Ljubljana, Train Journey to Klagenfurt

The view from the bedroom window when we woke was  a dreary and disappointing misty morning that obscured the view of the city buildings but we were planning to take a trip to Klagenfurt in Austria today so we hoped that the weather might improve along the way.

After breakfast we returned to the impressive train station that had a ticket office of cathedral sized proportions that made it seem more important than it really was and we queued and purchased tickets for a very reasonable €17 for the return trip.  On the platform it was nice to watch the information boards that changed frequently with a rattle like the sound of falling dominoes and displaying intriguing and romantic destinations like Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo as well as others more familiar to us like Venice, Vienna and Munich.  We were catching a train to Villach, in Austria, where we would have to change for Klagenfurt.

The train arrived on time pulled by a tired looking blue and yellow electric engine that looked as though it had had a long working life and with carriages that were old but were comfortable and spacious and it pulled out of the station and began to efficiently pick up speed.  First it went through the outskirts of the city on a similar route to that we had taken on the bus the day before and then it started to sway and got faster as it emerged into the open countryside.  It was still very misty and the landscape looked bleak and uninviting and the backdrop of mountains, that we knew were there somewhere, were completely obscured from view.

What was interesting was the layout of the fields that seemed to be set out in an old-fashioned medieval strip farm system with some bits ploughed and some not, some lying fallow and some prepared for crops.  This is because in the pre-independence period when Slovenia was a part of Yugoslavia, small independent farmers owned more than 90% of agricultural land and only about 10% was occupied by socially owned state farms known as agricultural enterprises.  Since independence agricultural reforms in Slovenia have tried to encourage the development of agricultural holdings of a viable economic size but this is a slow process and about nine thousand small family farms are no bigger than about ten hectares of land and the importance of agriculture to the economy of the country is continuing to decline.

The train tracks followed the natural valley of the River Sava, which begins in the Julian Alps, which lay ahead of us and joins the Danube somewhere near Belgrade in Serbia and was previously the longest river in Yugoslavia.  The river valley through which we were passing is the most industrialised part of Slovenia and consequently the river here is highly polluted with waste and I assumed that this is what accounted for its curious metallic sheen.

All of a sudden the mist dispersed and there were blue skies, cotton wool clouds and snow capped mountains on either side of us.  The train stopped a couple of times at Kranj and Bled and then the last stop in Slovenia was Jesenice where we stranded for fifteen minutes while the Slovenian engine was exchanged for an Austrian replacement and the border guards came on board to check documents.  No trouble on this occasion because unlike the last train journey into Austria from Slovakia to Vienna this time we had been careful to remember our passports.  This wasn’t nearly so stressful but nowhere near as exciting either but on balance I do recommend having travel documents available to show to the men in black uniforms with loaded guns.

When the train got going again it began to climb into the Alps and after a short while it disappeared into a tunnel that took us under the mountains for a good few minutes and a considerable distance.  When we went in on the Slovenian side the sun was shining and prospects looked good but we were disappointed to emerge on the Austrian side once more into mist and low cloud and that was the end of the good weather for the whole day.

The train stopped at Rosenbach where the border guards got off and then we continued on to Villach where we had time for a cup of coffee before catching the second train to Klagenfurt.  Looking for the platform I found the escalators and seeing that the up channel was busy I decided to use the other set of steps that were stationary and so I assumed out of order.  What I wasn’t to know was that this was an energy saving measure when not in use and as I started to ascend the machinery sprung into action in a downward direction and I had to run faster and faster up the steps to be able to make any progress.  How embarrassing and it certainly drew the attention of the sensible people on the correct side of the escalator.

This was a much shorter journey of about forty kilometres and the train stayed close to the shores of Lake Worthersee through the narrow space between the lake and the mountains and we enjoyed good views of the water and the little towns and villages which cling to the side of the lake recovering from the previous tourist season and waiting for the next.

We arrived in Klagenfurt at the eastern end of the lake and walked the short distance into the city with high expectations of an excellent Austrian Christmas market.

Ljubljana, Christmas Market

The weather was still dry when we left Škofja Loka and returned to Ljubljana on the worn out old bus and back in the city we wandered down the left bank of the river and took in some of the sights that we had missed the night before.

Starting at the heart of the city we visited Prešeren Square, with a statue of Slovenia’s greatest romantic poet France Prešeren that looks out over the cobbles and the Triple Bridge and then followed a route to the city centre to find somewhere suitable for lunch.  We found a promising little place in the main street called the Julija where we enjoyed a simple but satisfying lunch and some Slovenian Lašco beer and some wine.  It was a pleasant little restaurant with friendly staff and we liked it so much that on the way out we booked a table for evening meal later.

In the afternoon we walked around the market, which although extensive was disappointingly repetitive with the same type of stalls reoccurring in a sort of cyclical way every thirty metres or so.  The merchandise was disappointing too because I had been expecting local crafts like those in Riga and Krakow but here there was a lot of cheap rubbish at inflated prices that didn’t interest me in any way at all.

The regular market was much more interesting and even though it was getting towards the end of the day the stalls were colourful and exciting and the vendors were enjoying brisk trade as the market heaved with hectic activity.  Through the market we passed over Dragon Bridge, which was built in 1900 to commemorate the forty-year anniversary of the reign of Emperor Franz Josef and is so called because of the four large green dragons, which sit at each corner of the structure.   There is a legend that the dragons wag their tails if a virgin walks past and although I looked closely there was not the slightest flicker as we crossed from one side to the other.

It was late afternoon now and time for a stop so we found a bar, ordered some drinks and debated the weather again.  We had hoped for snow and Micky had continued to promise a fall by the end of the day.  Sadly, despite being a man of the country, we were all beginning to slightly lose confidence in his weather forecasting abilities, as the prospects didn’t look good at all.  We all secretly hoped that there might be some small chance that he might be right however.

When we left the bar it was getting dark and true to form Christine had the tumble that we had all been anticipating.   This time she did her impression of a human missile when she tripped over the kerb and either with good luck or accurate precision crashed into Micky, which was fortunate because it prevented an otherwise certain collision with the pavement and face rearrangement.

After a quick change and freshen up we reassembled in the hotel bar and to our complete delight the drunk guest was there again doing his very best to ruin a second evening.  What was intriguing was that they were both wearing exactly the same clothes as the previous night but one thing that was different was that this time his partner was even more irate and she verbally berated him about his behaviour.  This had no effect whatsoever of course because he was in no fit state to understand what was happening to him.

As she called for a taxi I think he tried to placate her but she was having none of it and she pushed him away as she stormed out of the doors and left him in his alcoholic stupor.  He wandered around the lobby like a ship lost in fog without navigational equipment or a rudder, went up and down in the lift, returned to the bar to finish his drink and then hung around reception no doubt wondering where his partner had gone.  She returned about thirty minutes later and took him away and with the entertainment over we finished our drinks and walked back into the city.

It was nicer tonight because the weather was much improved and we were able to appreciate the Christmas lights much better without umbrellas to worry about.  The market was much more vibrant as well and there were great numbers of local people enjoying the market and the company.   We joined the cheerful crowd of people as we walked through the market stalls again and then enjoyed a hot mulled wine before we returned to the Julija for our second visit of the day.

The food was good and the personable waiters went through their well-rehearsed routine of little gags and quips.  Micky ordered wild mushroom risotto and the waiter advised him to be careful because some of them might be poisonous, this backfired on him a little bit however when Micky informed him that in real life he was a food inspector!

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Other Market stories:

La Rochelle

Pula, Croatia

Alghero, Sardinia

Palermo, Sicily

Tallinn, Estonia

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Varvakios Agora, Athens

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Ljubljana, Bus Ride to Škofja Loka

Sadly there was little change in the weather overnight and the early morning check revealed grey clouds and steady light rain so it didn’t look too good.  Micky had been out for a walk already however and although we were beginning to lose confidence in his weather predictions was still promising improvement over breakfast.

Today we had decided to take the short journey to what is claimed to be the most perfectly preserved medieval town in Slovenia, Škofja Loka, and we left the hotel and made the short walk to the bus station to buy our tickets.  This was a relatively straightforward procedure and the bus turned up and left on time and we set off out of the city in a northerly direction towards the smaller towns with interesting names, Kraj, Preddvor, Jesersko and Radovljica, which were on our route.

The rain had stopped by now and it looked as though Micky might well be right today for a change.

First we had to drive through the suburbs of Ljubljana, which was predictably a lot less attractive than the city centre.  Here there were rows of featureless concrete high rise blocks of apartments not dissimilar to those that we had seen in Riga and Bratislava and which had the grimy mark of the communist past indelibly stamped upon them.  They looked as though they had been built hastily, I guessed in the 1970’s, when the population of the city was beginning to grow as it became more prosperous.

On the edge of town I was surprised to see a rugby club, because I had no idea that they played the game here.  I don’t suppose I should necessarily have been surprised because they do play to a very high standard next door in Italy.  Actually (and this is surprising, I think), out of the one hundred and ninety three countries in the world Rugby Football is played in one hundred and twenty three!  The International Rugby Board, which is the games governing body, has one hundred full members and twenty-three associate members.  In the world rankings Slovenia is 78^th and its Balkan neighbours Croatia are 45^th, Serbia 74^th and Bosnia Herzegovina is 90^th.

I have also discovered (and this is even more surprising, I think) that Slovenia has a national cricket team and has been an affiliate member of the International Cricket Council since 2005.  There are slightly less cricketing than rugby football nations but the ICC lists one hundred and one countries as members, including Croatia but not Serbia or Bosnia Herzegovina.  This list however includes Gibraltar, Jersey, Guernsey, The Isle of Man and the Falkland Islands, as well as Scotland, none of which are independent sovereign nations; so taking these and others into account the list reduces to only ninety-one.

As we passed out of the city and into the countryside the views began to improve and we passed through sweeping green meadows flanked by towering snow capped mountains, vivid green fields surrounding semi Alpine villages with traditional farmhouses and churches.  The towns too were interesting even though they were mainly unattractive, scarred by ill-conceived industrial areas and rows of bleak apartments that had been constructed with no time for or attention to the principles of style and design.

The weather was overcast but there were prospects for further improvement and the bus arrived exactly on time at an untidy little terminus at our destination.  The bus station may not have been very exciting but the little town was quite spectacular.  It is a European cultural heritage site and although there is evidence of fifty years or so of neglect there was a lot of restoration work taking place and when all of this is finished it will once again be a very attractive town.

The first place to visit was the castle. It was quite a walk up to the fortress and the museum but it was well worth the effort because once at the top the views were spectacular across the mountains and valleys that surround the town.  What we didn’t know, until we reached the entrance, was that the museum doesn’t open on Mondays so with our visit terminated prematurely we descended the path back to the town and stopped off at a little bar that was built into the old town walls before we continued our trip by walking into the main town square.  The sun was trying to make an appearance now and it was becoming quite pleasantly warm as we walked back through the town to return to the bus station.

On the way out we crossed a six hundred year old stone bridge across the Selška Sora and in the middle is a statue of St John Nepomuk who is supposed to be the bringer of good luck.  Well the sort of luck that old St John brings I can happily do without.  The man, who built the bridge, a certain bishop Leopold, fell off it shortly after completion and he drowned in the river below.  Where was St John on that particular day I wondered?

Ljubljana, The Wettest Capital City in Europe

It was Christmas market time again and by undertaking detailed research of the flight schedules and destination options there was an opportunity to visit two neighbouring countries by flying to and staying in Ljubljana in Slovenia and whilst there taking a day trip to Klagenfurt over the border in Austria.

This time the airline was Easyjet and was a late afternoon flight from Stansted so we took a steady drive down, stopped for lunch on the way and arrived at a strangely quiet airport and waited patiently for the flight.  I think on balance that Easyjet have got the boarding gate arrangements more organised than Ryanair and boarding the plane was achieved without the undignified rugby scrum situation that accompanies a Ryanair departure.

It seems to me that Easyjet take a much more relaxed approach to air travel.  There is not the same frantic haste to rush everyone aboard and get the flight out on time and this makes it a more pleasurable experience.  Ryanair seem to be completely obsessed with performance indicators and league tables and it must infuriate them intensely that when they reproduce the monthly statistics in their in-flight magazine that although they can proudly show themselves at the top of the performance leagues very often this is in competition with defiant Easyjet returns of ‘figures not available’.

For a week or so before the holiday, as is our normal practice, we had been keeping an eye on the weather in Ljubljana and although it had been a complete mixed bag Micky was still reasonably optimistic and was forecasting snow and extreme cold and we all hoped that he was right.  You can imagine our disappointment therefore when we landed in a wet and soggy Slovenia with a sullen sky full of rain.

The airport is about twenty-five kilometres from Ljubljana, which was a bit too far for a taxi but we found the transfer bus with an obliging driver who drove us the forty minute journey into the city and then took a detour off of the scheduled route to deliver us directly to the front door of the City Hotel and in view of the rain we were grateful for that.

The hotel had been recently modernised and was clean and new with a slightly curious combination of Mexico and Salvidor Dali as a theme in the public areas.  After a bit of unnecessary confusion over room allocations Micky was disappointed to find that this hadn’t provided him with the opportunity that he had been hoping for and we all retired to our rooms for the quickest of freshen ups and then a return to the bar in the lobby for a quick beer to familiarise ourselves with the local brewing arrangements.

As we finished our drinks there was a thoroughly amusing incident between a squabbling couple that entertained us with a piece of pure theatre.  He was completely pissed and she was very pissed off and after a short exchange of unpleasantries she left the hotel and left him to fend for himself.

In his condition this was extremely difficult and after he had procured a room key from the desk clerk he attempted to use the elevator to his floor.  This was a complicated enough procedure when sober so was especially baffling for this man who had a bottle of beer in each hand and a room key pass card that also activated the lift.  He got in and after a few minutes the doors opened and he was still there.  So he tried again.  And again he got absolutely nowhere.  The lift hadn’t moved at all but in his state of total inebriation I suppose he found it difficult to differentiate between imaginary spinning induced by excessive alcohol and genuine vertical motion.  He abandoned that lift and tried the one next to it but with exactly the same outcome.

We could have watched this for a whole lot longer but eventually a member of staff came to his assistance and helped him operate the lift to the appropriate floor,  He obviously didn’t make it to his room though because shortly afterwards he was back in the lobby in a state of complete bewilderment.  Luckily for him then that his partner returned at this point, gathered him up as best she could and took him away and show over it was time to venture out into the soggy streets.

Outside the rain had got progressively heavier so we needed our umbrellas for sure as we set off on foot towards the city centre and the Christmas market.  It was about ten o’clock now and the bad weather had cleared the streets of people and the city was prematurely quiet and many of the market stalls closed already for the day.  Even in the dismal weather however the street lights and decorations looked spectacular with a theme of planets and other heavenly objects all based on a principal colour scheme of bright royal blue.

We walked through the deserted main square and down the left bank of the river Ljubljanica before crossing Cobblers bridge to the right bank where a number of stalls selling mulled wine and gluvine were still open and dispensing drinks.  At one of these a group of boisterous young men were waiting under an umbrella that was swollen with rain and waiting for an unsuspecting passer-by to deposit the contents over.

As Micky walked by one of them sprung the trap and a torrent of water was despatched to the pavement missing him by a matter of inches.  Good job that it did because although this would have given him a good soaking these boys would have got a lot wetter swimming in the adjacent river if they had successfully hit their target!

It was all a bit wet and disappointing but I suppose if we had carried out our research more thoroughly then we shouldn’t have been surprised because Ljubljana has the dubious distinction of being the wettest capital city in Europe and at one thousand three hundred and fifty millimetres a year (fifty three inches) that would certainly take some beating.  Before I knew this I would probably have guessed that it would be Cardiff, in Wales, because that is fairly damp as well but the Welsh capital city is left way behind at only one thousand and seventy four millimetres.

Well the good thing is of course that it doesn’t rain in bars and in the main square just over the Triple Bridge we found a pavement bar with a rigid roof and blazing patio heaters and we enjoyed a couple of final drinks in the comfort of the warmth and the dry while the rain beat out a steady rhythm on the plastic roof sections above.  It was about midnight by now and we were the last customers of the day and after a couple of drinks I think the barman was pleased to finally see us go as he hurriedly packed up behind us to make sure that we couldn’t change our minds.

We walked back to the hotel in the rain stopping for photo opportunities and hoped that things might improve in the morning.

Tallinn, Snogging and Ice Skating

There was no improvement in the weather and certainly no sign of snow and if anything it seemed to be getting even warmer.  After leaving the bus we walked back through the city gates and at the market met up again with Mike and Helene who had just had a nasty little expensive incident in the same café that we had visited yesterday morning.  Well, that was their own fault, they should have come with us to Stalag Pirita Spa Hotel where prices were much more reasonable.

For lunch we weren’t especially imaginative and we returned to the same place as yesterday passing by and rejecting numerous suitable alternatives along the way.  But the food was good and Sue and Christine were becoming adventurous as they both ordered a bowl of spicy solyanka soup prepared to a traditional Russian recipe.  It was a pleasant place, warm and friendly and we took our time over lunch and drinks before returning to the streets where once again even by only mid afternoon it was beginning to get dark.

Outside in St Catherine’s Passage a couple of local men who had had a bit too much gluvine came past us in high spirits and one of them took a liking to Margaret and went in for a full snog attack.  He was determined to get his Christmas kiss and Margaret had to stoutly fend him off.  I think it was a full tongue assault and it was a good job for him that he didn’t achieve it because that would have left him in desperate need of urgent medical attention.

St Catherine’s Passage took us back to the ‘wall of woolens’ so Kim and I stopped here to purchase some souvenirs.  We selected a red cardigan with kittens on it for my granddaughter but long before we finished the others became bored with children’s clothes shopping and wandered off ahead and we became separated so we walked back to the market and then into the crooked side streets that run behind the main square with their cobbled streets, decorated shop windows and buildings with attractive pastel façades that were doing their best to cheer up an overcast steely grey day.

We were becoming more familiar with the layout of the town by now and we groped our way through the tangle of narrow streets past the city walls with conical topped towers, through medieval stone arches and narrow streets squeezed in between the adjacent houses until we stepped through one of the old city gates and found ourselves back at the Aleksander Nevski Cathedral whose floodlit walls were thrusting upwards into the late afternoon dark sky.  We visited the interior, which was full of colourful paintings and golden icons and smelt heavily of burning incense and candles.

After a drink in the bar we prepared to go out again and we were excited about this because some of us were going ice skating.  Christine can’t go on the ice of course because she is too accident prone even under perfect walking conditions and neither Sue of Mike S felt confident about taking to the ice but the rest of us were all keen to give it a try so we paid our entrance fee and strapped on the excruciatingly painful bright orange boots and carefully took to the ice.

The strange thing about ice skating is that it is a lot more difficult than it looks and instead of gliding elegantly around the outdoor arena we were stumbling gracelessly across the frozen surface just being thankful to remain vertical.  Kim quickly abandoned any attempt at proper skating and went around clutching on to a sort of ice rink zimmer frame, Mike W quickly got cold feet and abandoned the ice almost as soon as he had started but after a shaky start Helene was lapping faster and faster and Margaret was a complete natural with lashings of grace and poise.

I managed to stay upright through a dozen or so circuits but although I was beginning to feel like Christopher Dean and was humming Bolero to myself as inspiration I am fairly sure it wasn’t pretty to look at for those spectating.  For a start I found it impossible to skate with both feet so quickly established an awkward style of keeping my left foot in constant contact with the ice and pushing myself along with nervous little stabs of the right foot and then sliding for as long as possible before starting over again.  I found that stopping was especially difficult and the only really confident way of coming to a standstill was to plot a course for the side of the rink and then crash into the wooden fences surrounding the ice and it is difficult to make that look in any way stylish!

The entrance fee and boot hire was for a full hour but after twenty minutes without anyone injuring themselves we decided that this was probably quite long enough and to stay longer might increase the risk of broken bones and lacerations so we returned the boots and left in search of a restaurant.

There was plenty of choice but most of the menus were similar in content and price so, just as at lunchtime, we repeated what we had done the previous evening and went to the Peppersack again and had a very similar meal to the previous evening.

We were all quite tired tonight so after we had finished we left and walked back to the hotel via the starkly paved 1930s Freedom Square and its totally unimpressive Freedom Clock and then past the city’s western parks and the massive artillery tower, the Kiek in de Kök, built in 1475 and nearly forty metres high with walls four metres thick.   There was no late drinking this evening so we all went to our rooms for an early night.

What the snog attacker nearly got…

Tallinn, Old Town

Before dining however we walked through to the opposite side of town and along the ‘wall of woolens’, so called because here there were more market stalls cut into the arches of the original city wall and then we were tempted to part with thirty Eeks each to climb to the top of the tower for a two hundred metre elevated walk looking down over the rooftops and the narrow medieval streets below.  Actually it wasn’t that thrilling it has to be said but we couldn’t really expect a great deal more for only £2 a ticket.

Back at street level we wandered down the delightful St Catherine’s Passage in between fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century buildings where artisans and craftsmen and women were preserving medieval crafts such as glass blowing, intricate iron work, jewellery and leather work.  At  the end of the passage was a basement restaurant where we stopped for a bowl of soup and a glass of beer and we successfully negotiated the potential crisis moment when Sue and Christine both found something on the menu that they could order with confidence and enjoy.

By mid afternoon when we left the subterranean restaurant it was already starting to get dark because thanks to the ‘polar night’ phenomenon, in the Winter, Tallinn, on the same line of latitude as the Shetland Isles, enjoys only a few short hours of daylight. It has late sunrises and early sunsets, which creates incredibly short days and endlessly long nights.  On an overcast day like today the effect was even worse and it is little wonder that Tallinners have been known to have a tendency toward seasonal depression as a result.

In the market the lights on the Christmas tree were starting to appear brighter and the fairy lights decorating the wooden market stalls looked inviting and tempting.  We walked through once more and planned to return later and then with the temperature dropping again and a renewed optimism about the prospects of snow we made our way back to the Von Stackelberg.

We needed some beers and a bottle of wine but we didn’t pass any shops so as it was still early Mike S and I walked around the city ring road in search of a mini market.  The route we chose took us towards the railway station and this wasn’t any real surprise because is a railway man by profession and enthusiasm and after about a kilometre or so we were outside the ticket office and an impressive Soviet Steam Engine, the L2317, a 2-10-0 locomotive built in 1953 in Russia at a factory in the Moscow railway suburb city of Kolomna.

The Russian L-series locomotives were one of the more advanced steam locomotives built in the former Soviet Union. They used stocker to feed coal and had a relatively low axle load of eighteen  tonnes to be compatible with the clapped-out railroads of post war Eastern Europe.  It was a mighty black iron beast with red wheels of almost ninety tonnes that really deserved a name rather than just a number, which during its working life pulled mostly freight trains between Russia and Estonia and after it was decommissioned was rather ignominiously used as a static boiler to heat nearby houses.  It has been externally restored now and sits tall and proud outside the railway station, which was where we went next.

We were now in the working part of the city and a long way from the Christmas market and the students dressed in medieval costumes and the overpriced restaurants.  The station felt tired and past its best and next to it was a tram station that conjured up dreary images of the old days of the Soviet Empire and what was surprising was that the passengers on board looked grey and tired and firmly locked permanently into a 1960s Tallinn time warp.  The trams whirred and screeched and sounded bells to warn of their approach as they drew up and pulled off, setting down and picking up and clattering away again between the rows of old wooden houses and out towards the proletarian flats of the city suburbs.

Next to the station in an ugly 1970s concrete shopping mall we came across a two-story traditional food market selling fish, meat, vegetables and everything for the working class weekly shop.  Everything that is apart from alcohol so we were about to give up when we came across a small kiosk with cans of Estonian beer in the fridge and a screw cap bottle of blossom hill red wine.  Not exactly traditional but without a corkscrew we were severely limited for choice.

Mike and I returned to the hotel and shared out the alcohol.  I went back to the room to drink it and Mike went back for a second look at the L2317 and the finer details of the Baltic Station that we had missed the first time around.

Later we all met up in reception and wrapped up in hats, scarves and thermal gloves walked back into town making our way past the skating rink that we decided to leave until tomorrow, towards the Raekoja Plats where we were surprised to find the market closed.  It was only eight o’clock and I would have thought a Times listed top twenty Christmas market would still be open in the evening.

We dealt with the disappointment as best we could and then began the search for a suitable eating establishment.  We didn’t take too long over this and agreed upon one of the medieval banquet houses, the Peppersack, that was located in an old building not far from the Town Hall Square.  There was a good menu of hearty food and we enjoyed meat skewers and fillets and best of all plenty of Estonian beer and wine to wash it all down.

All we needed now was some snow but sadly there was none as we left the restaurant and walked back to the hotel with the objective of a final night cap.  There was no hope of that at the Von Stackleberg because the bar was closed so we wandered across the road instead to a modern glitzy hotel that was still open, and our final drink and made our day one assessment of Tallinn, which we agreed we all liked, before calling it a day and agreeing to meet at nine o’clock in the morning for breakfast.

Tallinn, Christmas Market

One of Micky’s important little jobs on our trips away is to get up early, go for a walk and bring back a full weather report and assessment for the day ahead but without him no one else was prepared to accept the responsibility so we had to rely instead on the view from the bedroom window and when I woke and looked out it was still dark and although there was no snow there was no mistaking the rawness of a below zero cold Baltic morning.

The hotel breakfast was a lavish affair with a choice of continental or full English, or both if we were hungry enough!  Plenty of hot tea, sausage, egg and bacon, croissants, toast, cheese, ham and a variety of pickled fishes for those who were feeling adventurous.  We all ate as much as we could and when we were full we left and assembled together ten minutes later for the short walk into town.

On account of the grey skies we wrapped up in an appropriate way to tackle the bleak weather and set off for the old town and we retraced our steps from the previous night and repeated our visits to the viewing platforms overlooking the Baltic and the islands.  With one of the most completely preserved medieval cities in Europe, the seacoast capital of Tallinn is a rare jewel in the north of Europe and a city fully worthy of being on the UNESCO World Heritage List.  It was once a medieval Hanseatic town and for long periods in history dominated by the Germans, the Swedes and the Russians and even today contains lots of influence from those days but as we walked we could tell that there was a uniqueness to the place, a bit like Riga but at only roughly half the size certainly very different.

Tallinn is a city with a long and proud tradition dating back to the medieval times and it was first recorded on a world map in 1154, although the first fortress was built on Toompea in 1050. In 1219, Valdemar II of Denmark conquered the city, but it was soon sold to the Hanseatic League in 1285. After joining the League Tallinn enjoyed unprecedented prosperity because its position as a port, a link between mainland Europe and Russia, enabled it to grow rapidly in size and wealth and many of the City’s finest buildings were constructed during this period.  This lasted until the sixteenth century when Sweden moved in and claimed the city and during this time of Swedish rule more fortifications were added and the architecture took on the baroque style of the times.

Just like the previous evening we were confused about how to find our way to the centre of the city not least because where we were was an elevated spot with limited access to the streets of the old town.  We wandered about and corrected ourselves a couple of times before finally walking through a medieval entrance to the city and descending steps behind the city walls before finding ourselves finally at the Raekoja Plats, the Town Hall Square.

Here, in the middle of the town we had reached our objective because since 2001, from December through to the end of the first week in January, Tallinn hosts a traditional Christmas market.  This is appropriate because (although this is disputed, especially in Northern Germany) the picturesque Town Hall Square is claimed to be the site of the world’s first Christmas tree, which formed part of a ritual begun in 1441, when unmarried merchants sang and danced with the town’s girls around a tree, which, when they had had enough fun and drink they then burned down.  This would be a bit like any town in England on New Year’s Eve if the tree wasn’t taken down in advance during the afternoon.

Today the market is included in the Times newspaper top twenty European Christmas markets and here in the square there were more than fifty wooden huts and stalls where visitors and locals were being tempted by (traditional? well maybe) artisan products from all over Estonia. Surrounding an enormous Christmas tree hung with lights and decorations, the vendors were selling a variety of original products including woolens, felted wool hats and slippers, buckwheat pillows, wooden bowls, wickerwork, elaborate quilts, ceramic and glassware, homemade candles, wreaths and other decorations.  Traditional Estonian holiday food was also on the menu such as sauerkraut and blood sausages, hot soups, stir-fries and other seasonal treats such as gingerbread, marzipan, various local honeys, cookies and, best of all, hot mulled wine poured from copious wooden barrels.

We stopped for a drink and paid over the odds in a restaurant on the edge of the square and then left and walked through the market towards the south side of town.  Here there were men and women dressed in medieval costume handing out lucky coins and trying to encourage us to dine in this or that particular restaurant.  Some of us thought there must be a twist involved and fearing an obligation refused to accept the coins but Kim and I took a chance on a con and took ours and it was all completely innocent of course.

Actually it was approaching lunchtime and therefore, because of the nervousness of finding somewhere that Sue and Christine would approve of, a potential crisis time in a new country with unfamiliar cuisine.  Without Micky the anxiety was all mine and weighed heavily because traditional Estonian Cuisine has developed over centuries with Germanic and Scandinavian influences and some of it is not for the faint hearted and certainly wouldn’t suit Sue’s delicate dining preferences.  For someone who turned her nose up at a plain fish salad in Portugal I was certain that she wouldn’t like sült, a sort of jellied meat dish made from pork bones, trotters and heads, or the marinated eel, Baltic sprats, sauerkraut stew or even the Christmas specialty of verivorst or blood sausage.

There was no real need to worry however because although Estonians speak fondly of their traditional food they are no more likely to eat it on a regular basis than in England we are to order pease pudding, jellied eels or brawn and the according to the menu boards displayed outside the pubs and restaurants had a good selection of acceptable offerings.

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Other Market stories:

La Rochelle

Pula, Croatia

Alghero, Sardinia

Palermo, Sicily

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Varvakios Agora, Athens

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Tallinn, Estonia

This year we have spent a lot of time in Western Europe and especially Spain but in December it is time to go East and visit a Christmas market and despite being disappointed in previous years on visits to Slovenia and Austria, which had been full of cheap trash from the far east, we remembered that the market in Riga in Latvia had been very good so we chose to return this year to the Baltic.

Having visited Riga several times in recent years we looked this time for an alternative destination and settled on Tallinn in Estonia.

When the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia made their accession into the European Union in 2004, few people, me included, were even remotely aware of where the mysterious sounding capital cities of Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn actually were.  Up until the end of the 1980s, and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, these countries were subsumed in any World Atlas into the massive smear of scarlet that represented the USSR and these once great cities had been hidden behind the Iron Curtain for so long that they had disappeared from the consciousness of many of their Western neighbours.

Even after they were restored to independence the view of most people was that many years under the jackboot of communism rendered them greyer than an Old Trafford sky on the first day of an Ashes Test Match and they didn’t feature on many travel itineraries.   But Estonia has caught up quickly, it has more internet access than any other EU country, is the birthplace of the internet application Skype and in 2009 it was ranked sixth in the Press Freedom Index, which is an annual ranking of countries, compiled and published by ‘Reporters without Borders’ based upon an assessment of press freedom records.

Estonia is located in the North East of Europe (the most Northerly of the three Baltic States) and South of the Gulf of Finland, which separates the country from Scandinavia. It has nearly four thousand kilometres of coastline and one thousand, five hundred and twenty islands in the Baltic Sea.  It is one of the smallest countries in Europe (148th in the world), and although it is larger than both Belgium and the Netherlands the population is a little over 1.3 million.

Whilst Estonia is a member state of the European Union it probably counts itself lucky that it hasn’t met the economic criteria to join the Eurozone and this is a country that makes financial transactions in thousands rather than tens of units so for the first time since Croatia in June we had a wallet full of unfamiliar notes and were enjoying the self deception of feeling like millionaires.

It was a mid afternoon flight to Tallinn, which meant with the two-hour time difference that we didn’t arrive in Estonia until just after seven o’clock.  Because we were flying due east we had flown deep into the night and once outside the cabin there was an icy blast from a spiteful wind that was blowing sub-zero temperatures around the Lennart Meri Airport (named after the second President of the Republic) that made us securely fasten our jackets and pull our hats down over our ears.

Thankfully it didn’t take long to get through passport control and the attentive police sniffer dog and make our way outside of the small airport building to find the best way of getting into the city.  It wasn’t any warmer outside the arrivals hall as the wind forced its way under the canopies and sent the cold air searching into every corner.

As we wanted to get there as quickly as possible it was a bit late to queue for a bus so on this occasion we broke one of our normal travelling rules and took a taxi for the four kilometre journey to the city and to our hotel the Von Stackelberg just on the edge of the old town.  Two taxis for the eight of us because this was a holiday club trip, which was sadly one member short because Micky had had to cancel due to family business.  Fellow founder members Sue and Christine were in the group and so were Mike and Margaret who had been with us before (Salzburg) and there were two new faces this time, Mike and Helene.

Our Taxi driver understood and spoke perfect English and he gave us a brief history of the city and the tourist industry, made some dining recommendations and gave us a weather forecast all in the space of fifteen minutes before we arrived at the hotel.

The Von Stackelberg was an old building that had been completely refurbished and the reception was cosy with a bright modern style.  After a complimentary drink we found our superior Zen room on the third floor and were delighted with the view from the window of the city and the floodlit castle.  Although it was cold outside the room was warm and comfortable and so too  was the basement bar and restaurant where we reassembled together after a few minutes of unpacking for a first drink in Estonia.

The waitress was keen that we order food but we didn’t have time for that because we wanted to go to the city for the market and some sightseeing so we explained this to her as best we could and then set off into town on foot.  We passed underneath the floodlit walls of the Toompea Castle, the home of the Estonian Parliament, and then below the tower of the Aleksander Nevski Russian Orthodox Cathedral and on to an elevated part of the town where there were viewing platforms that looked out over the northern half of the old town, the city port and the Gulf of Finland beyond that.

It was half past nine and the place was strangely deserted, perhaps because it was Sunday or maybe because it was just so cold.  There were no signs of any restaurants and as we weren’t sure just how to get to the middle of the old town we worried about running out of time so all agreed that we should return to the hotel and eat there.  A couple of years ago we arrived late on a Sunday night in Riga and everywhere was closed like this so this seemed like a good idea.

Back at the Von Stackelberg the friendly waitress in the black uniform that matched the contemporary hotel décor was pleased to see us and after preparing a table took our orders and served us with beer and wine.  The food didn’t take long to come and it was tasty and filling and we congratulated ourselves on a good decision to return to the warmth of the hotel basement rather that wander about aimlessly in the chilly back streets and alleys of Tallinn old town.