A Trip to Tallinn

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Sights of Tallinn

I recently went to Tallinn, capital of Estonia, for a weekend. This year, Tallinn, along with Turku in Finland, is European Capital of Culture.

So I went there to see lovely medieval streets and cultural what-nots. Here's what I saw...

  • Cute, winding old streets and soaring spires on churches, towers and the city walls.

  • The first thing I saw as I wandered down the street was a display of old maps of Tallinn through time. Amazing!

  • The streets were alive with the sound of music. Singing has a politically and culturally significant in Estonia (they had a singing revolution) so street corners had stages and impromptu choir gatherings.

  • To that end, I also heard Eric Saade's Popular played 7 times in the one night. Now, that's popular.

  • A dank pedestrian tunnel turned into an art gallery.

  • An old lady who was very proud of herself for wearing blue, black and white (the colours of the Estonian flag.)

  • A international parade of nations during a medieval jousting display, with by Koreans, Japanese and Georgians (amongst others) living in Estonia.

  • My favourite sight was the town's old pharmacy, which is the world's oldest continuously-running pharmacy. Displays showed lotions and potions from the past few centuries, including sun-bleached dog faeces, parched bees and dried toads.
Old pharmacy, Tallinn

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

ooo that looks lovely!

But the oldest running pharmacy is actually the old pharmacy in Dubrovnik (from 1317)...or so they claim, anyway. I think the Tallinn one looks nicer though!

Adrian said...

Let's go with "one of the oldest" then!

There's always competition.