The Where, The How, The Why, The When

We ended up in Estonia because of the bus timetables in St.Petersburg. The original plan was to go to Riga (Chris: ´It´s where Albrecht von Buxthoeven established the Livonain Brothers of the Sword, a bunch of German warrior-monks, to force Christianity on to the Eastern Baltic region in the 1200s.´) but the bus heading to Latvia was scheduled so that we´d be leaving Russia two hours after our visas expired. Border guards are a naturally sadistic lot and may have been forced to take a minor donation from our wallets to remedy this problem.

Nik peers at the time tables at the ticket office of the bus terminal. ´We could always go to Tallinn. That would save us the extra cash.´
´What´s that? Talon?` I ask, proud of my ignorance.
´Tee, ei, el, el, eye, en, en. Tallinn. In Estonia.´
´Wait a minute. Isn´t Estonia where that Eli Roth gore fest Hostel takes place? Where horny backpackers are enticed to stay in this hostel where beautiful girls have sex with them and then the backpackers get killed in the most horrific way?´
´The film took place in a Slovakian town. We´re safe,´ says Chris the geography expert.
Nik:´That doesn´t sound too bad. You get to have sex with all these hot women before you get mutilated? What´s the catch?´
Chris and I shudder at the thought, as only people who´ve seen the movie would. So we pay the woman at the ticket office and buy the tickets to Tallinn at twice the price that was mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide. We were such chumps.

I know that there is a place called Estonia but that was about it. I knew nothing of it. Their was a blank in my head where knowledge should be. Was I going into a place that was devastated by war, where children had limbs missing and the building were all crumbly due to tank attacks? Or was it fairly well developed? A city where motorists would drink espressos from Styrofoam cups while yelling into their mobiles at their secretaries, their moods unpleasant and their vehicles angry?