The Bacon Factor

Tallinn. For a city that has been consistently sacked, razed, pillaged and forced to give its lunch money to its neighbourhood bullies- the Danes and the Russians- it has weathered the beatings surprisingly well. Arguably it is still under siege but this time by tourists who assault the town almost daily. They tromp around alone or in groups while unfolding maps and taking endless amounts of pictures of Gothic buildings. You can tell them apart from the locals since all the Estonian women are blond and beautiful and wear glasses and all the guys look like jeans models.

´We´re not tourists,´says Nik.
´Hate to say it brother but we are,´ I inform him.
´Well then we´re not like the other tourists.´
´We´re just like the other tourists. We walk around, jaws open wide, taking the same stupid photos of the same stupid buildings as everyone else. That´s what a tourist does. We want to come home with mugs and T-shirts of cities we barely know.´
´We´re not tourists,´ continues Nik, ´we are severely lost.´
I guess that´s a healthy way of looking at it.

We return to the hostel after a day of wandering around and I bump into a girl I know from Melbourne. ´Jeanine?´
´I´m sorry. Do I know you?´
I flex my muscles.
´Fatman! I didn´t recognise you without your mask on.´

Even in Estonia it seems somebody knows Fatman. I guess working at a popular bar in Melbourne has significantly increased my Six Degrees factor. I know Jeanine vaguely. She´s a friend of my friend B.J. who used to work for me and now makes more money in a single week than I do in two months.

It seems like a great hostel. The hippie within says that the vibe of the place will draw people to it so they can talk about the weird journeys that lead people here. Jeanine had been here for a few months and used to carry an inflatable sex doll into the city to strike up conversations with strangers. I guess that´s one way to do it...