Random October Musings

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Tallinn

My dear daughter is traveling through Sweden, Finland, and Estonia right now.
In the rainy, starting to get chilly, Scandanavian October.

She landed in Stockholm, met up with some friends (the only way to travel!), and then took the ferry to the Aland Islands to visit her paternal family of second cousins in Mariehamn.

 

***She has now been designated the genealogy consultant of the family.***

She then ferried off to Helsinki and stayed with my host-sis - who had just gotten back from visiting me, here in Oregon.

Today, she is in Tallinn, Estonia. She is used to traveling alone and, frankly, it's easier in some ways, doing what you want to do and not having to endlessly debate going to yet another museum. She's been able to stay with people which helps with her travel budget and also grants access to local yokel sightseeing.

Helsinki

Mariehamn

No sewing going on. I'm working two solid weeks of serious overtime and even double time on two days.
Occasionally, I have time for some random pop-up thoughts, I thought I'd share.

1. Delirious that the ballots were delivered today. I can mail it in tomorrow and be done.
2. I'm sad about not being able to bike to work anymore. It's too  dark to be safe.
3. I must do a post about biking and doing something others think is too dangerous to even try.
4. My supervisor is off for two weeks, decreasing the toxicity at work by 74%.
5. I've made a new local acquaintance who sews pendleton too. Excited to get to know her better.

6. My schedule, barring any people being sick, allows for garage saling next Friday morning.
7. Creative Girl also has Friday morning off!
8. The new library opened recently and my first impression is echoing acoustics and gray.
9. Trying to coordinate dry weather with me being home in the daylight to get the yard straightened up.
10. I'm pretty sure I failed to finagle the weather gods last autumn.

11. I miss Rusty with his face pressed up to the door.
12. We have a teeny tiny mousey in the house who can run faster than me.
13. I did catch him under a mixing bowl but he managed to escape via the pour spout -- somehow.
14. This two weeks of 12-hr split shifts is very hard on my body.
15. I've got three more Christmas seasons to get through before I can retire.

16. I get way less political ravings on my IG feed. I am turning FB off for a few weeks.
17.  I live in a community with a significant latino population. I know many of them and they come see me because they know I treat them equally --the same as any other customer. I do not want a wall built. Most of my friends came to the US for a better life. And they are making their dreams come true.
18. I feel our rights as women to make decisions are very shaky. I don't want to go back to the days when a woman had to have a man co-sign a loan. She couldn't buy a car on her own. She couldn't make life decisions without someone's okay. No matter what you believe about anything affecting a woman, She is the one going through whatever and there isn't a blanket law that covers every situation. Be in control of your own life. Let others make the best decisions they can, at their particular moment of crisis. We don't always have to be right.
19. I want to go see the movie,  Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. I have not read the book and my library is taking holds but has not bought the book yet. The title just draws me in.
20. I'm watching Indian Summers (season 2) on PBS, as well as Poldark (season 2) via the internet.

21. Also binge-watching Ugly Betty - the entire four seasons is on abc.com.
22. I need to send some Halloween care packages. One less niece as she is studying abroad in Ireland and Berlin.
23. I've won two giveaways lately. One for a quilt book and another for a pattern that I've been eyeing enough that I thought I'd have a go at figuring it out myself. Now I can just use someone else's pattern.
24. I gave everyone Smarties today at work.


25. Off to bed. Goodnight. Sleep tight.

Tallinn, Estonia

Fat Margaret

Instead of Savonlinna and the opera, we traveled to Tallinn.
Savonlinna is an old castle in eastern Finland that hosts operas on it's grounds in the summertime. Outside.
The Magic Flute and Aida were playing about the time we would be in Finland. We decided back in May to leave it open and not commit to getting tickets (tres expensive!). Instead, our plan was go see the castle and then see if any no-show tickets were available.
Once we arrived in Helsinki, we looked up the train tables and found the journey to be over 4 hours away, necessitating an overnight stay, only to find all the hotels booked.

We changed plans and went to Tallinn instead on the hydroplane boat.

The  regular ferry covers the 50 miles between Helsinki and Tallinn in about 4 hours. The hydroplane boat - about 1.5 hours - or so they say. Ours took just over 2 hours due to a bit of rough sea.
In fact, our return ferry was cancelled due to ?.   No explanation really. When we tried to call, the signal was busy. When we arrived back at the ferry office, four clerks manned the counter in a surly russian way giving out no explanation other than to catch the next ferry and obviously not answering any phones. We speculated there were not enough passengers taking that particular ferry back and they arbitrarily cancelled it so as to not waste high-priced fuel.

Tourist Shop Mainstays. Russian Nesting Dolls.

The part of Tallinn that we saw was the touristy old medieval walled city. It was a wonderful walking tour. I followed Rick Steve's walking tour which takes about 3 -4 hours and is just about the right amount of time to spend on evil cobblestones.

My lunch: Smoked Chicken Salad

Oompa Loompas occupied Tallinn

I love this view up the street with St. Nicholas Church in the background.

Estonia joined the European Union back in 2004 and has done quite a bit of cobblestone straightening out.

One of our guidebooks made a joke about the  Russian buildings made of Micro Cement: 60 % cement, 40% microphones.

We did go into several of the shops only to find uniform touristy merchandising. Every shop stocked the same goods.  All of the 'linen' or 'handicraft' shops stocked machine-embroidered cloths, some with goofy cows. I can only speculate that the embroidery machine software came with the basic goofy cow.

This was a great addition to our trip to Sweden & Finland and I can highly recommend Tallinn as a destination and also Rick Steve's Walking Tour.
Below is a slideshow of more photos. I am trying this picassa album out to see if everyone can see it, view it, without overwhelming the blog platform. Let me know if it's great or downright un-viewable.

Looks like the link broke. I stumbled my way into re-doing it at end of post. :-)

Highlights?
**The pharmacy in the town square which is the oldest continuously operating pharmacy in the world? Since before 1422 anyway. You can buy aspirin here as well as suntan lotion or just view the pharmacy museum.
**Do NOT take photos inside the churches. How do I know this? Do you really need to ask how I know? (twice!)
**The dragons.
** Our lunch was fairly inexpensive - about 5 euro each plus 1.60 euro for water!
**My host mom's friend recommended a linen shop at K.A. Hermanni Street. It's just a bit outside the medieval area but we didn't find time to go. Supposed to offer authentic Estonian craft.

Tallinn, Estonia