tallinn

i always feel somehow relieved when i arrive in tallinn. i dont know why. perhaps it is my memories from when i was younger and arriving here always meant a shopping holiday away from russia, where, in those days, there was nothing. maybe because the place always seems so civilised: the streets are clean, the people friendly, and no one pushes and shoves. maybe because my family has good friends here who always showed me around and made me feel at home. i dont know.

the train ride was the usual russian train experience. there were two really cute ethnic russian actors who had been performing in moscow. they were young, and spoke fluent estonian and thus had citizenship. then there was an elderly ethnic russian pensioner who had been sent to estonia to work in a factory in 1970. he never learned estonian and consequently is citizenship, traveling with one one of those grey passports the estonian government started giving out in the early 1990s. it reads "Alien Passport" and announces in estonian and english that "the bearer of this passport is not an estonian citizen" and so on. the dyed gave me chocolat. the guys and i tried to explain to him where my country was. he didnt get it. he had noticed i spoke russian with an accent and assumed i was ethnic estonian. i explained that i wasnt, but i dont think i managed to convince him. slava, one of the young guys tried to draw a map....but that didnt seem to work either because dyed's final verdict was "nu, mi zhe vsye sovietski ludi v kontse kontsov." at that the guys and i concluded there was no point in explaining further.