Operation Baltica

Phase II: The Baltic States

Day 9: Tallinn, Estonia

My host is incredible. I was a little nervous when no one was at the station to meet me, but I'm a patient guy, and decided I could wait as long as I needed. I stood around just waiting for about thirty minutes before I realized I needed to be proactive in case no one came to meet me at all. My phone wouldn't let me send messages, so all I could do was wait. I bought my train ticket to Riga and changed my roubles to kroons.

I studied a map of Estonia on the wall for a while, trying to get my bearings, until this group of four bald guys with bad teeth and dirty blackish fingernails came up to me. They grunt something I don't understand in my direction and I ignored them. They didn't look in the least bit friendly or hospitable, so I didn't want to encourage an interaction. One stepped a bit closer and grunted again, this time I could tell they were words, and although I had no clue what they meant, they seemed less unfriendly than the first attempt. So I leaned toward him and ask politely, "English?" "WERYUFROM?" he grunts. I respond with a nod, "America." He puffs up his chest and grins, showing off his handful of nasty teeth. He pounds his fist on the wall map, squarely on an island of the western coast of Estonia - "Saaremaa!" I nodded again, not knowing if he was challenging me to whip out my own wall-sized map and puff and grunt, or just welcoming me with a geography lesson. I didn't particularly want to stick around to find out.

I found an internet cafe, figuring I could email my host or find another one or a hostel if needed. I ate a meat pie and drank a beer while waiting for the CouchSurfing website to load. Before I could send anyone a message, Erkki comes in, all hugs and apologies. He apologized for the mix-up with the arrival time (he had thought it was an hour later), and for the cold weather and the cafe's "pathetic" lack of free wireless internet. "Disrespectful, really."

Once in the car, my Estonian education officially begins. I find out that: Estonians are most closely related to Finns, with a long (10,000+ years) history of living in the same place. They share cousin languages, though Estonians apparently talk faster and live generally more active lifestyles. The Finns are known for being sluggish, depressed and drunk. Some parts of Estonia, Erkki says, are filled with absolutely crazy people who have carried on Viking traditions of aggressive machismo, complete with fighting and drinking heavily. Estonia has for a long time been known for having the cruelest Vikings in the area, most of them from a small island called "Saaremaa." "I actually met a guy in the bus station from Saaremaa," I interrupt Erkki to share. "Oh, yeah?" He seems genuinely surprised. "Was he crazy?" I told him about the encounter with the guys and the map and he confirmed that they are exactly the type of guys Estonia is/was famous for. I can only speculate what would have happened if I had stayed to chat with them. In my brief encounter I guess that there are two possible outcomes, a brawl or a wedding proposition. I can imagine that if I had grunted back and bear-hugged the man and invited him to go drink a beer or something stronger, he would have found a possible wife for me. On the other hand, if I had grunted back and puffed up my chest to show him Americans are real men and can whoop anyone anywhere, he and his pals would have gladly agreed me to prove me wrong.

Normal Estonians, not the ones on Saaremaa, Erkki continues, are traditionally pagan nature-loving people, though we passed a 600-year-old Catholic monastery on the way to his house. The most common religious affiliation these days is Lutheran, though Estonia is the least religious country of the EU, the fact of which Erkki owes to their traditional pagan beliefs. The flag is a simple three horizontal stripes: blue on top, black in the middle, and white on the bottom, which Erkki explains represents sky, earth and purity of heart.

We stopped by the store for some birch branches and beer for the sauna which would serve as our evening entertainment. Erkki lives with his 70-year-old retired parents in a beautifully square two story house with big windows looking out at the fir trees surrounding it. He designed the house himself, as he is a 41-year-old successful free-lance architect/designer. He speaks English in an educated, sophisticated manner, though his parents are more comfortable in Russian, so we speak that the most. They speak Estonian to each other. Everyone over twenty grew up speaking Russian in school and tends to know it better than English, whereas younger people (like the guy who sold me my meat pie) prefer English to Russian.

We had a great evening of chatting, sweating and hitting each other with birch branches in the sauna while sampling the different local specialty beers.