Csabi in Finland

After Turku we went to Tallinn with Julia. From Turku we took Onnibus (onnibus.fi), which is a new budget bus company in Finland. They operate only a few routes, and their price system is similar to budget airlines, if you book in advance on the internet you can get prices much below train prices. They have no ticket office, booking only on the internet. And they are also budget in a way that they stop not in the main bus stations of the cities (except in Helsinki), but somewhere outside the city center. We were a bit nervous with Julia as we were not sure we are waiting for the bus at the correct station. But we were. The bus was in time in Helsinki, but we still managed to be late for the Tallink ferry, so we had two hours to kill at South Harbor. Most of this time we spent in the new Verkkokauppa shop, which calls itself the biggest electronics store in Europe (!). It's 50m from the harbor. Also, it has a lookout terrace on the top (7 floors building), but it was raining and dark, so we preferred to play around ("test") different mobiles and tablets, and explore other recently developed products, innovations.

On the ship, it was quite peaceful and relaxing, except for that this Star/Superstar, which do the trip in 2 hours, they go so fast that the ship is leaning from side to side, it wasn't as good as with other companies with slower ships. When we arrived, the way from Tallinn harbor (D terminal) to the hostel was not so nice at all. It was raining quite heavily, and the pavement quality didn't allow me to use the trolley bag as it is supposed to be used, and at the end we also had some difficulties with finding the hostel, as usual. Actually the hostel is in a -probably- former cargo train package storage building next to the last, currently unused (or very-very rarely used) platform of Tallinn railway station. And of course google maps points the red arrow in a completely different place, hundreds of meters away from the actual location.

The hostel was nice, we had a room with shower and wc inside for 22 euros / night. Only counterpart what I could mention was that the hot water was periodically available, when it was over, it took one hour for the boiler to make hot water again. And the other is that I couldn't really configure the heating properly, on the first night it was hot, on the second cold, then ok. Oh, almost forgot, the name of the hostel is Platform 7 hostel. I recommend it to everybody, but I also recommend to prepare well (best with gps) for finding to hostel.

On the first day in Tallinn, my shoes were still wet after the walk from the ferry, and as soon as we went out they became more and more wet as it was continusly raining. So we actually did nothing except for a walk in the old town and eating in the building of the railway station, on the second floor there is a restaurant with good value for money proportion on weekdays between 12 and 15h. Together we paid 11 euros, for salad, soup and main dish and water. In the hostel the day continued with watching film and sleeping.

On the second and the third day, the weather allowed us to explore Tallinn more, we took longer walks in the old town, and also we went to puppet museum. We visited the TV tower as well, witch is not in the center, and it took us a while to figure out where can we take the bus #38 which takes us there. But finally we found it, the stop is at the opposite side of the old town, at Viru Keskus shopping center. More exactly under it (like Kamppi in Helsinki). Of course we had no idea where to buy tickets, so we bought from the driver, which turned out to be 50 cents more expensive than "normally". I was a bit afraid that the weather is still not clear enough for a tower, but it was, the Baltic sea, Tallinn and the surroundings all could be seen very well. The TV tower was closed for public for long, and they reopened it this April after an extensive renovation. It's a really cool attraction now, it's not just about looking out, it has many more attractions, including 3D cinema, TV studio where you can shoot how you read a news article and send it to yourself by email. Also, you can "play" with one of the many interactive "robots", touchscreens which turn around depending on what you are doing with them. And got to know interesting facts like that Skype is from Estonia. Everything is high-tech, interactive, this is how a 21st century tourist attraction should look like. Of course everything (incl. the touchscreens and even the temporary notifications) was written out in English and Russian apart from Estonian. But information sheets were available in many other languages as well.

In the puppet museum we had similar experiences, although I am generally not interested so deeply in puppets, but if I was, I would have a touchscreen next to every important puppet (of course 3 languages), where I could have found out more about the puppet. But I was more interested in history and traditions of puppet theaters, about that, there was also a lot of interactive information available. Also, we could send email with our picture as a puppet. These kind of things make a museum interesting, nobody cares if there is just an A4 paper with boring text next to every item. And I had the feeling that in Tallinn they are very good at this.

On Thursday we also visited to former city hall, which is a huge abandoned pyramid-like building. It's quite impressive, although it might not seem to be a very friendly place at first sight, I recommend it to everybody to go there, those who don't find anything interesting architecture-wise, can still enjoy the view of the harbor area and the Baltic sea from the top of the building. The old city hall is located next to D-terminal, and it is a very unusual building.

On Friday with the 8am Viking Line we went back to Helsinki, although it's already Sunday eve, the post ends now, and in 2-3 days there will be the next post when the blog catches up with reality.

On the picture, Julia stands on a glass over 170 meters of emptiness (Tallinn TV tower).

About the jobseeking I will write in the next post.