Thundy meets Frunty Part 4: Tallinn Drift

[Thundy]

So this August, I basically decided to do all of the meetups. Having had Celes over to casa del Thundy earlier in the month, I also flew out to Estonia for a week to hang out with Frunty and family. This would be my fourth visit to the country, and because I also wanted to do MORE MEETUPS, I arranged to meet Thorn in London before I headed to the airport.

Aug 28: The travelling

This story, like most, begins with me arriving super sleepy and confused, at Victoria coach station in London, right at the crack of dawn. I wasn't meeting Thorn until 9 AM for brunch, so I took the tube up to St. Pancras station and got some coffee. St. Pancras is a beautiful station and it's pretty good for people watching, so I always hide there whenever I have to wait for long periods of time in London. After a while I rolled on down on the tube to Covent Garden, where I was meeting Thorn for brunch at Le Pain Quotidian.

We were supposed to do this mini meetup the last time I was in London, flying back from Tokyo, but problems with my flights then (that resulted in me being delayed overnight in Rome) meant we could only meet that time for a quick beverage at Kings Cross. But it was well worth the wait! I had a full Belgian breakfast which consisted of a large scone, fried prosciutto, and scrambled eggs. Thorn had a hot chocolate with scrambled eggs and toast. The food was amazing and just the thing I needed to keep me from falling back asleep.

I picked up the tab for brunch and Thorn said she'd comp me back by hitting up some nerdy stores and I could pick something out reasonably priced. When we were at Forbidden Planet, I saw what I needed to get:

It's Prometheus, doin' a slep

We also checked out a neato Harry Potter themed store and a board games store. I was tempted to buy a lot of stuff in both, but my luggage would have been full before I'd even left the country!. Eventually I needed to head for the airport and Thorn had to nap to get ready for work later, so we took a photo outside of the theater showing the Cursed Child and parted ways.

Thorn & Thundy say hello!

A hopped back onto the tube to connect on the Gatwick express to the airport. Gatwick's an alright airport, as far as London airports go. I flew out of there last year when I was heading to Belarus, so I knew there was a place in there I could get a decent bloody mary before wheels up.

Prometheus was on hand to help

Anyway I had no problems checking in and clearing customs. At around 5 PM it was boarding time, and I got a great stroke of luck; nobody was sitting in the two seats next to me. So what did I do? After take off, I put all the armrests up, laid down, and had a nice snooze until we descended into Tallinn.

The view right before landing

We had a smooth landing at around 10:30 PM local time and I was able to deplane and clear border control fairly quickly, fortunately my bag was also one of the first ones off the plane too! I grabbed it and looked up to see Fraze waving at me frantically from the arrivals area, so I quickly breezed through customs to go see him and Hunty for the first time in 3 years, plus their kid, whom I had not yet met before!

We all drove back to their apartment (one of the jokes of these meetups is that every time I visit Estonia, Frunty are in a different domicile, so this continued the trend) and I was able to unpack and distribute gifts. Hunty got a bottle of Scottish ginger cider, Fraze got an imperial tonka bean and coconut stout, the little one got a Litten plushie, and my folks also sent along some homemade jam for Hunty's folks.

It had been a long day and the kid insisted we watch Kung Fu Panda, which we did, with some excellent Mojitos before bed crafted by Fraze.

Aug 29: Inital wanderings

So for the first couple of days Fraze had work related stuffs to attend to, so Hunty and the kid took me on a few wanderings, first to a large market next to the train station. It had all kinds of neat stalls, produce markets, street food joints, and actual sit down restaurants. I had a seriously nice pulled pork and BBQ burger with some Estonian craft beer to go with it (this would become a recurring theme)

Yum!

Afterwards we headed down to the harbor where we secured me passage on the ferry to Helsinki the next morning. Hunty's dad was able to get free tickets for me (mad props to Hunty and her nautical connections) so I only had to pay for breakfast. The only problem? Ferry departed at 7 AM sharp the next morning so I'd have to get up at 5:30 AM, a time I'd normally go to sleep when working.

We wandered around more the harbor area, catching pokemon and trying to do some raids in PoGo, until we met Fraze and walked around a cool district filled with street art and installations before hitting up a craft beer store to stock up on supplies.

That's me on the left

Fraze was very helpful in pointing me in the right direction of interesting ones to try, the Estonian craft beer scene is really impressive for a country that has a population of only about a million. Frunty also picked up a new puzzle for their kid featuring kitties. He absolutely loved it and learned to call me "Thundy"...for all of 5 minutes. He'd often want me to help complete the puzzles by saying "Man, sit!"

To which I'd point to myself "Thundy, I am Thundy."

And he'd go "No Thundy. Man, sit."

Making me the 'Forumer formerly known as Thundy'.

We had dinner and polished off the beers while watching Deathly Hallows Part 2. I lost count of how many jokes we made about Neville being swole.

Aug 30: Finland

I woke up super early and went to go catch my cab to the docks. The cab was running a few minutes late and when I got in the driver apologized and said "We will make up time."

Frunty had already told me about what to expect when riding with "Boris the friendly taxi driver" but I don't think I was ready, the guy certainly did make up the time, mostly by driving super fast down the opposite lane with my mind conjuring up images from all those dash cam crash footage shows from Eastern Europe.

In any case I arrived on time and boarded the ferry. I haven't traveled by ship in nearly a decade, so it was a nice novelty to wander around the decks, explore the thing, and take plenty of photos from over the rails. After the wind and spray got too much for me I headed back in to make use of the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet and stuffed myself silly. I also grabbed a quick beer and worked on some drawings in my sketchbook until we docked at the harbor in Helsinki.

We're not gonna need a bigger boat

DID I MENTION SOMEBODY BROUGHT A KITTEN ON BOARD?

Helsinki was absolutely beautiful, and super easy to get around. I picked up a metro card and hit the tram downtown and walked for ages along the various harbors, plazas, and areas around the central train station. I rode around on the metro for a bit before becoming HORRIBLY lost. At one station I got off I tried looking for the exit, and some how ended up deep within the bowels of a library.

Now I like libraries, but this hallway looks like there's some eldritch horror hiding down it

I mostly just did what I normally do when let loose in a city I've never seen before, I disregard all the maps and guide books and go searching down side streets for weird and cool places. I found quite a few nice pubs to sit in and watch people go past. The weather was quite poor so I avoided most of the rain this way. Then I remembered something. Helsinki has a pub onboard a tram. I looked up where I could board it and it turned out to be around the corner, in 10 minutes.

This is my kind of commute

A little on the pricey side, but it was a nice way to see a lot of the big sights downtown. After I got off, I joined in a PoGo raid with some Finnish people, which was pretty hilarious, then caught a regular tram back to the docks to board the ferry for a night time crossing back to Tallinn. I sat in the karaoke bar onboard the ship and continued to work on art and listening to Finns performing various songs until we docked back up.

Fortunately to save me another taxi (near death) exprience, Frunty came to pick me up, which was around 11 PM. We got home and I totally crashed out after eating a toastie for sustenance.

Aug 31: TV Tower and Seaplane Harbor

Today was the day we went all over! We started off heading back to the old area where Frunty used to live when we all went over for the wedding in 2015, as it now boasts the best coffee and pizza in the Tallinn area. We got a couple of pizzas, and I purchased a half-kilo of coffee beans to take home.

Then we drove to Tallinn TV tower, a large 300m tall transmission tower with an observation deck that offered impressive views for MILES, thanks to the clear weather that day.

It's a tall boy

Panoramic view from the observation deck

There was also an exhibition on life in the Soviet era, complete with an entire fitted out apartment filled with the normal every day items you'd find. They also had a mockup of a soviet era bar.

I got a new bartending gig

From there we headed to the Seaplane Harbor museum! I'd wanted to go to this since Frunty had told me about the maritime days, and of course seeing the photos from last year's meetup, so I knew it was going to be a treat. They've got all the things that make a great museum. A diesel-electric submarine you can just walk around inside, games to try your hand out at anti air gunnery and flying a biplane (I disregarded all the rules in the flight simulator, was texting while flying, and made an unauthorized landing at TLL because hey why not)

Trust me, I've done this before.

"Just a little light turbulence folks."

Hunty took this photo of me and it might be my favorite

If you guys ever visit them in Estonia, have them take you here 'cause it rules.

That evening we returned home and ordered hot dogs, all in all, a super awesome day!

Sep 1st: Street festival

The next day we hopped a bus to large street festival going down not too far away, mainly to track down a food truck that Frunty highly recommended called Hungry Carl's. And oh man were they right, those burgs were excellent.

There were plenty of stalls selling stuff here and there, I picked up a jar of cloudberry jam for my folks, drank some kvas, and ate some smoked cheese strings. There was also live music and I happened to run into this pretty kitty:

A good catto

Sep 2nd: Old Town

Hunty's mum came over to look after the kid while Frunty and I hit up the Old Town for a big wander. I needed to get some sick reference photos for Odysseus (I'm basing Olivine City off of Tallinn and the harbor). I had to stop basically every 30 seconds to take more photos because EVERY street just looked so pretty.

This was an awesome looking square

We also hit up the medieval tavern, which was so atmospheric! It was lit only by candlelight, and we all had a hearty broth, and I had a nice flagon o' ale. I also tried my hand at spear fishing pickles, which was great fun.

I'm 'bout to roll some nat 20s up in here

There were several places of interest we hit, a couple of cathedrals, and the Merchant Guild musuem. There were plenty of interesting artefacts in all of them, showing the rich history of Tallinn (man York really needs to step it up a little)

We also broke for coffee at Tallinn's oldest cafe, which was very picturesque. Fraze and I picked up yet more beer at a small craft beer shop before we headed back.

Later that evening we went for a walk down by the beach, and I caught a shiny Wingull. I also snapped a bunch of shots of the sunset

Who doesn't love a good sunset?

Sep 3rd: The Park

The weather was real nice today, so we all headed down to the largest park in Tallinn for a nice walk around. The park is home to a couple of nice looking art museums, and the Presidential Palace (which coincidentally happened to be a Pokestop, I was half tempted to throw down a lure). On one side there's a nice Japanese style garden with a large fish pond, which I really enjoyed walking around.

Pretty scenery

Following the wander we went to a buffet called Lido where I stuffed myself with blin, cold soup, and porkchops. They even had a tap from which you could pour your own beer. Just when I thought I got out of the game...they keep pulling me right back in </thousand yard stare>

Sep 4th: Heading home

My flight was in the afternoon so we first hit up the market by the train station again so I could blow the last of my money on gifts (read as: candy and smokes) and then Frunty drove me to the airport. It had been a real blast of a week! I can't wait to go back (hopefully not after 3 years again)

Prometheus had a nice flight, at least

All meetups gotta come to an end I guess. BUT NOT FOR THIS GUY. I hastly made plans to meet Thorn when I landed before she went to work.

I hopped a train back to Central London and got on the underground.

This is where disaster struck. I didn't hear the alarm for the doors closing on the tube train and they closed on my backpack, ripping off several of my badges. Most of them landed inside the train, but one landed on the platform. Thankfully a rando commuter forced open the doors and gave it back to me. Phew!

I met Thorn outside the Disney store for what was the fastest meetup in history at under 5 minutes, gave her a bag of candy and some marzipan before she started her shift and I made my way to get my overnight coach back to York. I finally arrived home at my house at 5:15 AM. A super fun and eventful week! Roll on the next one!

[Fraze]

Heyyy, so I kinda wanted to give my own account of this fine trip as well.

August 28: The Arrivening

The thing about having a small child in the house, every outing has to be meticulously planned like a military operation. Especially because Thundy flew in at 10:30 at night by which time the kid is usually already asleep. We had to make sure there were plenty of things to keep the kid calm (read: distracted) when we went out.

Once we got to the airport we hit an immediate snag; namely, figuring out where we were actually allowed to park. The airport was undergoing some pretty major construction and everything was mixed around. The parking house looked like the ceiling had caved in (I mean probably not, but still ominous) and everywhere else had no-entry signs. Finally figured out where the paid parking was after a good five minutes of sitting in the middle of the road up to the airport; thankfully it was basically deserted. Then Hunty directed another guy who was just as confused as we were, and we went in.

The wait wasn't too long; Hunty and I took turns showing the kid Youtube videos while the other went out to raid the Pokemon Go gym and we waited for the plane to touch down. We met up with Thundy in short order (there's a glass divider between the bag pickup and the waiting area so we could see when he got out) and headed back home.

The kid immediately bonded with his Litten plushie and now it's one of his favorites. Hunty and I also bonded with the drinks Thundy brought over.


August 29: Uptown, downtown

The few weeks leading up to the start of the school year are a parade of meetings and workshops, and two of the biggest ones were the first two days that Thundy was here. A person came to the school to talk about an anti-bullying program that the school has started to participate in, which took up most of the workday. I managed to dash out to meet Hunty, Thundy, and Traveler for a quick lunch before coming back for the second half of the workshop. Once that was over I met them for a walk around the cool developed bohemian area of the city that's just close enough to be easily accessible, but not so close that it drives up our cost of living.

I made it a point to get Thundy to as many of the city's craft beer shops as I could, and the first one we got to was also one of the biggest. We got several interesting looking bottles, before getting gelato from the Italian section of the nearby market.

Before heading home, we did one last stop at the supermarket. The kid wanted one of the small kid-sized carts, which comes with a tall flag attached so parents can find their children.

Except then our kid didn't want to push his cart anymore, and this happened.


August 30: On a Boat

This was my second day of full-work-day meetings, so Thundy took the opportunity to hop across the Baltic to Helsinki. I thankfully didn't have to contribute much to this meeting, so I mostly sat in the back waiting for it to be over.

Picking Thundy up from the ferry was a bit of an adventure because we'd never had to do it before. All in all it went off without much trouble, although there was an impressively magnificent traffic jam trying to get back out of the harbor.


August 31: Seeing ALL The Sights

This was pretty much a day when we got overly ambitious with plans and figured we should at least be able to do some of them, and the accidentally did all of them instead.

We started by going to one of the companies Hunty does translation for to pick up one of the new books she took on. That was way on the outskirts of the city, so we kept on outskirting until we got to the tiny town a ways outside the city limits where we used to live. It hadn't changed much since we lived there, and even less since we last visited, but this dinky wide-spot-in-the-road really does somehow have the best pizza in/around Tallinn. Also someone was selling porcini mushrooms at a stall on the sidewalk and I made Hunty buy some for me to cook up.

From there we headed to Tallinn's TV Tower. It was a pivotal site in the country's history as the site of the country's final (peaceful) battle for independence from the Soviet Union. It also has a place in Hunty's and my personal history for... less awesome reasons than that, that we quite wanted to overwrite with some new memories. I hadn't actually been up to the top of the tower since I first came to the country. It basically looks like a futuristic lounge-museum with a 360 degree panoramic view of, like, everything. Also there were transparent portals on the floor that you could stand on and look aaaallllllll the way down. We somehow managed to do a Pokemon Go raid on top of the tower, got cake to go at the cafe, and then headed down to check out the life-in-the-Soviet-Union museum at the tower's base.

After that was the Seaplane Harbor museum, which is less somewhere that you go to look through a bunch of exhibits, and more something you just experience. It's in a big ol' hangar, there's a submarine suspended on blocks that you can go inside, they have heavy artillery from different parts of the 20th Century, a flight simulator, and a bunch of other cool things. Also a really trippy mural that takes up most of an entire wall of the building that looks like it's about the industrialization of war or something, but it's just... there, and there isn't any explanation or even an artist name. I would suspect it's all must my own hallucination, except I show it to everyone we drag into the museum. You can see a bit of it in Thundy's "Trust me, I've done this before" picture.

Also I don't think you're supposed to text and fly.

After the museum, we looked around the actual harbor and let Thundy run around the icebreaker, which is always awesome.


September 1: Fairly good

Being so far north, Estonia basically hibernates for a large part of the year. Of course that means that when summer hits, the country suddenly springs to life and people try to get a year's worth of living done in half the time. In other words, there's a whole lot of fairs.

We went to one today with the intention of first hitting up the awesome burger place (which doesn't have a fixed location and just shows up occasionally at fairs and events), and then seeing what we could find.

After that, we...

Um.

Neither Hunty nor I could remember what we did after the fair. Most likely went back and crashed with beers and tasties and possibly a movie.


September 2: A-spire-ing

Tallinn Old Town is the sort of place that's all quite lovely, being the medieval walled portion of the city with buildings dating back many centuries, but it's also the sort of place you rarely go if you're a local. Of course, that means we'll happily take any opportunity to go there when we get visitors who feel like being touristy.

The medieval tavern we dragged Thundy to is one of the few reasonably affordable places to eat in the Old Town, and it's easy enough to fill up there. They don't have meals per se; there's stew and sausages and a variety of pastries and all-you-can-eat pickles, and that's about it, but it's all solid and delicious food.

(The pickles, by the way, are sitting in a barrel and you have to fish them out with a rod with a couple of nails poking out. And it's dark so you have to go by touch. Someone should make this a competitive sport.)

Then we went to museums.

"We're standing on a dead guy, aren't we?" "Yeeeeup."
This was in a church, in the background you can see the part of the Danse Macabre painting the church is famous for.

When Thundy saw this, we both knew what had to be done.

These guys are totally Doctor Who aliens, though.
There are several of these sculptures just standing around, apparently they're referencing some actual supposed hauntings. Plus I loved the graffiti in the background because it looks like the monk is talking.

Hey, we all look almost presentable here.
We went to a really cute cafe with a ferris wheel made of spoons and teacups in the window. The ground floor was full so we went one floor up, and through the window on the other side of the street was the Russian embassy. (Not visible because the glory of the Fatherland bad lighting.)

Also, we magically found another craft beer shop that I didn't know about in the Old Town. It was smaller than some walk-in closets I've seen, but it had the one really awesome beer I'd been trying to find for the entire trip, so I was very happy. Thundy was pretty happy too, when I split it with him later that evening.



September 3: The Park

Kadriorg park, on the other hand, is somewhere we'd quite like to visit more often, but it's halfway across town and getting there takes more planning than we're usually willing/able to clobber together. But "park" almost fails to do it justice. Looking at the map, it's at least a square kilometer carved into the city, and you could easily spend a day there without seeing everything there is to see.


September 4: Until next time

We dragged Thundy out to stock up on last-minute souvenirs before his flight. We got to the airport with time to spare. There were goodbye hugs (including a hug from the kid), and he set off without incident.

It was a pretty awesome trip. There was a lot of fun, we got a whole lot done, and caught a bunch of Pokemon. There were some awesome beers, too. The kid loved Thundy, to the point of choosing him over either Hunty or me as a desired play partner (whether Thundy felt the same way is a different question).

Here's to the next one!

[Huntress]

heyyy, just when you all thought I wasn't going to post on this thread at all =D yeah, this pretty much is my speed of communication these days.

Since the guys already covered the writeup and there probably isn't much point in trying to cover eeeeverything that might not have been mentioned yet, I figured I'd just post the photos that haven't been posted yet. So this one will be spoilerbox-heavy.

This is what the inside of the Tallinn TV Tower looks like.

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All of those screens have some sort of in-depth information on them and honestly I'm not sure how anyone's supposed to go through the entire area within the hour allotted on the ticket, but then again we spent most of our time up there raiding a PoGo gym while chasing the kid around.

This is the view down from the panorama deck.

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Display of Soviet toys in the downstairs exhibition:

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Why yes, we did own all three of those when I was a kid, plus a dozen others, although I never knew that the caterpillar was called Builder of Communism. Ahh, innocent childhood.

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The whole exhibition did a good job making me feel old. This is exactly what our classrooms looked like when I was in school (some rooms got modernized over the years, others kept that nice 60s feel all the way up to my highschool years because what even is funding?)

The Seaplane Harbour: murderin' some enemy choppers and having quality time with the family (when you're as busy as we are, you learn to multitask):

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Throughout these days I kept building up a separate photo collection of Thundy sitting on the floor with the kid:

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Last year, before Celes and Thorn came over and the kid's main exposure to other people were my parents, we were kind of worried how it'd go down, because for all we knew the kid would go AAA STRANGER DANGER and be screaming nonstop for the entire week that we had anyone staying over.
Well, turns out that he thinks that PEOPLE ARE AWESOME and moreover much better than us. It got to the point where even when we wanted to relieve Thundy of his kid-enforced babysitting duty (which, y'know, we didn't especially, because two years of perpetual babysitting leaves us all too happy to drop him on someone else and run off while cackling madly, but we still try not to drop him on our guests, because we don't get guests often enough as it is :'D) the kid was very resolute about what he wanted: "Nope, daddy. Nope, mommy. Man, sit!" And would ask for "man, sit!" pretty much first thing in the morning before Thundy was even up.

Cue the day of wandering around the Old Town (kidless this time, on account of having dropped him on my mom while cackling madly). Tavern selfie:

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Our food: mostly pastries, soup and sausages.

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Food sorcery:

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Then we went on to the St Nicholas Church, aka the one with the one remaining medieval Danse Macabre on canvas, which is an Enormously Big Deal and I've gushed about that on previous meetup threads. What was new this time, though, was a variety of uh, art pieces done by members of the Estonian Association of Scenographers (aka theater, film and TV artists, aka the sort of people who like to make things rife with metaphors, aka Too Artsy For You to Understand). The title of the exhibition was Aliens, hence the Thundy-photo in Fraze's post.

I generally like looking at vaguely metaphorical artsy things in nice church settings, except this one had this very strong underlying vibe of "not sure if artist or psychopath".

Like this deader-than-usual statue:

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It was called Autoportrait in Death. And then there were black hearts on a string:

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(which didn't photograph very well, because churches are tall and the coats-of-arms in the background muddy things a bit. The coats-of-arms, for the record, are coat-of-arm epitaphs, aka commissioned for the death of noblemen to cover their various accomplishments in life. People really have lost that special touch of pizzazz over the centuries.)

And then there was this nice boxy installation:

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which was all well and nice, until you looked at that glowing circle and saw that there was a bundle of human hair neatly arranged in there.

And then there was this:

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I don't know what it was intended to be - my best guess was "Doctor Who villain" - but it's not the most reassuring thing to hover over your head on a church wall.

So then we climbed up the hill to the historical seat of power, and since we used a shortcut, it took us to the Danish King's Garden, which looks gorgeous and also has more Doctor Who villains who Fraze already posted a photo of. But for a better view:

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There's a plaque that gives helpful intel:

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(not gonna lie, I would not take it well if I ever saw the ghost of an entire full-size galleon.)

The view up there is magnificent, though.

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There are also viewing platforms farther up, as one of those mandatory spots in the Old Town to take guests to:

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The building of the Great Guild Hall was right opposite the café where we took a coffee break.

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We'd been there before, during the Museum Night when entry is free to a lot of museums, but at that time the place was crowded and we couldn't really get to see anything, so we opted to go there again. Turns out to have been a good choice, because we hadn't seen the bulk of it last time.

There was a separate chamber for a display about Estonian money through the ages, and I took a shot of the cash we had before the euro:

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We had very pretty money and why yes we do resent having had to give it up >____> Back when we had them, 25 and 10 were the most common bills you'd use in regular everyday stuff, now they're worth less than two euros.

Inside view of the retro tram:

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We recently got new shiny trams (almost like we're a civilized country now) but there's a retro tram running on one of the lines, decked out in 1930s style.

Kadriorg Palace, once the summer residence of Peter the Great (and subsequent Russian nobility), now an art museum.

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And its gorgeous garden:

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