Leaving Tallinn and off to St. Petersburg..

Our last night in Tallinn we had a blast. We went out with our newly found friends and drank until 4 am. The bars closed at 3 (only because it was a Sunday night – usually they go until your wallet is empty) but we continued to party. It was light as day the whole time (White Nights) and people were still up and about shouting and cheering because of the soccer games going on.


The last thing we did before we got on the train is go up to the top of the old town – the enclosed castle town that is old Tallinn, and checked out the place as well as the view. It was pretty awesome!! The view was that of the Baltic sea, the whole town, and the never-setting sun. Despite all the preserved buildings, churches, and government palaces, some of the really old buildings were actually private residences and a couple were up for sale. Oh to live in a cobblestone street in a palace-like shell on the outside and a modern home on the inside atop a big hill in a walled off castle town…someday.

That night we hopped on the train, but me and George couldn’t sleep. We stayed up until 4 am watching Battlestar Galactica. At 4 am we arrived at the border and were first checked out by the Estonian border patrol and then the Russian border patrol. I don’t know why the Estonians had to check us out – we were leaving their country, but it was chill. It was the Russians who were scary. They were intimidating, sleazy, shady, and questioned us for a while. The scariest part was that none of my IDs actually look like me. My passport and driver’s license were both taken when I was like 16 years old, had a pony tail and shaved sides, and no beard! They looked long and hard at my IDs, at me, scanned them all with ultraviolet light to make sure they weren’t fakeys, and then gave us this look which seemed to indicate that they wanted bribes. I think we played dumb pretty well and tried to play nice and talk our way out of it. I think it worded since we got through, but those 10 minutes my heart skipped many beats, while George and my mom were amused. That is one experience I don’t want to repeat again..