Europe 2018: Part 3
Monday, 26 March 2018 20:06![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iguana
By pure chance we ended up in Tallinn for Estonia's 100th anniversary! Tallinn itself was very picturesque and we did a couple of tours to some very interesting and beautiful places too; I'd thoroughly recommend Estonia to anyone looking for a holiday destination.
Western Coast Tour
On the first day we took a tour around some sights to the West of Tallinn, along the western coast of Estonia.
The first stop was at an abandoned Soviet military base. It felt like visiting Pripyat all over again. It had been abandoned for nearly the same amount of time, too; Soviet/Russian troops left around 1993.
Fittingly, nearby was a managed, defunct nuclear power plant. It made me think about how the design fault at Chernobyl was endemic to all Soviet nuclear power plants, and it was only pot luck as to which one went up first. Estonia's one is also apparently being managed until it is safe to dismantle it, though I'm not sure of the details.
We visited an old lighthouse that was in the process of falling off the eroding cliff:
We visited an old monastery which reminded me so much of my mental image of the castle into which one follows a monk in the text-adventure educational game L: A Mathemagical Adventure.
After that we visited the Rummu Underwater Prison; a partly-submerged abandoned prison in a quarry; when it was abandoned the quarry filled with water. It was pretty rockin'.
Actually, it looks likesquirmelia did the same tour as us when she visited last March, and now I'm thinking I should go back to Estonia and see it without the snow too. My entire photo album is here as a point of comparison.
Also on the tour:
On the first day we took a tour around some sights to the West of Tallinn, along the western coast of Estonia.
The first stop was at an abandoned Soviet military base. It felt like visiting Pripyat all over again. It had been abandoned for nearly the same amount of time, too; Soviet/Russian troops left around 1993.
Fittingly, nearby was a managed, defunct nuclear power plant. It made me think about how the design fault at Chernobyl was endemic to all Soviet nuclear power plants, and it was only pot luck as to which one went up first. Estonia's one is also apparently being managed until it is safe to dismantle it, though I'm not sure of the details.
We visited an old lighthouse that was in the process of falling off the eroding cliff:
We visited an old monastery which reminded me so much of my mental image of the castle into which one follows a monk in the text-adventure educational game L: A Mathemagical Adventure.
After that we visited the Rummu Underwater Prison; a partly-submerged abandoned prison in a quarry; when it was abandoned the quarry filled with water. It was pretty rockin'.
Actually, it looks like
squirmelia did the same tour as us when she visited last March, and now I'm thinking I should go back to Estonia and see it without the snow too. My entire photo album is here as a point of comparison.Also on the tour:
Tallinn
Surprise Military Parade
We only realised after the first day in Estonia that the country's centennary was going to be the very next day; by luck we also didn't have anything planned that day, so we joined in with the city's celebrations, buying tiny Estonian flags and waving them at military vehicles parading down the street. It snowed some more while we were waiting for the parade to reach us.
The hotel we were staying at, which we'd got fairly cheap because it was newly opened and had no reviews, was the Centennial Hotel (really, the name should have given it away) and we found that we were sharing breakfast with a lot of high-ranking military personnel. They had table service but the hotel buffet was also adorned with tiny Estonian flags and some very fancy looking things like pike roe (didn't try) and chocolate things (did try).
With time before everything kicked off at eleven, we also visited Linnahall, a stadium built for the 1980 Olympics, which offered good views of the city. It was also where we were when the harbour and/or the cruise ships in the harbour decided to let off a rendition of Happy Birthday on their foghorns. Ever heard a boat singing Happy Birthday? You have now.
The parade itself was a whole selection of troops from various countries; NATO was running it, I think because Estonia has no military vehicles? I may have misunderstood this. But there were pretty much every type of military vehicle going spare here, from bridge machinery to ambulances, and the odd tank for good measure.
The parade finished with a fly-by from a couple of Eurofighter Typhoon jets, and the moderate crowds dispersed quickly after that.
In the afternoon we went to the Seaplane Harbour maritime museum which had a big ol' submarine in it that you could go inside. There were also some moored boats outside in the water that were open to be explored.
We only realised after the first day in Estonia that the country's centennary was going to be the very next day; by luck we also didn't have anything planned that day, so we joined in with the city's celebrations, buying tiny Estonian flags and waving them at military vehicles parading down the street. It snowed some more while we were waiting for the parade to reach us.
The hotel we were staying at, which we'd got fairly cheap because it was newly opened and had no reviews, was the Centennial Hotel (really, the name should have given it away) and we found that we were sharing breakfast with a lot of high-ranking military personnel. They had table service but the hotel buffet was also adorned with tiny Estonian flags and some very fancy looking things like pike roe (didn't try) and chocolate things (did try).
With time before everything kicked off at eleven, we also visited Linnahall, a stadium built for the 1980 Olympics, which offered good views of the city. It was also where we were when the harbour and/or the cruise ships in the harbour decided to let off a rendition of Happy Birthday on their foghorns. Ever heard a boat singing Happy Birthday? You have now.
The parade itself was a whole selection of troops from various countries; NATO was running it, I think because Estonia has no military vehicles? I may have misunderstood this. But there were pretty much every type of military vehicle going spare here, from bridge machinery to ambulances, and the odd tank for good measure.
The parade finished with a fly-by from a couple of Eurofighter Typhoon jets, and the moderate crowds dispersed quickly after that.
In the afternoon we went to the Seaplane Harbour maritime museum which had a big ol' submarine in it that you could go inside. There were also some moored boats outside in the water that were open to be explored.
Escape Rooms
We did two escape rooms in Tallinn.
The first was Affect Laboratories' The Interview, which was styled somewhat like the Portal video game, and has astonishing set design and mechanics. The room attempted to subvert the idea of an escape room in various ways, which unfortunately left us often feeling quite bewildered as to why things had happened, even though there were some very neat puzzles too. We reached what I would say was the finale in good time (presumably? There was no time keeping even though the room was timed) but ran out of time just trying to get out the final door!
Apparently we wouldn't have failed had we finished a couple of minutes later because the code got easier to guess over time? A weird artifact of having no hint system was that a lot of the puzzles had to just activate after a set point, which might be why cause and effect were getting confused throughout. It was the first escape room I've failed (of eleven) and while I would have liked to have won it, I didn't feel too bad due to the subversive nature of the room.
The second room we did was Claustrophobia's Gravity, where the mission was that we, stranded on board a damaged spacecraft, had to repair the craft and propel it to a nearby space station to use their escape pod. The set was quite small and it was somewhat light on puzzles (as a team of 3 out of maximum 3, we finished in under half an hour) but it was without a doubt the most fun I've ever had in an escape room. The set was high tech and perfectly immersive, and I don't think it was a spoiler to say it physically shakes in places, as we were warned about this beforehand in case of motion sickness (I never felt nauseous, incidentally). The finale was worth the money on its own.
We did two escape rooms in Tallinn.
The first was Affect Laboratories' The Interview, which was styled somewhat like the Portal video game, and has astonishing set design and mechanics. The room attempted to subvert the idea of an escape room in various ways, which unfortunately left us often feeling quite bewildered as to why things had happened, even though there were some very neat puzzles too. We reached what I would say was the finale in good time (presumably? There was no time keeping even though the room was timed) but ran out of time just trying to get out the final door!
Apparently we wouldn't have failed had we finished a couple of minutes later because the code got easier to guess over time? A weird artifact of having no hint system was that a lot of the puzzles had to just activate after a set point, which might be why cause and effect were getting confused throughout. It was the first escape room I've failed (of eleven) and while I would have liked to have won it, I didn't feel too bad due to the subversive nature of the room.
The second room we did was Claustrophobia's Gravity, where the mission was that we, stranded on board a damaged spacecraft, had to repair the craft and propel it to a nearby space station to use their escape pod. The set was quite small and it was somewhat light on puzzles (as a team of 3 out of maximum 3, we finished in under half an hour) but it was without a doubt the most fun I've ever had in an escape room. The set was high tech and perfectly immersive, and I don't think it was a spoiler to say it physically shakes in places, as we were warned about this beforehand in case of motion sickness (I never felt nauseous, incidentally). The finale was worth the money on its own.
Lahemaa National Park tour
Next day we went on another tour, this time out the other direction from Tallinn, where we visited:
ALSO the roads were entirely iced over; fortunately our tour bus had (mandatory in Estonia over winter) spiked tyres and the ice drove just like any regular road.
Other things we did included a KGB secret-hotel-floor mini-tour, the KGB interrogation/torture cells/museum, and a Monet & Klimt exhibition where the artwork was animated to classical music.
So, yes. Estonia. It was awesome.
Next day we went on another tour, this time out the other direction from Tallinn, where we visited:
ALSO the roads were entirely iced over; fortunately our tour bus had (mandatory in Estonia over winter) spiked tyres and the ice drove just like any regular road.
Other things we did included a KGB secret-hotel-floor mini-tour, the KGB interrogation/torture cells/museum, and a Monet & Klimt exhibition where the artwork was animated to classical music.
So, yes. Estonia. It was awesome.
