George Rebane

We are definitely ready to head for the barn.  This is our last night in Estonia and tomorrow morning we drive to the airport, turn in our mud splattered Opel sedan, and fly to Frankfurt.  Yesterday afternoon we arrived back in Tallinn after a short drive from Muhu and Saaremaa, the country’s big island in the Baltic.  There our stay in Pädaste at the renovated manor cum luxury hotel was most pleasant.  On Friday night we ate in their gracious dining room, this time with sharing it with guests that had arrived for the weekend. 

The five course dinner was a “set table” wherein the entire meal was designed by the chef.  This was a good thing because I probably would have blown the whole thing and ordered stuff that wouldn’t go together – I can imagine the twittering at the neighboring tables.  But seriously, the food was expertly prepared and the portions, which initially caused some internal panic, turned out to be more than sufficient – even for a pudgy old Viking like me.  The only problem with the dinner was its extended elegance – it started at seven and lasted until almost ten – which was camouflaged by the long summer evenings’ light at this high latitude of almost sixty degrees.  Jo Ann and I are early eaters, and they sent us to bed with very full bellies.

One of the gentleman guests ordered a glass of port and a cigar as the dessert was being cleared and the last coffees served.  He properly went to enjoy his smoke and drink on the nearby steps just outside the big glass-enclosed patio.  This stirred up some long-dormant juices, for once long ago I too enjoyed those pungent delights after such dinners.  But today, seeing such pleasures from a distance, all I do is pine and start telling stories of when I too … .  As we left the dining room, I decided to stop by the cigar case for a last, longing look, and discovered another little commentary on Estonian culture – their mandated warning label on tobacco products.  The government here doesn’t go into twisted tirades about tobacco causing, perhaps, lung cancer, or possibly aggravating your emphysema, or maybe having your baby born with its three legs in a knot.  No sir, in very big, black-bordered print they get right to the point – “Smoking can kill.”

So yesterday morning, after saying goodbye to the owner, Mr. Martin Breuer, and a couple of especially helpful staff, we drove to the ferry port Kuivastu and got on to the ferry that was just ready to depart.  Half an hour later we were back on the mainland and on our way to Tallinn.  We took some back roads so that I could visit Vasalemma, the small town outside of Tallinn where my aunt once lived.  My dad took mom and me there during an interval in 1943 when the Soviet bombers were hitting the capital every night.  The old train station was the only building there that I could say with certainty that I had passed through, we no longer have my aunt’s old address.  Oh yes, this report would be incomplete without mentioning the obscene field of wildflowers we drove by.  It’s amazing how fast I can still react to an authoritarian voice screaming that I stop the car so we could take a picture.

Pulling into Tallinn we felt a little cocky since the streets were no longer a mystery and we knew the lay of the land.  We drove straight to our B&B Valge Villa, the same one we left two weeks ago at the start of this odyssey.  Jo Ann immediately started repacking our suitcases for the return trip – I think that’s a woman thing since my criterion is just to get all the junk in there and jump on them until they finally zip up.  We walked to the local supermarket, bought a cooked chicken and fixins, and had dinner in the room.

This morning we got up and ate breakfast at a crowded table downstairs.  The B&B is full with most of the guests being an extended family visiting Latvia, one country to the south.  The Latvian-American matriarch with them had a same WW2 story as mine, and was taking her US brood to see the old sod.  I didn’t resolve why/how they wound up in Estonia before going back to Riga today.  Best guess is that the Baltic countries are small and it’s easy to miss one way or the other when your aim is not too careful.  Not to worry though, a couple of hours on the bus usually corrects the mistake.

After breakfast we drove downtown to attend services at Jaani Kirik (St. John’s Church), one of the city’s major evangelical Lutheran churches and landmarks.   We wanted to see what a traditional European Lutheran service was like, and doing it in the church where my mom and dad were married made it even more special.  The church itself is quite spectacular, and by our standards is almost a cathedral.  The service – administered by four clergy – was impressive in its formal liturgy, adult-level sermon, and length (two hours).  It was also communion Sunday, so we were served unleavened bread wafers and wine from a common silver chalice.   The chalice was rotated and wiped by a white linen napkin as we supplicants took our turn.  Sanitary considerations aside, I think the theory is that if the good Lord wants to call you home, he has many alternatives other than nailing you with the dreaded disease of the person kneeling next to you.

After the service Jo Ann needed some more retail therapy in the Old City, and we both were hungry for Italian food.  So we hoofed it to the old square in front of the ancient town hall, shouldered aside a few tourists, and sat down at an outside table under an umbrella.  The sky was blue, it couldn’t have been better.  Well, it could have.  The Italian food was not what we Americans are used to in our so-called Italian restaurants – I longed for The Macaroni Grill in Roseville.  Sustained, Jo Ann led us to a linen shop on a narrow medieval street and promptly put a serious dent in its displayed inventory.

So this ends the trip that has been decades in the waiting.  Later I’ll have more to say about my impressions versus expectations.  Tomorrow we say ‘Nägemiseni Eesti!’