From one capital city to another

On-the-cruise-to-Tallinn-selfie after a rather sleepless night.

Long time no see! Over a year and a half, to be more percice. The reason behind that is that I have simply not made any trips to other countries since I went to Budapesst in October 2014. My mother and I try to visit a new capital city every year and this time we're exploring Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia!

Short about Tallinn and Estonia

The country is between Finland and Lettland and is known for it's many lakes and forrests; over 50% of Estiona is covered by lush, green vegetation! Their language is Estionian, one of the finno-ugric languages, together with finnish and hungarian. But that doesn't mean that I understand what they say. On the contrary, they're only similar in the grammatic rules, but the languages themself are completely different. Finns and estionians on the otherhand understand eachother somewhat well, like swedes and norwegians.

There are roughtly 400 000 people living in Tallinn and is famous for it's old town, which we have visited today.

Edit: The name means "Denmark city"; taani = Denmark, linn = city, named after a great battle at Lindanäs in 1219 where the estonians fought back against danish crusaders. The estonians attacked from five different directions and killed the bishop, who they mistook for the king. But luckily for the estionians, that resultet in a fatal loss for the danish. Unfortunately, the estonians hadn't seen the Wendish tropps who quickly fought back, giving the crusaders some time to regroup and chase away the etonians.

Tallinn had many names during the times; Kesoniemi, Koluvan, Lindanisa, Lindanise, Lindenäs, Revalia, Revel, Reveln, Räffle and Reval. The swedish saying "kärt barn har många namn" (a loved child has many names) fits quite well.

The estionan flag; blue for the sky, black for the soil/earth and white for peace and the purity and honesty of the soul.

Stockholm - Tallinn

Sunday morning we made our way to Tallinn. First part was an 5,5h long trip with a bus to Stocholm, where we boarded the cruise. I have only travelled shorter distances with ferries, so being on a big ship for about 18h was new, and a bit scary since I'm terrified of oceans and seas.

It was a surprising mix of people on board. I'd expected mostly elderly or maybe 45+ year old folks. But we saw a lot of youths, some elderly, a huge group of chineese turists and families with small children.

The view of Stockholm's archipelago passing by in the sun was lovely. We took a coffee/drink and just sat and enjoyed the view while people were rushing to the taxfree shop

All in all the stay was pleasant, except for the night. The cabin wasn't soundproof at all, and when we reached open waters the motors began working on full speed, which made it sound like we were sleeping right next to the machine-room.

A somewhat sleepless night later, we arrived in Tallinn. We'd booked a sighteeing tour by bus so we just hopped off the boat and on to the bus. But I'll stop here for now before this post is getting waaaaay too long!

Trying to capture the sound of the engines on the boat.