ГОРМОСТ

That is, "GorMost". "Gor" for gorodskoj, adjectival form of gorod, meaning city, and "Most" for, well, most, meaning bridge. GorMost = City Bridge Service. John and I had risked leaving our heavy winter greys in Tallinn, but were surprised to be the only ones wearing bright, colourful -- and, purely by accident, both orange -- coats in Russia. That is, with the exception of the city maintenance crews. Each in turn, my Russian pals cheekily pointed out the amusing resemblance, likening the pair of us to the road repair service, the GorMost bridge crews and the mostly wizened, yet day-glo security-vested, street sweepers. Here I am posing with my workaday brethren on the bridge linking Vasilevsky and Petrogradsky Islands. (The pilons coordinate perfectly to boot!).

I'd forgotten how dirty things like bright orange coats can get, especially in gritty-grimy St. Petersburg. Every metropolitan foray adds to your wardrobe, whether soot, car exhaust (belched by any or all of the older makes of Moskvich, Lada, Kamaz, Zhiguli, Volga, etc.), cigarette scum, sticky public transport residue or an allover spritz of eau de fried meat. My city slicker was slick with city in no time, though there was no time to leech out the filth due to no substitute outerwear for the interim. And Russia was lousy with washing machines this time around.

Suffering From Periodical Cosmopolitanism

In April-May, Russia's newspaper and print kiosks started selling the 13th anniversary issue of Russian Cosmo. The Cyrillic in the red balloon on the cover crows "Cosmo is 13 Years Old"! Apparently, covermodel "Tori Praver" is but 21 -- a year younger than I was when I purchased the inaugural issue of the mag's Russian incarnation in May 1994 -- thirteen, count 'em, thirteen years ago! I still have my 13-year-old copy (front cover: Cindy Crawford). Gasp. Thirteen years since I'd first stepped foot on the then-browbeaten soil of Ma Rus'. When I was a student at the Centre for Russian Language and Culture of St. Petersburg State University (at the Smol'nyj Institute), mes dormmates canadiennes and I were tickled to have witnessed that instance of print culture globalization, more specifically, the girly-magazination of the former Soviet U.

Some aspects have changed -- the 2007 cover speaks to realities facing "new" (think "monied", not necessarily "contemporary") Russian women. There's a section devoted to cars (women drivers, let alone car-owners, were pretty much unheard of in 1994), as well as a "Cosmo-Eksperiment" that dares readers to try and survive a spell without one's mobile, TV or Internet. Several sample squirts of free products are stashed between the pages, creams from Lancome, Garnier and Nivea ("Good-Bye, Cellulite," transliterated directly from English into Russian [Gud-Baj, Tsellulit]). The biggest change is in form, not format; page dimensions have shrunk to approximately 7" x 8", meaning the glossy's grown widthwise, stacking up nearly a full inch of Cosmopolitan (and local) content and requisite ads. In fact, the majority of the magazines marketed to women, home hobbyists, cooks and teens are now such physically-reduced specimens, mini-mags, both in Russia and across the Baltic countries. The new proportions make even Cosmo seem more "literary," sizing up more like an academic journal, despite the too-puckered lips, the touched-up pics and the tired sex tips. Easier to fit in one's glove-box or slide/hide under one's keyboard, in any case. Suggested retail price: 65 roubles.

Cover Features from 1994:
Sex or Chocolate: There's a time for everything!
Don't Let Jealousy Dominate Your Life
TEST: How well do you know each other?
They're 30 years old, independent and self-confident... Do they really need husbands?
Cosmopolitan in Russia! An internationally-renowned magazine - published in Russia for the first time!

Cover Features from 2007:
Sex-games for the bold and not-so bold
Cosmo-Experiment: One week sans Mobile Phone, TV and Internet
Free Spaces: Where to Go, Besides the Garage, to Meet a Real Man
A Woman's Education: Real Stories of Lesbian Love
Counting Costs: The Price of Your Job
New! "Gas Pump" Car Column, page 128

Shawn

I made another montage, entitled "Shawn" and featuring same.
Electroacoustic composer-musician Shawn also hails from Canada (Edmonton), and has been living in Tallinn on and off for several years. He's been teaching sound at the Arts Academy and also at the Baltic Film & Media School -- it was he who tipped off John about the teaching position there.
So many thanks to Shawn for that tip, which led to this trip!

Head aega, Eestimaa

We saved another trip to Kalma sauna for our last day in Tallinn. We opted for 90 minutes instead of our usual 60 -- we didn't want to rush, nor did we want to anxiously keep our eyes on the clock for the duration our final, celebratory skin-sloughage and salt-flushery (the one snarky reprimand we'd received for steaming 3 minutes overtime a couple of months earlier was fontrum enough). Back home, we tidied up and did the bulk of our packing. There wasn't much new stuff to bring home (not surprising, for such reluctant shoppers as we), though the oddball, oddshaped souvenirs (lamp, telephone, clocks, tin box, tin purse,) required some careful placement, as did the 4.7 (cumulative) litres of various boozes we'd selected to export from the Baltics.

Then it was off to Cafe Pushkin for a plate of their delicious salmon pel'meni and a final mayo-laden, boiled egg, prune, walnut and smoked chicken-filled "salad". We crossed over to Texas Honky-Tonk, an unfortunately-themed resto-bar (lexical proof I'm back in Quebec) in the Old Town, where we raised several pints and shared stories and many laughs with some students and staff from the Baltic Film & Media School. We took our leave at closing time, which the Honky Tonk invariably announces by playing the American national anthem. John, Shawn and I continued our last night's nostalgia tour by descending into Levist Valjas, a notoriously divey open-til-morning joint around the corner -- truly a dank, dripping dungeon of a bar. I botched my last attempt at ordering a "Tõmmu Hiid" in passable Estonian, John deviously nabbed a few more snaps of passed-out, head-on-table patrons, then we piled out into the late-night dusk just as the place was becoming completely overrun by revelers from bars that stay open later than they seem to do in Texas.

White nights season had definitely started to creep in -- though we were tired, we thought it appropriate to say "head aega" (good-bye) to the almost-bright night and to Estonia from the Stroomi Rand -- the stretch of beach not far from our digs on Ristiku street in Pelguranna. We headed back to the neighbourhood, cleared our fridge of whatever remained of beach-worthy reinforcements (beer and... cheese), and started off beachbound at about 3:30 -- the photos above are from about an hour later. Back home by 5-5:30, we caught a few mid-morning Zzzs, just enough to recharge for final prep and exit. Bags were packed, borscht slurped, cupboards emptied, garbage thrown, floors swept, fridge unplugged. Urmas, our friendly landlord, came by to collect the final communal payment, and we were off in a taxi towards the harbor, soon to board Viking Line's "Rosella" afternoon ferry to Helsinki.

This Little Piggie Went to Market

It's been tough-going finding good throwaways and second-hand curiosities at the markets in Tallinn. Mind you, since the weather's shaped up, more stuff has appeared at the train station market. Fewer kiosks are locked, boarded up or unmanned. More of the sellers are skulking around, socializing (and sometimes boozing) in the environs of their collections, making it much easier to find out whether something's for sale, and how much things cost.

We dropped by this past weekend to pick up the most recent in John's line of broken watches. We'd returned it to the kiosk he'd bought it from since the hands weren't firmly threaded on the central pin. Any handshaking or wringing of same would force the hands to jump intervals of fives, tens or twenties of minutes at a time, whether future-bound or past, every fingerwag also a wager in time lost or time gained. The watch had been sold with a year's guarantee, this in the form of a tiny piece of paper with incomprehensible handwritten details. The guarantee was honoured, though our money was reimbursed for the meanwhile. The watch was to be sent to "the master" and we could pick it up after 2 Sundays had passed.

Alas, the watch was on the premises, but still broken. It hadn't been sent anywhere. "The master's sick," I was told. "For the past three weeks?" I asked, and filled John in on the goings-on. The seller overheard us and called out in English from the depths of his booth, "He is very old -- 80 years!" No other repair options were suggested. A single week remained until our departure from Tallinn -- unlikely that even the speediest of recoveries would allow enough time for master-ful repair and Sunday pick-up. The seller removed the watch-strap (which belonged to John... this had been bought at yet another wacky watch repair and clock kiosk, located in the steamy, mildew-stained lobby of Raua sauna, in downtown Tallinn) and kept the broken timepiece. John's given up on finding a new old watch in Estonia.

But all was not lost on this trip to the market. A longer than usual look into a toy'n'games kiosk yielded this most awesome name-brand rip-off compact, a must-have accessory from Christian Dior's lesser known and spelling-challenged haute couture of a cousin, "Charsten Deor". I googled the spoofed-up name on a whim and turned up a handful of Russian articles (Itar-Tass Ural, Federal Customs Service, Security Service) on a court case dealing with the seizure of counterfeited Christian Dior goods. Apparently, the Arbitration Court of Sverdlovsk Region ruled in favour of Ekaterinburg Customs on charges of illegal use of the Christian Dior trademark. The guilty party was fined in the amount of 30,000 roubles, and the counterfeit items -- mirrors in plastic frames, 7200 units -- were confiscated. I'm glad this one made it all the way here from Ekaterinburg. It's the first item I own that I know was supposed to have been officially confiscated -- a bargain at 19 EEK.

Meanwhile, over at Keskturg, Tallinn's Central Market, the outdoor stall section has been largely taken over by sellers of bedding plants and starter tomatoes, making for slim pickin's. In the midst of all the spring seedlings, one woman trading in household detritus did have something of note. Here's an artistic interpretation that features the fantastic find:

Stockholm Syndrome

CRUISE PROVES CAPTIVATING
TALLINN, ESTONIA, April 16-18 /Baltic Cruise News/
Tallinn travellers finally on board with Tallink prescription, take two-day dose of ferry-cruising to Stockholm. (Full story, A12.)
Exclusive film footage available only on ChristleZine!

Stockholm Syndrome: Case History

As I explained in a previous post, although there are daily departures and several ferry lines running routes from Tallinn to Helsinki and Stockholm and between the latter two, passage on these routes shall primarily be sold (and bloody-well enjoyed, dammit) in the form of a 2-day cruise. The passenger shall be financially punished should s/he endeavour to book one-way fares or attempt to build a triangular journey linking the 3 cities. Despite the price differential -- baffling, since we would potentially be travelling on the same ship with the same folks, just not calling it "cruising" (we'd've donned the cruisewear, if that would've helped) -- we decided to get one-way tickets on non-adjacent dates and spend the intervening days in Sweden's capital.

Thankfully, we'd noticed another Tallink ticket branch inside Stockmann's department store. We couldn't bear visiting the main Tallink branch in the Hotel Tallink for a third time. We'd already had 2 horrific episodes with the Silja cruise specialist there, and were certain we'd either be thrown in the galley or ordered to swab the decks all the way to Stockholm if we'd asked this salty sea-hag of a ticket scalper once more to price out the one-way fares for us.



Unfortunately, we didn't realize Stockmann's was in the midst of its price-chopping, bargain-shopping, "Crazy Days", so the place was a mad-house, jammed with giddy Estonian consumers (many of whom, like us, can't afford a damn thing at Stockmann's), pawing through bins of designer cosmetics and haute couture men's T's for the crazy, as advertised, deals. (Dollar-forty-nine day, Tuesday, this most definitely ain't.) We did our best to shuffle clear of the bright yellow fun-fur-fuzzied Casper-the-Grotesque mascot (our prices are so insane that I'm yellow, formless, and have neither pupils nor mouth, see above) and headed into Tallink with our chosen travel dates and our respective speech apparati puckered and ready to firmly enunce: no cruise, aitäh [thanks]. We got the tickets. (Asked just the once about the cruise option.)

Next task was to find accommodation in Stockholm. Affordable mid-April, mid-week and two-person rooms in Stockholm... very difficult to find, indeed. Impossible, in fact. A couple of days of vigorous e-mailing produced the following notices of rejection.

Hello Christine,
What it looks like now we are unfortunatelly fully booked on the 19 th and I can therefor not help you out with a room this date.
Have a contines good day!
Christine Front Desk
Vanadis Hotell & Bad

Hello!
Thank you for your e-mail. So sorry but we are fullybooked.
Kind Regards Christian
Hotel Tre små rum

Hello Chrstine!!
Our hostel open the 16 of june - 13 of august. You are welcome to visite our site www.ostrareal.com
Med vänliga hälsningar/ Best Regards
Östra Reals Vandrarhem

Sorry but we are fully booked that weekend
Best of regards/Med vänliga hälsningar
Achipelago Hostel

Dear Christine,
Thank you for your kind request! Unfortunately we are fully booked for the dates requested. Any other dates we are glad to help you!
Best regards Erika
RYGERFJORD HOTEL & HOSTEL

Hi,
We only have one freee bed in dormitory these dates.
With best regards,
Reception / 2kronor Hostel & Budget Hotel - Old Town|Stockholm

Hello, Thank you for your request! I’m sorry that I can’t reserve anything for you because we are fully booked.
Best regards,
Lotta Casranea Old Town Hostel

Sorry, no.
Kindest Regards,
Colonial Hotel

Hi John,
We only have beds on the 21st and 22nd in an eight bed dorm. To make a
booking please respond with your credit card number and expiry date.
Kindly, Matt

Dear Christine,
Thanks for your mail. We are unfortunately fully booked this period. Please feel free to getback to us should you need accommodation another time in Stockholm.
Best regards
Mats Sahlin
Checkin Apartments Stockholm

Dear Christine,
Thank you for your request. We can offer you accommodation between May 21 and June 9 and pretty much all dates after June 16.
Please log on to our website www.stockholmliving.com to get more information.
Sincerely Adrian La Torre

Time to anchors aweigh was a-dwindling. I hadn't had this much trouble finding a hotel room since Minsk, in 1994 (Svensk... Minsk... just a coinskidensk?) We looked over wistfuly at our hard-procured itinerary and boarding documents, then snatched 'em and flipped 'em to read the fine print on the return policy. Seemed simple enough. Since we'd purchased regular tickets at enormous, non-cruise fares, the tickets were 100% refundable up to 24 hours prior to boarding. Finally, they had us. We'd turn these in and treat ourselves to a m%tha-#$*'in cruise with the proceeds. We'd pay Tallink a fourth visit come sun-up.

Sun-up. We headed into the Tallink office, prepared for an easy exchange with the reasonable staff. Bushwhacked! The first words out of their mouths wipe the smiles from our faces, "We're sorry, but these tickets are non-refundable." We bark back, "Oh, we're sorry, but they are, please read where it says so, right here." Their second line infuritates us all the more. "We reserve the right to make changes to the pricing policy, and regardless of what it says on the tickets, because we do reserve this right, now these tickets are non-refundable." Fuming. And we reserve the right to get angry, and will do so, right now, as we demand to speak to a manager, and not leave the premises until we do so.

There were flustered page-flippings, pink cheek flushings (on all parties' parts) and calls were eventually put through. At one point, the C-word was mentioned, along the lines of "Cruises aren't refundable"... immediately drowned out by "But this wasn't a cruise!" If we'd learned anything in our 2-month battle to get these one-way tickets, it was the difference between a cruise and what we'd bought. Attempts were made to do a one-to-one exchange -- our one-way fares for a cruise. Not acceptable. After all, the one-ways are worth 3 times the cruise amount, are they not? The Tallinkers had to agree. Their cruise prices were unbeatable!

Many more Estonian words exchanged softly over the phone, and soon it was apologies all around. A refund to my credit card would be "impossible" and would "take many days". Instead, we were issued a two-day cruise Tallinn-to-Stockholm for two passengers in an inside cabin on an above-water deck and two complimentary drink coupons, and were then paid out exactly two times the cruise price in Estonian cash, enough to make up the difference we'd paid on the one-ways. We left the office red-cheeked, embarrassed to have had to play the role of the sputtering and awful N. Americans (who really must speak to your supervisor) and relieved the whole thing was over. Now we just had to shift into cruise-mode along with the rest of the proud Tallink Club Card holders, and get ready to see Stockholm in FastForward.

The Peterburi Express

The Express bus to St. Petersburg departed uncomfortably early, at 6:00 a.m. Nevertheless, we opted for this route since "Express" meant shaving one hour off the trip as compared to all other departures. We packed up as well as we could the night before and set multiple alarms.

Another Soviet-era clock souvenir we picked up at the household junk market in Tallinn. ("I bet it rings like a bitch" said to have been uttered at time of purchase. And, I assure, you it does.)




Out the door a little after 5:00 a.m., we led our rolly-mini-suitcases through the morning fog down to the Telliskivi tram stop, in time to catch the first public transport of the day, and enjoy the scenic ride around the stone walls of still-sleeping medieval Tallinn en route to the Autobussijaam.

We were relieved to discover that this Eurolines bus was differently-configured than the ones we'd taken to and from Riga and Vilnius. There was actually leg-room enough for 2 people to sit comfortably side-by-side and face forward, instead of sitting diagonally, with 2 of a couple's 4 legs blocking the aisle. The bus was only half-full, though all passengers were jammed up into the anterior half, since everyone either opted or were advised to sit in their assigned seats. We left Tallinn and travelled down Narva mantee [for Edmontonians, Narva being to Calgary what mantee is to Trail], revisiting some now-familiar territory, as the road traverses the southernmost section of Lahemaa National Park.

In Narva, the essentially all-Russian town on the Estonian side of the border, we handed over our passports to the Estonian authorities and beeped our watches 60 minutes hence before the bus trundled over the bridge to Ivangorod, on the Russian side, where we had to unload all of our luggage and walk it through the visa-processing border shack ourselves. Notably, this procedure is not much different than what one faces at the U.S. border when travelling by Greyhound, except that the Russian border guards don't grill you with questions about drugs, weapons, produce or animal husbandry. Paying close bureaucratic attention to the required documents instead (including some or all of passport, visas, invitations, official stamps, migration cards, form listing the currencies and valuables you're taking into the country, health insurance policy) -- provided these are all in order -- you are thankfully ignored.

The road was far less worthy on the Russian side, perhaps not repaired since the days of Catherine II. The change in road conditions was accompanied by a switch at the helm, the Ivangorod-to-Petersburg pilot clearly an expert at navigating these 200 kms of so-called road, these 3 hours of rubble and craters. Any hope of making it safely to Peterburi rested on this one man, it was he who intimately knew these roads, these barely-passable stretches and trecherous crevasse-ravaged curves, who knew where best to drive in the shoulder, which sections could be passed only at snail-speed, when to swerve, what to avoid, how to roll with the bumps and bobs, how to careen and come out relatively clean. Only once when a Lada attempted to make a blind left turn directly in front of us did we risk losing complete control. An elderly woman passenger did eventually lose her breakfast, though, as a result of the relentless lurching and jerking.

We finally reached St. Petersburg -- and immediately became ensnared in a traffic jam for 45 minutes, though we were just blocks from the Baltijskij train station, our final destination. This made us late, thus rendering moot the "Express" status of our route. This introduction to the now vehicle-choked St. Petersburg was appropriate; there would be many more "probki" (literally, corks) to come.


Calming Interlude
Talk of traffic jams has the potential to set the heart a-racing and the blood a-boiling. So time-out for a little soothing bell-chiming and bobbling from this weeble-wobblin' Gator Gena (An acquisition from the flea market at Metro Udel'naya in St. Petersburg.)

Service Will Resume Shortly

I apologize for the 3-week break in newsfeed (or snoozefeed, whichever applies). Just got back from an exciting, exhausting and long overdue visit to Mama Russia. For anyone following international news, the stoppage in the bloggage was in no way connected to riots in the streets of Tallinn (which there were, 2 days after our departure) and fallout thereafter, nor to any cutting of diplomatic or other ties between Estonia and Russia (not that these would affect us personally, though we wondered whether we might need to choose an alternate route back into Estonia), nor to attempts, by "pro-Kremlin" youth groups, to block the highway at the Russia-Estonia border (the youths were hauled away long before we made our way back over the bridge from Ivangorod (RUS) to Narva (EST)).

Being in Russia during this political flare-up with Estonia definitely provided a fascinating backdrop to our journey into Russia, not to mention our stay in Estonia more broadly. (More later about the Bronze Soldier monument and its removal from a square in central Tallinn just prior to Russian Victory Day celebrations.) For me, though, this is really a travel story of places and routines visited and revisited, others bypassed, of a language reclaimed (Y-PA!), of sharing one's past, of remarking ways in which places and people change and noticing how places and people remain remarkably the same, of disconnecting, misconnecting and reconnecting.

As the sign says, PEMOHT! You can spell it out without a Cyrillic keyboard, which is cool. Said aloud, it's actually re-mont, a most useful and frequently-encountered Russian word, which basically means [closed for] repairs; renovation; refurbishment. And so, christlezine, repair, renew and refurb! Due to the scheduling upset, some upcoming posts will, of necessity, be on a 3-or-so-week delay.

Edible Audible

One is to nibble on at tea-time, the other is for making business.
Can you tell which is which?

Saaremaa: The Movie

Saaremaa: The Making-Of

Chapter 1: The Even Lonelier Planet

Apparently, no one tours the Island of Saaremaa in early spring. Well, more precisely, and judging by the passengers on the Thursday afternoon express bus from Tallinn to Kuressaare, the region's capital city, no one tours Saaremaa in early spring except for the likes of us, plus a small group of Germans (birdwatchers, perhaps?). Kuressaare was indeed a small town, despite capital status -- we repeatedly ran into our Germans at the grocery store and at other town hotspots (i.e. walking across main street, outside tourist info, etc.). I'm guessing most Aprils are not so warm, so blue and so beautiful. From Virtsu, on the western coast of mainland Estonia, we boarded a ferry over to the small island of Muhu, drove through Muhu, then across a narrow dam over another body of water, the strait of Väike Väin. Once on Saaremaa, it's an hour or so drive to Kuressaare. We were the only guests at Hotell Repo (which I opted for partly because of the oddball name; not sure where the Germans were staying).

Even the great outdoors was ours exclusively. Transportationally abandoned to trudging the outskirts of Kuressaare on foot, we ran into a lone cyclist as we wandered along an oak trail at the edge of Kuressaare, barged in on a single spider on the bird observation tower, and just barely missed stepping on a snake on the straw bog meadow near the sea (Saaremaa, we later learned , is home to vipers). Two deer paused to check us out from behind a stand of leafless birches. Each historical division of the Saaremaa museum in the Kuressaare castle was locked by its grandmotherly guard immediately after we'd passed through (being rarities of the spring visitor variety, we must have unintentionally ruined the staff's routine of cutting out of work early). Even the castle drawbridge was locked by the time we reached it. The night guard kindly let us out (instead of throwing us to the famed castle lion's pit).


Chapter 2: The Peel 'n' Wheel

As we'd learned in Lahemaa a few weekends before, objects are much closer to one another on maps than they are in reality. To see more of the island, we'd definitely need some wheels, and something more than pedal-powered. Despite no tourists, Tourist Info was open. We were furnished with a flyer and steered over to "A-Rent" Auto. A-right next door to Repo, and A-lot more than a car rental service. The sign for A-Rent hung on one side of what looked like a residential house, while the sign for "Aspasia" 24 hour stripclub, boasting "piljard, sauna and privatshow", was on the other. We poked around in the backyard-carlot, but found no entry on the A-Rent side, so entered the stripclub. The bartendress got the owner, and his brother, and after some haggling, we reserved one of their crappiest available cars for the next day.

Aspasia was already (or still?) happening at 9:00 a.m. the next day, when we dropped by for auto-pickup. It was a small place; tiny, red-velveted stage with peeler-pole to the immediate right of the entrance, small bar-counter with space for 6 or so elbows, small backroom with orange-and-beige vinyl booth chairs. The morning show hadn't begun, though the revelry had: full beers, accompanying shots and a handful of wasted, but mellow, Estonian men, lined the bar. The bartender nodded knowingly when we approached her in connection with our vehicular arrangement. Soon after, Aspasia's proprietor emerged from the basement, looking like he'd just woken up. He was followed by a cozy couple just out of the sauna to join the party upstairs (unclear whether the toweled woman was patron or personnel).

John was invited out the side-door for a rundown of the 1991 Volkswagon Jetta's kinks and idiosyncracies (stalls during take-off, deceleration, reverse maneuvers and while turning unless the manual choke is out), while I went to the billiard room/erotic photo gallery with the head barmaid to read over the contract. Everything appeared to be in order, a pretty standard rental contract all around, despite a few translation goofs; we'd do our best to return the car in a timely manner, thus avoiding the "retardation" fee. Documents signed and rental fee paid in full, we stood around outside, waiting for the owner's brother to show up ("He has to walk one kilometer") with the car's insurance and registration. Meanwhile, the owner pointed out Saaremaa's main highlights on the map. He assured us there were 3: The Kuressaare Castle, the Kaali Meteor Crater (photo), and Aspasia!

The Yolk of Communism

Easter weekend. Time to give our "Paskhalinka" Russian egg-decorating plastic-film wraps a whirl. We'd picked up two packs, both with traditional Russian motifs; one like "Palekh" lacquer boxes, the other patterned after "Gzhel" porcelain. Each had designs enough for 3 eggs, though we discovered that the label was made of the same material, and used it to make the above exemplar for instructional purposes. These are as follows: (1) cut the film along the perforated lines into separate sections; (2) hard-boil your eggs and let them cool; (3) stick an egg into the plastic ring of film; and (4) dip the ensemble into boiling water for 3-5 seconds. A brief demonstration for the hard-of-reading:



Prior to egg-dip, we had our doubts, but the space-age plastics and thermal technology, whether Soviet or post-, did not disappoint. Maybe the plastics engineers should be thinking extra-large, and I don't just mean free-range. What if more things in Mother Russia were shrink-wrapped, like Christo wrapped the Reichstag, or like Nescafe disguises scaffolded buildings like monolithic steaming coffee mugs? Why not give Red Square a homey, welcoming facelift by parboiling Lenin's mausoleum into a wrinkle-free plastic coating of Khokhloma? For an extra couple thousand grand, space tourists could blast off from Kazakhstan in trendy rocket-wraps of their own choosing.

ADMINISTRATIVE UPDATE...
Tales from Russia upcoming since travel authorization nearly obtained! Tourist visa invitations were ordered, tourist support was granted, invitations and related fees were paid for in full, confirmation voucher was faxed and picked up at Tallinn Central Post. Visa application forms (no. 95) were filled out. These, alongside voucher and photos were submitted, perused, authorized; invoice drawn up, processing fee disbursed. Potential refusal due to missing or unreadable stamp, unreliable support or unpredictable whim, thus far averted. Passport pick-up time set for one week hence; passports, in the meantime, on file awaiting visa-sticker insertion. Let's us all spit three times over our shoulders in unison, shall we?

The Skype's The Limit

Calling all phone fanatics. All you constant callers, telephone talkers, cell phone stalkers, dingle devotees, ring-a-lingers, ring-a-ding-dinglers, drink-and-dialers, 1-800-numbed-ers, toll-freebees, can-I-put-you-on-holders, call-waiter-traitors, clicksters, no-longer-in-servists, long-message-leavers, star-sixty-niners, call-when-I-drivers, I'm-on-my-way'ers, better-let-ya-go'ers, the ring-tone-deaf, those with voicemail-hangups or let-the-machine-pick-up hiccups.

It's one thing to have your landlines, your podberries, your assorted cellularia and your global roaming and such, but have you ever imagined you could speak out loud, in the general direction of your laptop, and a voice would come back at you in response? And what's more, this voice belongs to someone with whom you actually intended to talk. It might seem ridiculous to talk through your computer hardware when there's usually another device lying around that's wholly dedicated to this very process. Since arriving here in Flower Town, however, we have been without such a device. No phone apparatus here, and not sure whether things would be hooked up if we acquired one.

So we've recently given Skype a test-run. If you don't already know, this is a free, downloadable software (developed in Estonia, by the way) that lets you call anybody, anywhere, and talk to them through your computer, for free if they're a member, and for pennies if they're not. If your computer has a built-in mike, you're good to go (better for the speaker to wear headphones).

"This is Our First Call" wrestles with the often difficult transition from old technology to new; here, Skype taking on Telephone. Note that this vid might not be appropriate for the young ones due to brief "language" (would have been beeped if I knew more about manipulating the audio). Please also keep in mind that this offering belongs to the realm of the arts and the entertainments and in no way should be seen to represent John's true character. The music is by the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir -- I hope they don't mind.

April Fools, Part II

The next morning, we shared the breakfast table with the Gasthof's cleaning lady. Middle-aged and seemingly stern, her T-shirt was bold and capricious in contrast; it depicted 2 aliens in a cartoon frame captioned by "Come Play With Me For Out-Of-This-World Sex." We retrieved our bikes from underneath the Gasthof's lobby stairs, took one last look at the manor house and set off for a day in Lahemaa.

The problem now was how to enjoy a day of riding in the park -- we'd finally reached it -- and cross back over the distance we'd covered plus what we'd ride that day -- all by 11:30-ish next morning (the bikes were to be returned at around that time and, more importantly, John had to teach at noon-thirty). We called City Bike to see if they were running any park tours that day -- maybe they could pick us up? No, there were no customers, so no tours, and no ride. A special trip would cost us $80. They suggested we try finding our way back by bus. Given our luck with Baltic bus service, we doubted having much luck getting us, never mind the bikes, back to Tallinn that way. We decided to remain optimistic and enjoy the day despite having no exit strategy.

I've already described how not-far we got that morning due to poorly-marked trails and run-ins with angry guard dogs (if you missed it, it's described about mid-way through this post). We decided to ditch the backwoods route, got back on the road out of Kolga, and rode to Vosu, where we'd arranged to stay, but didn't, the previous night. The Lonely Planet described this as a "resort town". The desolate shell of the boarded-up Merehotell, the abandoned cafes and unkempt beach-side buildings indicated otherwise. Granted, it was still early in the season, but, at first glance, there didn't appear to be much in the way of tourism and related industry. Beach parking was in abundance, however; Vosu is more likely a favourite day-trippers' destination.

We found Vosu's only open cafe, had a hearty Estonian lunch, then dropped in at the Rannaliiv guesthouse for info. The proprietor was very helpful despite being stood up the night before. She said there'd be a bus at 18:53 that evening; if empty, as it usually was, it might allow the bikes. We told her we'd give that a try, and to expect us for the night if that didn't work out. We got back on the bikes, headed through neighbouring Kasmu, and enjoyed some sun-dappled pedalling through the erratic boulders to the peninsula's point.

We turned back and took in the peninsula's other corner; in summer, you can walk the rocks out to Saartneem, the island in the distance.

In commemoration of our journey into nature, a still-photo animation; I call it "Portrait of John in 3 Acts":



We headed back to Vosu town centre and bus-stop with plenty of time to fret and stress about what size of bus might pull up, and speculate just how annoyed a bus driver might be when faced with dumb-bell foreigners who hoped to load their bicycles onto the bus. We didn't know what to expect when a mid-sized passenger bus pulled up; the bus driver said "no" when we pointed to the bikes and asked if the bus went to Tallinn -- were these refusals, grunts or other? He then started nodding, jumped out and opened the back-hatch -- there was room for one of the bikes. We took the front wheel off the other one, and loaded it into the aisle. We paid 15 EEKs each to board (about $1.50). We were on a bus, and we saw that it was good. But something wasn't quite right -- the Lonely Planet said buses from Vosu to Tallinn would run about 55 EEK.

The bus headed right back to the peninsula, and filled up completely in Kasmu. We reached a place called Vihasoo, and the bus pulled over and parked. Everyone piled off. Were we to get off, too? A young girl stepped up to assist in English, informing us that we'd also have to disembus. She instructed us to ride 2-3 kms to "Kotka," where we'd catch a bigger bus to Tallinn from the gas station bus-stop. One should be passing by at around 8 o'clock. Or we could ride 12 kms to "Loksa" and catch a bus there, either way.

The other passengers huddled by the highway. Clockwork: their mini-bus connection to Tallinn pulled up moments later. They were off to the capital, and we mounted our bikes, off to Kotka, wondering how likely it was that this next, supposedly "larger" bus, would be willing to take us on. Wondering whether we'd spend the night snuggling up to an erratic boulder. Wondering whether there were any "M's" in Kotka.

7:45, Kotka gas station. Checked in with the ladies at the gas station kiosk (this road-stop-'n'-shop doing far more trade in 0.5 L cans of Gin Long Drink than petrol). Sure enough, the bus would be by shortly. Good thing, too, since the sun was on its way out. The 7:55 was a city bus, with long-distance fares. Electronic doors in the front, middle and back. The driver saw the bikes and open sesame'd the middle doors, entrance graciously granted to our bulky, two-wheeled charges. We shared the standing space with a perambulator, balancing our bikes and blocking the middle exit for the entire trp, happy to be heading back towards the cityscape.

Though we'd left just before noon the day prior, it felt like we'd been gone a week. Heading into the Estonian countryside was a bit like passing through some kind of Einsteinian time-space wormhole. Though distances are rather small -- especially when compared to Canadian ones -- no roads are absolutely straight, and there's a tendency for point-A not to meet point-B. The sense is that you've covered an enormous amount of territory and come across a vast number of things and sights. In Vosu and Kasmu, we really did feel like we were on another planet -- maybe that just comes with the pine-fresh air, maybe the spray from the Gulf of Finland, maybe we were under the spell of forest sprites. Despite the twists and turns, this was a magical day and a half.

April Fools, Part I

Night of March 30. We'd spent a tremendously pleasant day walking along the beach to the Pirita suburb and through the forest to the Tallinn TV Tower, a route we noticed also doubled as a bike-path. We decided we should be taking advantage of the unusually fantastic weather, get some bikes ourselves and get back on that path. From the map in our Lonely Planet guide, it would appear that Lahemaa National Park was only 35 kms from where we'd just been at the TV Tower, itself only a 6 or 7 km hop-skip-jump from Tallinn. Impetuously, we made a late-night reservation at a guesthouse in "Vosu" (selected basically at random, though this was one of the bigger towns) in the national park for the following night, and set the alarm clock for Saturday morning. (We'd already hit the hay; this lazy in-bed Internetting a happy by-product of Estonia's heavy Wi-Fi dependence.)

Saturday morning, we scarfed some biking-worthy grub at an Old Town bakery-cafe (John: breakfast pizza with pickles, bacon and pineapple; Christine: weiner, smashed spuds and cabbage salad), then headed to City Bike, a bike rental co. and tour agency operating out of a hostel in the Old Town, and picked ourseves up 2 velos to go and a map of the national park. We also borrowed a map that supposedly pointed the bike-route way out of Tallinn, to something called "Koogi Crossing", which we assumed was somewhere near, if not itself, the gateway to the park. We were wrong.

We were through Pirita and past the TV Tower in no time at all. Here's one of the sights not too far outside of Tallinn; go-karting, anyone?

We continued to follow the bike-path signs, though they seemed to conflict with the map to Koogi Crossing. Every turn we took seemed to be leading us a few degrees away from the direction in which we felt instinctively we should be heading. From what the signs said, we were always equidistant from a handful of towns, never actually reaching any of them, just skirting every pinpoint in the region, every recognizable map-marker.

We were, however, making our way -- slowly and counter-intuitively -- to the Koogi Crossing, no part of the route following a point-A-to-point-B kind of logic. The weather was indeed beautiful, though we battled a constant and strong headwind, and our faces were stinging with the grit turned up from the fields. The bike-path also had you darting dangerously across the Tallinn-Narva highway at several points.

Koogi Crossing. This turned out to be some kind of rest-stop gas station, but there was a giant map of the region. Instead of seeing evidence of the national park on the giant map, we learned that there was a chunk of territory that none of our maps accounted for -- the zone between the park itself and the Tallinn outskirts map. This part seemed do-able, though we'd yet to actually see where the boundary of the national park lay. When would our park map become relevant? We were eager to get to the green space.

Kuui. Apparently 4 kms from the Koogi Crossing (by one map), apparently on the edge of the national park (by another map). Definitely in the "InterZone". There was nothing there, at least on the bike-path, highway part. Ok, a rusty post office box and another gas station. We bought some nachos and water, scarfed those down while local yahoos in loud cars squealed up violently to buy vodka reinforcements and plastic jugs of strong beer, then screech off off to get back to the fishing hole, or whatever parking lot party they'd just been at.

Kahala. Kahala kauplus. This "town", this "centre" marked on the map turned out to amount to about one house, one pig-barn, this one tiny shop (closing momentarily, it was a Saturday afternoon), in the midst of fields, swamps, forests, a couple of huts here and there, big expanses of nothingness. No signs for national park that we could see, though Kahala did, finally, appear on our park map. I started question my dependence on typographic convention with respect to map-reading. What I mean is this: I'd see a "town" on the map -- and judge it so based on the point-size of the font it was written in. So the word "Kahala", for instance, was rather big, Helvetica, bold, italic, somewhere around 28-point. When we saw that it was really nothing -- town-wise -- we started to get nervous, about font-sizes to come and the likelihood that we might find somewhere other than a stand of trees to sleep in that night. Recall that we'd made arrangements to stay at a place which now looked ridiculously far on the map -- we'd discovered the unmarked Inter-Zone in our travel route, and it was getting later in the day...

A fork in the road. Signs. 2 kms to Kolga. 15 to Loksa, more to Vosu. A closer look at the map. There was indeed a diamond symbol in Kolga with an "M" in it. "M" marks .... (a look to the legend) ... accomodation?! Surprise. Well, if there's one "M" in a town of about the same font-size as "Kahala", in which there was absolutely nothing save a couple of water-tanks, someone's boarded-up dacha and a manure-pile, should we really turn off this road and see what this "M" has to offer? [NB: this is the 2007 inaugural ride for these cyclists, already been quite a lengthy one, and our veloistes are sans their cushiony bicycle shorts.]

Cranky moods decide a closer "M" is better than a further one. We traverse the 2 kms to Kolga. The town is a tiny one -- consisting of about a road or two, basically a small grouping of rather squat apartment blocks. Then there's a strange stone arched passageway at the end of the street. We ride through it. There's an unbelievably beautiful ruin of a manor house to the right of us, gardens to the left, out-buildings and stables lining the periphery.

We ride our bikes up to the stables. We can't believe what we've stumbled upon. Sore-arsed, wind-whipped, dusty, dirty and hungry, we're astounded to learn that the renovated stables are a Gasthof. The woman at the front desk is more than happy to pour us a cold Saku from the fridge (guesthouse lobby doubles as guesthouse "baar") as we fill out our registration card, adding that the first floor of the manor houses a restaurant. Kolga: truly an oasis. We got a room and a shower, then walked over to have a look at the grounds behind the manor house. A bunch of local teenage girls and guys were hanging out, smoking and doing bike-tricks; same teen activities worldwide, only the backdrop changes -- these wheelies and smoke-rings practiced amongst historic, crumble-down ruins. For centuries, the manor house belonged to the Stenbock Family of Sweden; ownership since independence has been returned to Finnish relatives of the Stenbocks). We headed inside for a first-class meal in the restaurant, where we are the only customers. Salad with chicken and corn, elk-meat blinys with mushroom sauce, dumplings with candied fruit, clear soup with salmon and baked ice cream.

Exhausted from the day's meanderings, we drift off to Jim Carrey in "Liar, Liar" on Estonian TV... What would tomorrow bring?

Post No Bombs

John's post on the Soviet missile base we visited in Lithuania is ready for launch! Follow link for captivating story and photos! 10...9...8...7...6...5...

Putting the "Hes" in Hesburger

J and I figured we'd better try out some local "American-style" fast food at least once during our stay in Estonia. Technically, that would mean "Nehatu", an Estonian chain, but I'd already sampled their fare years before, when it had a 24-hour outlet in the parking lot next to the Viru Hotel (the lot's since been converted into a giant shopping mall).

Had not, however, tried the now-ubiquitous "Hesburger". This burger empire originates in Turku, Finland, and apparently bought up the previously-ubiquitous Carrol's chain, converting all those restaurants into Hesburger joints.

We decided April Fools' Day would be the best date to set aside for fast-food boogers and fries, nearly exactly midway through our stint abroad, and symbolic to boot; only a fool would bother eating frites outside of Quebec, that haven of heavenly earth apples, and the Estonian homemade meat patty, the "kodukotlet", with black bread on the side, far exceeds what any northern European teenager can manage with frozen beef and dry white buns (whether shivering under Hesburger employee polyester slacks, or toasting on the grill).

On April 1, however, we were stuck in Lahemaa National Park, trying to find a bike path --tangible, existing in reality and resembling anything, anything at all-- as depicted on our map. Total disaster, as we headed around in cartoon-like circles, a million different paths, all different kinds, sandy, mossy, gravel, mud, pavement, none of them the right one, all leading to ones we'd taken before.

We finally got on a hiking trail which was gorgeous, and thought we'd just ride it instead (soft pine-needle rug, basically). Beautiful surroundings notwithstanding, we were heading the wrong way once again, soon to be chased down in 2 different places by vicious, and I mean vicious, dogs. We'd unfortunately ridden the back-end in to some private territory (we saw signs to that effect on our heart-pounding and breathless retreat). The first dog barked maniacally from the other side of a little stream. We figured we were safe, since our "path" was on the other side of the water... that is, until we noticed that the dog had full and convenient access to some 2X4s serving as a wooden plank-bridge over the stream, and started running for us. Thankfully, the dog's owners came out of their house and called the dog back just as he reached our side. A short while later, we ran into another canine security guard. I was chicken and held back... J was more optimistic, suggesting he was just "checking us out". Then he came a-running. We were pretty close to getting chewed up like a couple of um, Hesburgers. More about the bike trip later.

Hesburgers would therefore have to wait until the April Fools made it out of the forest and back to Tallinn -- though not too long. Stayed up far too late the night of April 2, discovering and celebrating the wonderful ins and outs of Skype technology, waking up a touch bleary-eyed and stomachs-a-growlin'. And so this, the third day of April, of this year, the two-thousand and seventh, was officially declared Hesburger Day.

Exciting New Products

Exciting New Product no. 1: Safety Reflectors

On our first morning in Tallinn, we ate our breakfast herring and boiled eggs facing the street in the hotel restaurant. Early enough, Friday a.m., people rushing to work. A number of these had small discs hanging from their clothing, from their lapels, some swinging from bags and purses. Could the fad of not removing price-tags from expensive or "hot" threads have spread beyond the Tallinn hip-hop community to these fast-paced corporate folk, these secretaries, travel agents, IT specialists? We couldn't have guessed then that the Estonian Road Administration, and its enforcement of a mandatory reflector-wearing policy for pedestrians during dark hours of dark days in dark seasons and in poorly-lit areas, was behind it all. Drivers don't have too much respect for pedestrians, despite their number, so it's not a bad idea. Considering the stats on rundown pedestrians, it's a very good idea. From Baltics City Paper Tidbit Facts, "Without a reflector, a driver can see you at about 30 meters; add a reflector, you’re visible at 130."

Hence, the discs. But it must have been hard to get a nation of fashion-conscious consumers to integrate the traffic safety device with a given season's look. Thank goodness "alterpreneuring" companies like "Good Mood" were there to start designing pedestrian-friendly haute couture and/or corporate-sponsored reflectors (all government-approved); high-style encouragement for the obligatory safety accessory.

At the same time, Tarbitjatekaiseamet, the Estonian Consumer Protection Board, warns that "consumers must pay attention to the fact that products only resembling reflectors are not reflectors, they don't replace reflectors and do not protect the user," cautioning buyers and sellers alike that "instead of buying a reflector a person may buy accidentally a glimmering toy or a keychain."

Well, keeping the sober words of the Tarbitjatekaiseamet in mind, we did our best to stay focused on reflectors and shield our eyes from unsuitably dazzling doodads, in the end foiling the crooked motives of keychain-peddling charlatans. We spotted the above, completely legitimate reflex-reflector, through a kiosk vitrine in Tartu, and picked up 2. By total fluke, ours are indeed "Good Mood" reflectors, of the corporate subtype, ours bearing the name and logo of the national postal service, "Eesti Post".

"Introduction to Use" informs thusly: "Attach reflector knee-height on the right side of your body. The reflector must hang freely and be seen from back and front. If the reflector is badly rubbed or damaged other ways, it should be changed to a new one. Reflector must be used in the dark also in built-up areas."

And further inscribed is the state and scientific benediction: "Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Department of Physics (FIOH), Topeliukenkatu 41 a A, FIN=00250 Helsinki, Finland, notified body no. 0403, has EC type examined this product according to Directive 89/686/EEC".

Exciting New Product no. 2: Good Morning!

Single-portion hangover remedy in a jar, now we're talking.
IN EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS!!!

If that doesn't work, you can always reach for a Baltika #3, the quintessential Breakfast Beer. Or, depending on day's activities, start in right away on the heavier stuff -- after all, your pickle-chaser is all ready to go.

Exciting New Product nos. 3, 4: Maxi-Sticks and Meiran Sinappi

The CoMarket has a new product! These are no regular pretzels. These doozies, at 27 cm, come in 4 flavours (garlic, onion, sesame and pepper). We've tried garlic and onion. I actually found the junkyard website of the Slovakian producer, Zael, S.R.O. From what I can gather, these are the company HQs in a town called Lučenská. Keep it up, gang! Next year's M-Sticks should challenge EU pretzel-length standards by adding at least a couple of cms (for details, see Article II(g) of EEC Pretzel Directive 45/70-56).

And what is a pretzel without its mootarde? Here's our favourite new condiment. A sweeter, snappier "sinappi" that lends itself particularly well to pretzel-dipping. Giant squeezy bottle encourages the artful composition of burnt umbrish soft-serve mustard mounds and decorative flourishes in dipping bowl. (For best results, apply gentle even pressure with steady, ideally sober, hand.)