Railway Dog

Baspie the Railway Dog found Tallinn Estonia a relaxing city for a dog. Away from the mosquitos of the forests, and lacking in crowds in early June, despite a cruise ship with numbered tour groups doing the rounds. People like dogs in Tallinn, so Baspie got plenty of attention. We took it easy in the gentle long day sunshine.

Tallinn is a port city, which is why we were there, ready to sail to Stockholm, Sweden. Ferries to Helsinki, Finland, run several times a day. Both routes have dog-friendly boats, including for foot passengers. Towards the end of the First World War, the British Navy fought and lost lives here, and are still commemorated for helping to win Estonian independence – that’s what the wreath above is for. As with the rest of the former Eastern Block, there are bunkers to protect them from WW2 and from us in the West during communist times.

The city of Revel (changed to Tallinn on independence in 1918) was established as a trading port by Germans, whilst the Danish nobility who got there first ruled from the hill. They all wanted the locals to convert to Christianity, getting brownie points from the pope. This was a lot easier and cheaper than going on crusades to the Biblical lands. So the poor pagans didn’t get much of a choice, though they had got away with being in a forgotten corner of the world till the 13th century.

Tallinn boasts one of the oldest clocks in the world, an astonishingly good vegan chocolatier, the Brotherhood of the Black Heads, and some good anti Putin posters outside the Russian Embassy. The temporary fences protecting the embassy work well as a poster display board.

The Blackheads are named after their patron saint, a black Roman, St Maurice, who Christianised North Africa 1000 years earlier than Estonia. The Brotherhood of the Black Heads are also claimed to be responsible for Christmas tree lights. There’s a snazzy old House of the Blackheads in Riga, the Latvian capital, too.

The Danish papist rulers on the hill taxed this most northern and eastern Hanseatic League port. This included taxing the size of the front of your trader’s mansion. So this quite impressive frontage extends for an even more impressive 80 metres behind.

I noticed a more attractive and developed level of street art in Estonia than the scribbles in Lithuania and big text of Latvia. As I travelled on into Scandinavia this trend became stronger, topped with stunning commissioned street art in Denmark.