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Home Countries Europe

Tallinn: Where Cold Winters Create Charming People

White Nights, Frozen Seas, And Pagan Bonfires In The Land Of Skype

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Aug 23, 2017
in Europe, Travel
0
Old and New architecture mark the Estonian skyline on a clear day
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“We Estonians are a bit weird… a bit eccentric,” admitted our Tallinn guide Maria.

“We blame it on the weather. We have nine months of expectations and three months of disappointment.

“Or nine months of winter followed by three months of road construction.”

a bonfire burning in front of a crowd of people
In the absence of night…Estonians light bonfires and sing and dance all night

Estonia dates back to 10,000 years before Christ. Vestiges of paganism persist. Every June 21, for example, when night falls for just two or three minutes, Estonians say it is a sin to go to sleep. They stage bonfires and sing and dance all through the white night.

“Then, during the few minutes of darkness,” Maria explained, “we go into the woods to find our happiness.

“I am a product of this tradition,” Maria continued. “I was born on the 25th of March.”

Estonia enjoys a baby boom every March and April.

“We Estonians like to drink and not always coffee, if I’m honest,” Maria carried on.

“There is a statue here in Tallinn,” she said, “memorializing the Soviet bombing in 1944. The statue shows an injured man being held up by his wife and son.

“We Estonians describe the statue as, “Please, taxi man, I need a ride. My husband is drunk again,’

“We Estonians also like to laugh,” Maria added, “at everything and everyone, including ourselves.”

You’d need a sense of humor and a well-stocked bar to survive winter in this part of the world where temperatures regularly fall to minus 25 degrees Celsius.

snow covered trees and rooftops in estonia
Winters in Estonia are beautiful but harsh

“When it is that cold for two weeks at a stretch or longer,” Maria explained, “the Baltic Sea freezes. We take advantage of the situation to drive to the islands.

“This gets very exciting when you’re driving to an island and you notice a ferry crossing the sea ahead of you.”

Despite the hardships of life in these parts, Tallinn was a sought-after spot in the Middle Ages, when it offered perhaps the world’s first citizenship-through-residency program.

You could become a citizen of Tallinn back then simply by showing up and living in the city for a year and a day. Serfs who managed to escape and make their way inside Tallinn’s walls could become free.

Tallinn flourished through the 14th and 15th centuries, when it was a powerful member of the Hanseatic League. The city’s nicely preserved and restored old town is a living monument to this golden age.

More recently, during Russia’s rule in the 18th and 19th centuries, the city became little more than a summer getaway for wealthy Russians. Today, improved air and sea links with Western Europe are putting Tallinn back on the global traveler’s and investor’s map and making the ancient city more accessible than ever. The Tallinn-Helsinki ferry line is among the busiest in the world.

Meantime, Estonia serves as the current Presidency of the Council of the EU and is home to a thriving tech community. Skype was invented here.

Tourists visit picturesque Tallinn mostly in the months of May through September

The result of all this openness and increased recognition on the world stage is a booming tourist trade in season. May through September, the narrow streets, cobblestoned alleys, squares, and courtyards of Tallinn’s picture-postcard old town are overwhelmed with folks like us interested to learn more about this long ignored but at various times throughout history important little city.

The first cruise ships docked in Tallinn’s harbor in the late 1990s. Today, more than 300 ships visit each season, sometimes six or seven at once, releasing tens of thousands of cruise-goers into the heart of this medieval city at a clip.

The day we joined them we stood shoulder to shoulder with our fellows to regard en masse the Holy Spirit Church, the Dominican Monastery, the Church of the Transfiguration of our Lord, St. Olaf’s Church, Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the Cathedral of St. Mary the Virgin, Toompea Castle, Viru Gate, the oldest continually operating pharmacy in Europe, and on and on…

Oh, the indignities we grand tourists endure in the interest of filling in the gaps in our education.

Normally we’ll go far out of our way to avoid tourists. In Tallinn we had no choice but to embrace our reality.

Our too-brief visit was enough to convince us that this is a place we’d like to get to know better. We’ll visit again… next time out of season. Give me freezing temperatures over mobs of tourists any day.

Kathleen Peddicord

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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

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