While Tallinn Sleeps

Location

At 6am in the morning the streets were almost empty. There were 3 drunks wandering home from the last bar to close. The only sounds to be heard were from the birds.

Arriving on the overnight bus from St Petersburg I was dropped off at the bus station at 6:30am. Sitting next to a fat man during the white nights when it's constantly light didn't make for the best night's rest. Regardless I was excited to be in Estonia.

I assumed the bus stop would be somewhere close to the old town where I had booked a hostel. At the bus depot there wasn't much to see, just a few people waiting for a bus and a cluster of taxi drivers hoping the next bus would yield a fare. I wasn't going to make their day. Just before we pulled into the bus station I saw a rather high spire of an old church, 'That's gotta be the old town', I thought to myself. It was in walking distance so once off the bus I set off on foot.

Armed only with a rough map I'd printed off the internet I was still able to quickly find my bearings and head straight for the hostel. I found it in about 15 minutes. On my walk I received a text message asking to change my time settings, it was 5:30am, not 6:30am! Check in at the hostel wasn't until noon. Oh well, I thought it was worth a try. No such luck, so I wander off to find a park to eat my sandwich and have a walk around town.

At 6am in the morning the streets were almost empty. There were 3 drunks wandering home from the last bar to close. The only sounds to be heard were from the birds, who like me, had awoken with the sunlight and the street sweepers working feverishly to keep the old town pristine for its visitors.\r\nIt was nice having the whole town to myself. I wandered up to the Toompea, the highest point in the old town, where I could look out over the roofs to the port and beyond. I took lots of photographs too, of empty but sunlight streets with its cobble streets, crowded buildings and the odd section of city wall spaced out with watchtowers.

Now I'm in the hostel and might take a nap before hitting up the museums. Already it's a nice change of pace and scale from St Petersburg's never ending prospects.