A week-end in Tallinn
18 August 2008
The Old Town has medieval origins and is very well preserved to this day. Over 500 restaurants and bars, night-clubs, and souvenir shops and then of course tourists from all over the worrld everywhere.
Quite a contrast to our quite cruising life tha last 5-6 weeks.
The name Tallinn means 'Danish Town' in Estonian. The danish apparently founded this old trading port in the 1200's when it bacame the End, or the Beginning depending on your view of the Danish King Valdemars Trading route from Ddenmark, through all of the Swedish Baltic Coast with it's thousands of islands, via ?.land and Finland to Tallinn.
From 1561 and during the next 150 years, Tallinn was an important stronghold for the eaterns part of the Swedish 'empire'. Then it was German territory for many years, and after that the Russians took over.
Estonia with it's 1,5 million inhabitants has a quite short history as an independant nation. They became free at 1918 after the Russiian revolution, and then, ironically enough, became occupede by the Soviet Union in 1940.
Then upon the 'implosion' of the Soviet Union, they were independent again in 1988. In fact they will celebrate 20 year anniversary on Wednesday the 20th.This is called the 'singing revolution'.