Last weekend, my sister and I went on a trip to Estonia. Unfortunately we didn’t travel for fun, we had a meeting in Tartu (2,5 hours away from Tallinn by bus). We left around noon Wednesday and returned on Friday morning. It was intense. We had about fourteen different connections to make, by train, bus, air and taxi and for instance spent about seven hours on the bus to Stockholm and as many on the way back. That was apart from the five hours on buses in Estonia.

The impressive building where we had our appointment

The view

It was only my second time flying and my sister’s first time. Fortunately, the trip only took about forty-five minutes one way.

From the airplane

In Tallinn many people speak English and in fact, some even Swedish. In Tartu many older people don’t even speak English. For instance, the taxi driver on the way back to the bus station couldn’t understand a word of English. He had to call back to his employers (I think) and let her talk to me on the phone to be able to understand, but at least he was polite.

The plane

We travelled on so called Express buses. On the one to Tartu there were little computer screens on the back of the chair in front, where the Estonians could watch movies, music videos, play games, get info about weather etc. On the other hand, those buses drove so slowly I was surprised they were called Express buses. The driver on the way back was rude and apparently felt threatened by the fact that we didn’t speak Estonian. If it hadn’t been for the kindness of students (there’s a university in Tartu), we wouldn’t have known if the bus would stop at the airport. Fortunately the students speak very good English, but they probably never get any practice speaking to foreigners because they actually looked surprised at themselves for being able to communicate with non-Estonians.

The hotel room


The very very old bus that took us to our hotel

Estonia is a very high tech country. For instance I’d never seen buses with computer screens before. Estonia is, as we were reminded of by huge signs in the airport, the birthplace of Skype. Actually, that’s not the whole truth. Skype was born in Estonia and Sweden. Another high tech feature is the free wifi hotspots, that you can find ‘everywhere’. On the airport, on buses and in various establishments all over the country. In Sweden we have some hotspots, but they’re few and far between, except in Stockholm. The hotel where we were staying for a few hours before getting on the plane to Tallinn had one. That hotel was actually located in a shopping mall, where again, there was a free wifi hotspot with a free charging area. A very nice idea, that I wish shopping malls closer to home had one.

A Swedish phone company was sponsoring the free wifi spot and charging station at the Tallinn airport

Estonian is very similar to Finnish and the Swedish-speaking Estonians speak with an accent that is more or less identical to the one used by Finnish speakers. In fact, Estonia is very similar to Sweden in many ways. They have some of the same phone providers, internet providers, at least one bank that is the same and one of the gas stations. There’s probably more, but we were just passing through very quickly and didn’t have time to do any sightseeing. Fortunately, we’ve been to Estonia three times before and then we had time for a lot of sightseeing.

An interesting building in Tartu. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to get any closer for a better photo