Baltic Cousins
February 2-4, 2024
Tallinn, Estonia has been on our radar for several years now. Remarkably, every single person we have talked to who has visited the city has told us they loved it; that alone was reason enough for us to want to see it for ourselves. In February 2024, we found ourselves wanting a quick weekend getaway, so we checked where the cheapest flights from Berlin were headed. Tallinn was on the short list of destinations, so without too much forethought or planning, we set off on a quick two-night jaunt to Estonia, excited to cross off one of the few remaining European countries from our list.
Geographically, Tallinn sits equidistant between Stockholm, Sweden to the east and Saint Petersburg, Russia to the West. Culturally, it sits somewhere nestled between those two as well. There is a clear Scandinavian vibe to Tallinn, but as one friend described it to us, Estonians are the both literal and figurative “Baltic cousins” to the rest of Scandinavia proper. Estonia only regained its sovereignty in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR, so the Soviet influence will always be woven into the cultural fabric there in a way that it simply isn’t for other Scandinavian countries. Even the Finns, whose border lies just a short boat ride to the north.
The Soviet part of the culture presented itself to us quickly in Tallinn. We chose to go to Olde Hansa for dinner, a medieval-themed eatery offering modern takes on dishes that would have actually been served in Estonia during the Middle Ages. Our waiter greeted us in a boisterous, old-timey English accent and sat us down at our candlelit table beneath a sprawling painted map of medieval Europe. After explaining the menu to us in-character as a court minstrel, he went to help the man sitting down next to us and, learning where that patron was from, repeated the entire performance in Russian. Kirb ordered a dark herbal beer that tasted like amaro, served in a clay jug, along with a rich stew made with boar and bear meat. Mazz got a tart rhubarb cider and a variety of different sausages. We were both pleasantly surprised and impressed by everything we ate and drank. We ended the meal with a shot of pepper aquavit, on the recommendation of our server. Before drinking the liquor, we were instructed to put the glass between our pinkies and thumbs, place our other hands on our heads (in case the liquor blew our minds), and yell “VIVAT!” as loud as we could.
Snow was starting to fall when we left Olde Hansa and made our way through the old town to a beer bar called Koht. Estonia has the most established and impressive craft beer scene of its Baltic and Scandinavian neighbors, and we were thrilled to find over a dozen local beers on tap for only €3-4 per pint. They even had a few gluten-free options for Mazz, which is never a given and always exciting to find. We sat down next to a warm fireplace and started making friends with the locals, who were curious what had brought us to their neighborhood watering hole. We also made “friends” with a budding young Italian fascist Erasmus student who started asking us about Donald Trump (specifically his gun policies) upon learning we were American. Jokingly, we asked the young man if he liked Mussolini too, and he stated with pride that he had a Mussolini tattoo on his back. We promptly migrated the conversation to an Estonian who wanted to talk about grunge music instead.
The old town in Tallinn is a fascinating contrast between the past and the present, with beautifully-preserved buildings housing sleek and modern shops and restaurants. Here it is easy to see the Scandinavian influence in design, with furniture and décor choices that feel effortlessly minimal and cool. Walk down the street from a chic cafe and you may pass by an apothecary that has been in continuous operation for over 600 years – the oldest in the world – creating some fascinating interplay with the sleek modernity of the businesses surrounding it.
The front of the Russian embassy is completely covered in posters decrying their war crimes in Ukraine
Just outside of the old town is the Balti Jaama Turg, an enormous three-story market with specialty groceries, food vendors, and a top floor brimming with off-brand clothing and vintage treasures. We didn’t have too much use for foodstuffs or cheaply-manufactured attire, but we did get lost for hours wandering through cramped passageways of store after store stacked from floor to ceiling with Soviet relics. Every kind of weird knick-knack and curio was on display in these shops, urging us to forage through baskets of 40-year-old buttons to find the perfect vintage designs and thumb through beautifully-illustrated, decaying Soviet children’s stories we couldn’t understand. We eventually had to stop and leave Balti Jaama Turg because our eyes were exhausted from trying to parse the sheer volume of visual information inside.
One of our go-to tricks for picking a restaurant in a new city is to find the Bib Gourmand list in the Michelin guide and then proceed from there. These restaurants are great because they generally have a reliable quality-to-price ratio; good enough to be honored by the guide without suffering from the price hike that inevitably comes with getting a Michelin star. This is how we found Lore Bistro, a modern but casual spot focusing on “good old comfort-food classics with a new twist.” For €56 per person, you can sit back and let Lore bring you all of their signature dishes. Our “Lore Experience” included scallops in lemon butter, a beetroot salad with feta, beef tartare, sea bass served with pumpkin, oyster mushroom, and cream sauce, and a perfectly-cooked beef tenderloin with potato gratin. Lore was better than the vast majority of casual fine dining restaurants in Berlin, and a fraction of the price. The quality of the food for the price we paid felt like an absolute steal.
We also left Lore particularly full, something that doesn’t always happen at higher-end restaurants. After a short, cold walk to the Põhjala Brewery & Tap Room down the road, we found we didn’t have a whole lot of space left in us for beer, though the beer we did drink was particularly good. We sat at the bar and got to chatting with the servers and told them about the excellent food we’d enjoyed in Tallinn to far, and asked for some recommendations for the next day. After mocking us for going to the overpriced tourist trap Olde Hansa (it was actually delicious and fun, we swear), they gave us a handwritten list of their favorite places in town serving real Estonian food, which we graciously accepted.
There was a solid sheet of snow coming down outside when we woke up the next morning in our studio apartment in the old town. We weren’t sure what to make of the place based on the pictures on Airbnb, but we really enjoyed our flat for the weekend in Tallinn. There was a cove adorned with Grandma-chic floral wallpaper, walls made of seemingly-ancient wood and plaster, and thick sailing ropes that acted as molding along the baseboards. After stopping at a random café for breakfast and once again being served food that was tastier than it had any right to be, we made our way to the Kiek in de Kök Museum and Bastion Tunnels to learn more about the history of the city.
Our cosy and charming grandma flat in the old town
When we bought our tickets, we thought that were headed to the top of the fortification walls for a stroll up above the old town. Imagine our surprise then when the tour took us deep underground into the “secret tunnels” that were carved beneath Tallinn in the Middle Ages. Various group have used the tunnels for different purposes throughout the centuries: Swedes originally built them to stand against enemy artillery fire; locals took shelter inside during air raids in WWII; Punks lived inside the tunnels while rebelling against the oppressive Soviet regime in the 1980s. We emerged from the other end of the tunnels and expected to make our way up to the top of the castle walls but the tour just…ended. The entire grounds around the museum were a literal sheet of ice, so we moved very slowly and carefully around the walls to look for an entrance, only to discover that the wall walk was closed for the winter.
So, we moved on to the next item on our sightseeing tour: The Museum of Estonian Drinking Culture. After navigating through the winding, hilly streets above the old town back and forth trying and failing to find the place, we dug a little deeper online and discovered that it had permanently closed during the pandemic. For all our attempts at planning out a proper Tallinn sightseeing day, nothing seemed to work out. Only one of the multiple restaurants on the list that the nice people at Põhjala had given us was even open on Sundays. Thankfully, there was room for us at Rataskaevu 16 for lunch.
You could sense from the moment you walked in that this restaurant was a high-end establishment, and sure enough, the waitress asked us almost immediately if we were there celebrating something special. We had to think for a moment before remembering that we actually were: Almost unbeknownst to us, it was our wedding anniversary that day. We usually forget it’s even a thing until right around the date, and we hadn’t even planned this trip to Estonia with our anniversary in mind. Still, we’re always happy for a good excuse to splurge on a fancy lunch, and the meal we got at Rataskaevu 16 was beautifully presented and prepared using local ingredients. The standout was a braised elk roast served with celeriac, beetroot, pearl barley, carrot mustard, black currant and mustard sauce.
One of the biggest parts of Estonian culture is the sauna. The first written records of sauna bathing in Estonia date back to the 13th century, and today the people of Estonia see public saunas as a way to share and connect with one another. While we would have liked to join in and whack our naked bodies with birch branches in a room full of sweaty strangers, there was no space available for us at the public sauna we wanted to go to. Luckily, we learned that you could pay to use the spa at the 5-star Telegraf Hotel in the old town without actually staying there, and when we arrived there were only a few other people inside. We spent the rest of the frigid afternoon in saunas and jacuzzi tubs, lazing on recliners in bath robes, and swimming in a heated pool. It might not have been the most authentic Estonian sauna experience, but it was a lovely one nonetheless.
Having splurged on a fancy lunch and spa day, we decided that we should probably go to the mall food court for dinner to even things out. Of course, the street food court in Viru Keskus mall was filled with restaurants that served every kind of international food you could ever want. As we ate delicious fried chicken sandwiches, birria tacos, and Mikkeller beer while Chromatics played over the mall’s speakers, we couldn’t help but wonder if Tallinn was actually cooler than Berlin. Sure, Berlin has all the world-class techno clubs, and the sheer enormousness of the place means there’s a little something for everyone. But its vast scale also means that a whole lot of Berlin…kind of sucks. Per square meter, Tallinn may have more cool stuff to offer than the place many people consider the Coolest City in Europe™. We definitely understand now why everyone who goes to Tallinn says that they love it. All it took was a weekend for us to love it too.