer cans, when adhered together with packing tape, become your wizard staff. Oh, and you have to continue drinking from the top beer can as you build your staff, making for a didgeridoo-like appearance when you have to take a sip.
the idea.
the reality.
Before you start slamming beers in front of your laptop, check the wizard math for a (my) wizard staff:
- I’m about 5 feet, 10 inches. 180 cm.
- A half-liter beer can is around 168mm tall.
- This means that I would need to consume 11 half-liter cans of beer, or 5.5 liters, to gain powers of magic.
I don’t regularly sock away that much beer on a given evening, and I need motivation beyond the idea of my John Hancock on an Estonian wall. But motivation was in no short supply – nonstop rolling drinking games ensued and the pace of consumption quickened to fit.
Hostel employee, friendly/engaging drinking game MC, and rather competitive foosball player, Matt.
every Wednesday?
Oh, and don’t say the word “drink”, or you’ll have to drink. And don’t pick up your growing staff with your right hand, or you’ll have to drink. And don’t point at anyone, or you’ll have to drink. And don’t sit your beer within a finger’s length of the table, or… well, you know.
My mom was not particularly excited to hear that I was to write an extended public announcement about how much booze I swilled in Estonia in my thirties. Hello Mom, Mister responsible here!
Though our beers became rather awkward to drink due to their length, Cessi and I unfortunately never became wizards and we never got to write our name on the wall. I know. I know. But we didn’t call it quits (like we should have), either. The friendly hostel staff corralled as many lodgers as they could from the common room’s beat-up couches and we stumbled into the night on a Tallinn Backpackers pub crawl.
We drank ciders at a pool hall (and team Matt/Cessi won all of their games, thank you).
a little assistance from the opposition.
Then, a trip to an outdoor bar/club that was playing some pretty good drum’n’bass, and finally, some horrible pub with padded walls that served collections of shots in pill bottles where things went a little hazy.
They all taste the same, and none of those tastes are good tastes.
How many drinks did I consume? I’m afraid to venture a guess! What time did leave the bar and go to bed? Information lost in time, forever! Were the beds comfortable at Tallinn Backpackers? No idea! It’s hard to tell when you pass out into your bed instead of properly tucking in. I’m surprised I wasn’t still in my jeans and shoes in the morning.
I had fun on the night of August 1st, but the next morning was hell. It was also my birthday.
yay. yay. palju õnne to me.
Through one of the worst collective headaches I’ve known, Cessi and I trudged through the massive tourist parade of Tallinn’s old town and got coffee and pancakes. It was about all we were capable of.
sweet!
savory!
The place to go is Kompressor Pub – it’s just east of Tallinn’s town hall square and serves up big portions of simple food for not a lot of money. It won’t blow your mind, but it’s a good place to fill up.
Other important events of the day included a four-hour nap and not much else. Our brains were dead, and museums and historical architecture tend to lose their appeal when your head is threatening to explode with too much movement or thought. I hope you’re not expecting a lot of wide-angle architectural shots either, I just didn’t take them. And even if I did, it’d be impossible to frame out the droves of wandering tourists!
A few notable international travel hangovers of years past:
I flew into Barcelona in January of 2009 and decided that my first jet-lagged night was a great time to imbibe hard with my fellow hostel-mates as a bonding exercise. I woke up the next morning with the undeniable, unstoppable urge to expel all the grappa from my body, and ended up bed-ridden until 9:00 PM that night. Great use of one day of a three-week trip, right? Fortunately I had another four days in Barcelona, which provided just enough time to see the Gaudi sights and get my DSLR stolen on the metro.
In 2011, I found myself in Vang Vieng, Laos, a town whose identity has been all but destroyed/replaced by backpacker party culture. The thing to do there is “tubing”, in which (in short) you get loaded and float down a river in an inner tube. Some backpackers I met kept up this routine for a month or longer. I couldn’t understand why they hadn’t explored the rest of Laos instead. Instead of a nasty Lao whiskey hangover, I managed to get sick from food poisoning in Vang Vieng from horrible invasive food like pizza and banana pancakes. Where can a guy get some LARB around these parts?
Getting loaded on my first night Tokyo in August of 2003 was just harmless, juvenile, idiotic fun – the best kind! Waking up super jet lagged the next morning on a tatami mat in a sweltering, bright apartment with no air conditioning nor curtains the next morning (to the sound of a jackhammer) was considerably less fun.
We managed a really solid, relaxed birthday dinner that evening at Sfäär Resto, a hip but casual/friendly little restaurant just outside the old town. It’s half boutique, half eatery, and a good place to hide from the old town tourists for a coffee or a full meal.
We started with bruschetta and some of the best mussels I’ve ever had, followed by duck and wild boar entrees. Wine would have been nice but was entirely unnecessary (as we were likely still legally intoxicated from the previous night). Nearly to the point of bursting after coffee and frozen cheesecake, we asked for the tab. Only around 50 Euros!
i had the duck.
wild boar for the lady.
the lady. (not pictured: tramp)
Doing something like a birthday dinner on the road can be a bit stressful and potentially disappointing. What if the place you pick is all wrong, or you can’t come to an agreement with your travel buddy? What if you arrive at your restaurant of choice and find it closed for the season? What if the food or service is just terrible, or vastly overpriced, or the scene uninviting? This kind of stuff happens constantly, and I’ve been wrong more than I’ve been right – so when it comes together in a nice way (like it did on August 2nd at Sfäär), it feels really, really good.
We checked out of the party hostel after one night’s stay, booked a small private room at Old House Hostel for the following (about 40 Euros per night total), and woke up on August 3rd still feeling like crap thanks to festivities on our first night in town. Sigh, oh well. To the bus station!
yep. let’s go.
If you’re moving through the Baltics, you’ll be traveling by bus. Whereas rail service is scarce, buses are reliable, plentiful and often inexpensive. Even the low-cost buses have air conditioning and bathrooms, and upper crust buses have wifi and beverage service.
We took Simple Express from Tallinn to Riga, Latvia. It’s the cheapie regional bus in the Baltics, but it’s still clean and totally serviceable.
Catching a bus out of Tallinn? Here’s how to get to Tallinn Central Bus Station (Tallinna Autobussijaam):
- We took a city bus from the Viru Keskus shopping center to the Central Bus Station. At the time of writing this, said bus leaves from A. Laikmaa street (on the east side of Viru Keskus, headed southbound), NOT from the underground bus terminal. We found this slightly confusing in execution. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the bus number and am having a hard time figuring out which it was via internet research as I don’t know the name of the bus stop in question. Ask the front desk at your lodgings, they’re sure to know. It’s a quick ride – only about one kilometer (three stops?) if I remember correctly. Also, the city bus does not stop directly in front of the Central Bus Station, so pay attention to the other folks with luggage on your particular bus and disembark accordingly.
- Alternatively, you can take tram number 2 or 4, which run along major streets. Again, ask your front desk where you should jump on, and what direction the tram should be running when you board.
- Or, take a cab and make things easy. The Central Bus Station is only about 1 km from the old city.
It took about 4.5 hours to get to Riga by bus. Tickets were 13 Euros per person via Simple Express. A few other bus lines that offer service between the two cities:
I don’t feel our Tallinn experience was inauthentic or wasted time. Boiling it down, the city’s touristic draw is two things: the old city and cheap booze. We stayed in/saw the old city and went to the bars, which is what many vacationing Finns, young backpackers and package tourists would do. I don’t feel that I have an understanding of Estonia and would still like to get deeper into understanding things like what it meant to emerge from Soviet control and assert independence. I’ll work on that next time (and maybe pre-book our lodgings, too). For now, off to Baltic country two of three!
NEXT UP: RIGA, LATVIA
TALLINN IN REVIEW:
ARRIVED BY FERRY: Tallink Silja Line
STAYED AT: Tallinn Backpackers and Old House Hostel
ATE AT: Kompressor Pub, Sfäär Resto and Leib Resto (not discussed above, but good!)
LEFT VIA BUS: Simple Express
Great synopsis of your trip…..!