I arrived at Helsinki by ferry early in the morning. We had a great breakfast on the ship that we had booked before. I felt a bit like being on a journey on the titanic while I ate Caviar and salmon.
We accidentally passed by the Orthodox Church without noticing it, because on one side there is a very big office building hiding the church. (Hups!)
But when we found it, the red color was very impressing.
In the streets you can find unexpected treasures of architecture like a cafe out of glass as you can see here.
The most impressive monument was the big White Cathedral of Helsinki looking like a fancy cream cake. The city is so beautiful and you will find a hundreds of things that could impress you.
As time went by, we became very familiar with the city and its history. When our parents came to visit us, we realised that our role as tour guides was very good, thanks to the Estonian Culture lessons.
Wherever we went, we always knew some facts about a place or a piece of art we saw in some museums. But I will come to that later.
We saw many great and fascinating things there such as the Stasi museum, little Galleries or buildings, but what I liked the most, was the Orthodox Church. The building is amazing, but for me it was really fascinating to see people praying there and see how the preaching is done. I never saw such a free behavior in a church before. The people came whenever they wanted and some of them left the church in the middle of the sermon. Some of them just attended the preaching for a few minutes, maybe to think and pray for someone special and left again. I really liked that.
The best food I had till now was in the Middle Age Restaurant in the Old Town. They had authentical food of that era. We got a lot of barley dishes and moose meat, that I have never eaten before. The food is quite expensive, but it was so extraordinary that I think it was really worth it.
The Kumu is the official Museum of Estonian art and you can find drawings from all epochs of art there. You will find controversial and time-based art from times of soviet suppression. l was mostly impressed by the contemporary art sculptures, with worms as high as humans and a complexed, very special play of shadows.
Teliskivi is the artists‘ district of Tallinn. Here you can find the Photografiska, a lot of great bars and restaurants that offer interesting food and drinks. There, I for example drank an amazing wine that tasted like pineapple. I highly recommend discovering the strange flavoured beers too. Not everything is tasty but it is interesting each time.
The Photografiska was one of my personal highlights because of the cool exhibitions there. I loved the exhibition of one who realized a big variety of photos that offered a window to a different world of fairytales. Due to copyright regulations I was not sure about publishing photos so please google it if you are interested.
I saw a white girl captured in a spider web, beautiful women covered with butterfly wings and naked fairys with broken wings walking through the woods. Different tensions followed this fairytale creatures shown in different seasons who all mourn the death of the artists mother.
All the exhibitions were completely different. Another artist provided fake photos of celebrities doing funny, strange, or just things we would never think about. An example is Queen Elisabeth sitting on the toilet or Donald Trump amusing himself with some hot chicks in the oval office.
We watched a lot of films in the cinema. The Cosmos is a very modern 3D cinema with Dolby Atmos system and everything a film student can dream of. We saw, “It”, “Joker” and “Once upon a time in Hollywood” there while eating a strange salty Estonian popcorn with tasty powders. I really loved this stuff and I am happy to go there again when “Frozen” will be shown.
Nurme, a district in a pine tree forest was one of my personal favorite places. I really love the architecture there. The houses are integrated in quite a natural way that makes this place even more remarkable.
The Estonians built very individual houses in many different styles. We would never do that in Germany, but it all fits together because of the pine tree forest that connects everything.
I took a couple of walks through the woods and swamps of Tallinn. Each time it was something completely different because of the impressions you get with the change of the seasons. In autumn it changed from a light and colorful place to a pale, foggy and mysterious place, were I got a lot of inspirations for my future storys.
Many bridges and wooden ways meander through the forest. This is completely different to Germany and makes it possible to go there even if the ground is so wet that you could get stuck in the muddy ground.
On Halloween we searched for the house of the witch Baba Yaga, a baltic fairytale character who lived in a house that has chicken feet to walk with. With the fog it was very spooky taking a walk at night.
