"Tallinn, Eesti" a Tallinn County Travel Page by cocoandsami

Eesti (or Estonia as we call it) is a lovely country, although I have only seen its capital, Tallinn. Estonia is up north East corner of Europe– just below Finland and next to Russia (about a 50 min flight to St. Petersburg).
Tallinn has an old city centre that is over 800 years old, and three quarters of it is still surrounded by the old town wall. The city centre is all cobble stone roads and old gothic style buildings. I first stayed there in a lovely quaint hotel in the old city centre. The building had walls (both internal and external) that were over 3 feet thick. Outside the city centre is a mixture of buildings from the Russian occupation (which are horrible) and new modern buildings, which look really smart.

Eesti has had a long and varied history. The Tallinn region was settled over 3500 years ago by the Finno-Ugric people. Between 1219 - 1346, it was conquored by the Danes. Around the 14 and 16 Centuries is was part of the Hanseatic League. 1561 - 1710, it was united as part of the Swedish Kindom (i think). This was followed by Tzarist occupation 1710 - 1917. In 1918, it first became independent. Around 1940 - 41, Russia occupied it, this was then followed by German occupation for a couple of years. Between 1944 - 1991 it was occupied by Russia.

However, for being occupied by Russia for quite a long time, it is remarkably western in feel and character and much of its history has been preserved. The people are really friendly and speak Estonian as well as Russian. English is spoken by most business people, but by others to varying levels.

This move to independence was known as the singing. A number of singing mass demonstrations eventually collected over 300,000 Estonians (more than one-fifth of the population) in Tallinn to sing national songs played by rock musicians.

In 1989 about 2,000,000 people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stood on the Vilnius-Tallinn road, holding hands joining the cities creating a chain nearly 600km long.

The company has an office in Tallinn, and I have two staff located there looking after Russia, Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. As I have been there three times so far, I have found many quaint restaurants and pubs in the old town. One thing that Estonia is known for is its good restaurants, and to date, I have not been disappointed at all. It has a very international selection of food, and they do it really well. What was surprising to me was the presence of Australian Wines – and a huge selection. I didn’t recognise many brands (think that they are special export ones), but did see Peter Lehman (spelling??), James Hardy, Lindemans amongst some of the selection.

If you are interested, a good site is

www.tallinn.info – I think. I really like Tallinn, and think it is a hidden treasure, which is good, since I will most likely be there once a month.