I'm now on Eesti Standard Time. Well, East European Standard Time, to be precise. Have zoomed up 14 degrees of latitude from Montreal's paltry 45 to Tallinn's 59. J and I caught a small glimpse of the Old Town as our ferry from Helsinki docked just before sunset (officially, at 4:20 PM, the "day" having lasted 7h 32m and 21s -- adding 2 more witching hours to those already used -- whether snoozed through or boozed through -- in Montreal).
We'd decided just to wing it upon arrival -- I'd stayed at a pretty nice hostel in the Old Town before, and thought we could go there if nothing else occured to us. We were met by J's pal S at the ferry terminal, who suggested that the school would likely pay for some nights' hotel. Calls were made, all was to be confirmed the following day -- in the meantime we settled into the school's recommended Reval Hotel Central, on Narva mnt.
We were famished, having been dealt the usual lousy hand by Air Canada's catering service. Our hefty carry-on Ziploc of homemade trail mix had also left us parched and vacuously seedy-stomached. S suggested his favourite cafe -- Noku -- an artistes' members-only cafe hidden in the Old Town.
No sign above the door, and entrance is by inserting plastic membership card into a gizmo street-side. None of us had said card. But someone had failed to pull the door to--, we happily entered. Story is, once you're in, you're in -- there's no checking of cards. So we jetlaggedly glugged on our first Saku Tume's, as we endeavoured to decipher the menu. (The first time I visited Estonia, my travelling companions and I fondly referred to Saku Tamu as Sock-It-To-Me -- this is definitely a high-powered brew.)
John ordered some readables -- borscht and "pelmeenid". I knew from Russian what a "kotlet" would be (not really a cutlet), but was obviously unfamiliar with the (presumably) adjectival accompaniment in Estonian: "madaroikakastmega"*.. so I ordered it.
Turned out to refer to horseradish or horseradish sauce or done a la horseradish or in the manner of same -- in any case, a most important condiment, and, thus, a much welcome bit of new vocabulary (if only I could remember it/knew how to pronounce it).
*I'm not showing the diacritics in this word, since don't know how to type them in! For sticklers, the first "a" has two dots on top and the "o" should have a tilde.
