Outlandish

As we know the restaurants in the biggest and busiest tourist clusters are usually over-prized and more than often not worth a visit at all. We discovered this last weekend again when we were craving for some simple pizza and went walking around in the Old Town. Not knowing where you're going you often end up just anywhere close in the end. We found pizza on the side of the main Square and it really wasn't worth the Finnish prices. Thank goodness we had booked a table for Saturday in a place that was recommended to us: Restaurant Kaks Kokka (Two Chefs) between the Old Town and harbour. The place was a bit tricky to find. It wasn't on the street but in the inner yard behind a parking lot. But even though weather was absolute shit this place was worth walking around a bit! The decor was pretty simple and Scandinavian, with black and white and earthy colours, and huge windows facing the street. The lights were a bit bright and in your face but that was ad...

I might have mentioned it before but I need the sea close to me. It’s one of these things you  take for granted when growing up because it’s there anyway, but as they say, you don’t know  what you have until you lose it. I have fully started appreciating what the sea means to me after  living in countries and cities far away from any sort of coast. It means peace. Here in Tallinn the sea is inevitably part of my life every day and it makes me insanely happy. I  see it from my window at work (if it’s not cloudy…) and no matter which way I walk (grocery  store, towards Kadriorg or home from work) it’s so close all the time. Last weekend I went for a  walk around the Kadriord area and there’s a really nice beach on the way. And there I saw  waves! Such a simple little thing but I went berserk. They were so beautiful and calming and the  sound is the best in the world. Just what I needed after the worst work week so far. That beach...

Since I was very young I thought that I didn't want to grow up to live the kind of life that my parents did: wake up, go to work, come home, eat, watch telly, sleep and repeat every day. Of course one cannot escape a job five days a week if one wants to live a reasonable life, but the time outside the working hours was in my case dedicated to everything except finding a husband, getting a family and being stuck with a mortgage. I promised myself my future would be different. And I've kept that promise to myself. I've loved living abroad, life like that is so exciting and full of unpredictable events. Comparing that to a stable family life in a country I never felt comfortable in seems like there's no other option anyway. I can honestly say that I have loved every day of my life when I've lived abroad (excluding London perhaps). But for the past few years I've come to think whether I will ever stop. Will I ever find a country where I want to stay for a...

Estonia, a country I didn't know much more about than that everything there is cheaper than in   Finland. By now I've learnt such interesting things as the fact that Estonia has two Independence Days. First in 1918 when Germans lost the First World War and second after the Soviet Union had been demolished in 1991. Tallinn has been an unknown center of some pretty major historical events, such as the sailing competitions in the Moscow Olympics in 1980. For this occasion the communists built one of the ugliest things my eyes have ever had to endure, Linnahall. It used to be a concert hall on which you can climb and look around the harbour and the sea. The idea is so lovely that I cannot comprehend how they could fuck it up with such an abominable structure. The view's nice though. Another highlight for Tallinn was in 2011 when it shared the status of the European Capital of Culture with the almighty city of Turku. How splendid! But my favourite thing about Tal...

Another position in my pocket, this time the one I've been reaching for for many, many years; project manager! Ooh it's good to be me :) And being a new citizen in another country once again I had to get all the paper work done. So, one evening I decided to take care of the registering. Unlike in Bratislava, here the registration office is in the city centre and people speak English.   That doesn't mean, though, that things would go smoothly for me: I found the correct street alright but stepped into a building way too early. I marched to the receptionist and announced in my unFinnishly loud voice that "I'm here to register!" Everybody in the lobby went quiet, the poor receptionist even looked a bit frightened. She mumbled something which I didn't hear and so I kept telling that I just moved from Finland blabla blablabla. She looked so embarrassed (for me perhaps?) when she finally managed to say in a teeny tiny voice "This is a theate...