Some videos from Tallinn:

IMG 0095 from Maria O on Vimeo.

IMG 0104 from Maria O on Vimeo.

IMG 0106 from Maria O on Vimeo.

During my Tallinn trip there were a number of situations that were, for one reason or another, unphotographable.

There was the medieval-themed restaurant in the city square, warm and stuffy and incredibly dark, lit only by candles. I don't remember if the ceilings were low and the space was actually oppressively small or if the circles of candlelight just seemed to pull the walls in and make everything a tight squeeze. I had some scrumptious meat stew that I couldn't see, served to me in a clay container that was only slightly less of a mystery in the dark. I think the place was known for their meat pies, but I don't really have a memory of those.

Then there was that night that we kind of randomly ended up in that food place that was maybe a pizza place or maybe a hamburger place or maybe a middle eastern falafel place but was really just the open-late, sparsely and cheaply furnished, neon-and-fluorescent-lit tiny food place down the street from the hostel. I was either tired or drunk or both, because I remember sitting at a cafeteria-type table and having to focus too much energy on eating the pizza or fries or falafel.

And also there was a drunk card game with the Russians staying at the hostel. I think they didn't know much English, and were thus my favorite kind of Russians. I don't remember much about the game except that I liked it a lot and the cards all had cartoons of different anamorphized pigs on them.

And finally, after my travel mates and I got sick of one another at the TV tower, we split up and I walked alone, back through the forest cemetery, through a tombless patch of trees, and to the beach. Here I thought about the imprints that each place you live leaves in you. On this beach I realized that, after years in Oregon and multiple trips to the coast, standing on the beach and staring out at the ocean* was comforting. Strangely so, because I spent all that time in Oregon complaining about the weather and how having the ocean nearby did not make up for it because what the hell do I need to go to the ocean for? I found out later that further along the beach becomes a nude beach, but I didn't walk that far and it was still too cold for that kind of behavior anyway.


*Tallinn's on a gulf, not on the ocean. Turns out the nostalgia center of my brain didn't distinguish.