We really didn't know much about the Baltic before we arrived. So we were pleasantly surprised with Estonia, the people are very polite and friendly and enjoy sharing their culture of singing and dancing with tourists (!); everyone speaks excellent English; if they do something they do it right first time and are generally brisk and efficient. They explain this attention to detail and go ahead attitude as being due to a Germanic aspect of their culture, Talinn having been a Hansa trading guild city ruled by German merchants from 1285, who remained powerful after the Hansa disintegrated, even under Swedish and later Russian rule.
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| Talinn is a beautiful old walled city |
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| The old town has two sections: upper (back of photo) and lower |
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| The wall towers |
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| View from upper to lower old town |
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| Some of the Talinn highlights for us were the museums. Kumu, the contemporary art museum cut out of a limestone hillside and the architecture museum. |
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| Kumu, great museum, fun exhibition of busts |
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| I loved this sculpture at Kumu |
The recent art at Kumu was really good. I posted with a video a while ago, and there were several other thought provoking exhibits (no Tracey Emin bs!). Another aspect we found really interesting about this museum was that it had sheets in each room explaining Estonia's recent history as the background information to the art. The audio guide was of the nature of: in the middle of this painting you will see a big yellow... so I can't recommend that.  |
| One of the displays at the upcoming garden show |
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| Funny combinataion of flavours? No it's all marzipan... |
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