“Let’s just get the fuck out of this place.”

Day breaks over the Russian-Estonian frontier at about two o’clock in the morning. From here on the sleep is intermittent at best. Sharing a bed certainly did not help and neither did being in a sleeping bag liner (due to appropriate fear of bugs etc) in the radiator-less chill.

Eventually the 0830 alarm went off and we were up – we avoided showering, as we didn’t particularly wish to further endanger our health.

As instructed the night before by the border guards we “went to bank for 0900″ (unfortunately contradictory to what we were told, it didn’t open until 0930) and unintentionally had a rendezvous with the drunk Russian from last night, who was considerably more sober and fairly chatty. Once we finally reached the counter we pointed at/showed forms to the clerk and had our new friend (Dennis) speak very loudly and continue our gesticulation.  Between the three of us (and some help from the elderly locals) we eventually managed to get the visa elongation(?!) we needed. The actual piece of paper that caused us so much trouble was only the size of a receipt from a small shop.

Off we plodded down the road, holding our passports so tight that our fingers went white. Over the next hour we were fairly silent as Dennis did the loud and admittedly slightly confrontational talking. Keeping our mouths shut was seen as the best policy to get this palaver over as quickly as possible as the general Russian viif you can’t speak Russian then that’s tough and they probably don’t consider you worth talking to.

The tones of the voices conversing varied wildly as we received mixed messages from Dennis, who had assumed the role as local fixer and translator. It might be worth mentioning that the man we met last night who had claimed to be able to help us was nowhere to be found, but had apparently invited Dennis back to his house after we’d left, for a cup of tea and a hamburger…

At various points we thought we’d be able to leave and at others we thought that we might well be staying in the customs building for another four hours.

Eventually, though, they’d had enough of us and we were escorted to no man’s land – the bridge of the dividing river to Narva (which boasts some gorgeous scenery.  Probably because it’s outside Russia).

Again, we started to fear the worst as we approached the Estonian border and another set of officials, but after less than twenty seconds at the immigration desk we were waved through with a smile (something many Russians seem to lack) and we were in Estonia. Again.  The air smelt fresher and sweeter, filled with the aroma of the Schengen Agreement, the wafting scent of globalisation and of the subtle musk of the European Union.

From this point on things got comparatively simpler. We obtained some money (from an ATM, obviously) and after some long deliberations using a pen and paper with the booking office lady at Narva bus station, we discovered the fastest way to Riga was not direct but via our current-favourite stop, Tallinn, and then we’d have 15 minutes to make a change to another bus to Riga.

We received a mild form of compensation for the early morning’s events in the from of the bus to Riga from Tallinn being a ‘Lux Express’. However it wasn’t just this that made us smile, but also the 4 chairs and a table we had to ourselves at the back of the coach that helped lift our pretty dampened and weary spirits.   We spread out our Lion Bar, our M&Ms and our water from the kiosk, stretched back and watched the Estonian countryside give way to Latvia.  I couldn’t tell you when we crossed the Latvian border – it was just that easy.

Upon arrival in Riga we found Friendly Fun Frank’s Hotel and got a free beer – with that sort of compensation for our troubles, it seems like a pleasant place. Having said that, anything is better than our exit disaster from Russia.  The hostel here seems massive, with a fully-stocked bar downstairs broadcasting The Ashes on not one, not two, but FOUR TVs.

We’ve just had dinner in a Latvian style buffet in town and I’m now being forced to write this blog but I am well and truly exhausted and the man (who makes up one of four foreign roommates) below Nick is snoring very loudly so it may be a night to sleep with the iPod on.

Executive summary reads: We’re alive, we survived, and we’re never going back to Russia again. However, this probably isn’t an issue because we’re almost certainly blacklisted for another visa anyway.

If I could use one word to summarise my experience of Tallinn, besides the hospitality of our hostel and the beauty of the city (and the inexpensive price of food and drink), it would have to be ‘wi-fi’.  Seriously, it’s everywhere, and it’s free.  If I bought an apartment in downtown Tallinn, I probably wouldn’t need to pay for internet at all, as wireless access is so prevalent. More on that in a bit.

We kicked off the day with a trip to the Museum of Occupations, where we learned about the ill-fated first Soviet occupation, the WWII years under the Germans, the Stalinist regime through the 50s and 60s until finally Estonia regained its independence in 1991.  We ended up watching three of the seven half-hour documentaries and spent an additional half an hour perusing the sparse artifacts from each era.  We now consider ourselves experts on 20th Century Estonian History.  This was rather ill-timed, as the overwhelming animosity we now felt for the Russians as we left the museum didn’t heighten any excitement about going to St. Petersburg later that night.

Breaking for lunch, and to debate the best scenario for liberating the Estonians if we were in charge during WWII, we found a terrific café called simply ‘EAT’, where you could get a full bowl of fried Estonian dumplings (meat, meat and spinach or potato) for less than £3.

While Nick bought another of their fried delicacies for dessert – a doughnut – I got chatting to one of the tourist guides who actually made the map I was looking at and who’d popped in for a bit of lunch himself.

By the time we’d left the café, it was raining.  Hoorah.  I hope the leftover trait from 2008 isn’t inevitably poor weather following us around…

We walked to the Old Town Square and had a look at the impressive Town Hall building, and then took a walk north to see the part of the Old Town we hadn’t yet managed to cover.  St. Olaf’s church and Fat Margaret’s Tower awaited our acknowledgment and….yeah, they were alright.  Everything looks a bit more dull in the drizzle.

Remembering something that the friendly tour guide mentioned, we wandered back into the Old Town Square and checked out a quirkily rustic coffee house for a spot of tea, coffee and cake.  Then it was back to the hostel to chill out in the common area and hit the supermarket for some dinner.  Buying the staple carbohydrate-laden assorted sweet and savoury items from the bakery to save for our bus journey, we ended up buying  the cheapest pasta and the cheapest sauce to cook back at the hostel’s kitchen, That was an error, as the pasta was akin to molten lead and the sauce appeared to just be sweet ketchup,  Needless to say we didn’t quite clean our plates and learned a lesson to serve us in good stead.

Giving travel advice to our Aussie friend Rob and meeting two nice young Irish ladies who were willing to share a taxi to the International Bus Station, we avoided the now-heavier rain outside by watching Anchorman to while away our final couple of hours in Tallinn.

A seven-minute journey took us to the aforementioned International Bus Terminal, where we met some more people from our hostel who were taking the slightly later version of our bus.  We were all hastily giddy with excitement when we saw our jet-black Lux Express bus pull up.  Thoughts of a champagne reception and a caviar bar quickly formed in our minds as we wondered what our extra supplementary expense might buy us.

As we boarded our formidable wheeled transport (although it did look a bit like a cockroach), we were greeted with: comfortable seats, a reasonable amount of legroom, a power socket per two and, of course, free wi-fi.  See, I’m typing this up while making two Skype phone-calls on my iPhone through an admittedly slow but reasonable connection provided by our bus.  Yes, that’s right, we have internet on our bus.  I can check Facebook while hurtling towards the Russian border.  The 21st Century is great, isn’t it? I hope you’re listening and taking notes, Gordon Brown, because ‘Digital Britain’ has got a long way to go to match this techno-savvy Baltic state.

And they were under German and Soviet rule for 53 years, so don’t give me all that ‘recession’ talk….

After the escapades of several youths in the street at  four o’clock in the morning ensured that we would have to have a lie-in to regain the several hours of sleep lost, we eventually got up at about 10am.

Breakfast consisted of a variety of croissants and pastries from the local supermarket’s bakery – two each for just over a pound. Bargain. Meaningful activity started shortly afterwards with the now age-old tradition of renting bikes, that we then rode into the old town centre up to the castle area of Toompea, annoying our fair share of footsloggers on the way.

Inside the old walls we found discovered the Alexandr Nevsky Cathedral – an ornately decorated orthodox building that greatly contrasted with the Lutheran Dome Church that was sparsely decorated with various crests across its walls, found on the far side of the Toompea district. Up at the castle there was also a grand variety of tourist-y things to do, including archery. I was tempted to go, but after missing most of the Robin Hood for Beginners module at Nottingham due to incarceration by the Sheriff I thought better of it.

After visiting these parts of the Old Town, we decided to get the most out of our two-wheeled steads and rode the two and a bit kilometers to the Kadriorg Palace. This however, was shut…but the surrounding parks weren’t and were a very pleasant cycle around the park and past a monument next to the coast road. This in turn lead us to our first cycle path, so we went cruising along the seafront until we stumbled upon the rocket-shaped spire of the Maarjamae War Memorial. This was a soviet memorial to the soldiers that had died in the area.

Soon though, our stomachs were trying to tell us something and we cycled back into the the park to find the cafe…which was shut. Towards the top of the park however was the Kumu museum of Estonian art (which was open) and we had a beer and lunch (a tuna salad for me and an omelette for my partner in crime – just in case you were wondering).

Stomachs filled, we journeyed back to the old town and got back to the bike hire shop in excellent time – we went so fast the FIA would’ve banned us. F1 in-jokes aside, me and Nick were curious as to the nightlife Tallinn had to offer, however after a trip to the travelers’ info tent we were told:

“You chose the wrong days to come to Tallinn, nothing happens on a Monday night!”
“What about Tuesday night?”
“No. It all really kicks off Wednesday to Sunday.”

Fantastic, Tallinn effectively runs a restricted timetable on a Monday.  The clues were, in retrospect, laid out by all the closed museums and exhibitions we’d passed…oh well, back to the hostel we went for a power-nap. This however was rudely interrupted by meeting two new occupants of our room. One was an Australian named Rob who’s been traveling all over for the last 7 weeks or so and the other is Rebecca from Costa Rica who had been visiting relatives in Moscow and couldn’t really stop herself travelling to Tallinn. With our new compadres we went to Kompressor, a cosy pub selling incredibly calorific and cheap savory pancakes that also tasted damn good (bacon and cheese, yum).  This was followed by an extended visit to a bar that sold 87 varieties of beer and cider from all corners of the globe that enabled us to sample some of the very best.

Unlike many of the cities we visit that come with the weight of expectations, we had no idea of what would be awaiting us in Tallinn, what we found was a city with plenty of history but that was obviously as up to date as forward thinking as any typical ‘western’ city. A city that had plenty of winding streets and back alleys but that always felt homely, comforting and always friendly.

With no fanfare, no last supper and no five-strong mixed-gender band of travellers, two Nicks modestly set off to explore a different part of Europe for the remainder of July.

The trip to Stansted was easy enough – some might say a little too easy – we had checked in half an hour before our check-in was even due to open.  Emotional farewells also out of the way, it was off to international departures and the relative obscurity of the world beyond.  Or so we thought.  Ten minutes airside, and I’d already seen my RGS Spanish teacher, Ms. Lopez-Garcia, and her gaggle of pre-GCSE students eager to go on their homestay trip to Santander.  Well, that was a blast from the past.  I knew something was up when three 15-year-olds passed me and not-so-quietly remarked to one another “Isn’t that whatshisname….Stylianou?  Nick Stylianou?”

Finally!  Fame! Glamour! Celebrity status achieved!  Not quite.  Two ex-RGS boys travelling together for almost a month?  Tight t-shirts and jeans?  In retrospect, nothing spells out ‘homosexual holiday’ quite like us.

As for easyJet, they were all too happy to delay the plane for an hour in case we thought we’d started our journey a little too smoothly.

This was, of course, after the mandatory rush onto the plane, in which I was left stranded to find a seat. Luckily, I was spared sitting next to one of three screaming babies and ended up finding a place almost at the back of the plane, with Nick somewhere in the middle.

At around 1800 local time (we lost more time because these Estonians are two hours ahead) we touched down in Tallinn.  As soon as we got off the plane, our rabies vaccinations earned their money while a customs dog was waiting to sniff us as we walked past.  No sooner had we thought we were free from Tallinn’s canine security force than another smaller dog was wandering around the baggage carousel to sniff our luggage.  It seemed to be having a jolly old time, although reasonably confused when the carousel was moving as to why it was going backwards and covering less ground when it trotted forward…the hilarity of a dog being transported in circles around international arrivals wasn’t lost on us.

Finally in the brisk air of the early evening, we waited at the bus stop for a lift into the centre of the town,  Who was to be our first acquaintance, having only just left the terminal gates? Why, it was travelling postgraduate law student Jules, of course, from Oxshott in Surrey. We got chatting, and as he was looking for a place to stay for a night (because he’d arrived a day early), we made the relatively short journey on bus and by foot with him to our hostel.  Sadly, it was fully booked, and we left Jules to find another hostel, and to have a nice summer.  Or so we thought.  We ended up seeing Jules while we had dinner, and invited him to join us in a post-dinner er…food run to the local McDonald’s.  Hey, we’re all growing lads, with fresh Estonian currency burning a hole in our pockets.

Another farewell to Jules (have we seen the last of him? Who knows?) meant it was time for us to turn in for the night.  A return to the hostel after a wander in the twilight of 10pm (!) found us acquainted with one of our room-mates: a boozy American called Brendan who couldn’t quite work out why we’d want a cultural experience of the city, preferring to wax lyrical about the ‘beautiful women’ he had found.  Another, quieter gentleman from Norfolk, educated at Oxford, introduced himself and we all promptly went to sleep.  I think I’ve given up a tally of meeting people, let alone single-travelling Caucasian English-speaking men.  And it’s only the first day.