Tallinn, Estonia Review

We made it back Tuesday night from Estonia.
It was completely what I expected, but nothing what I expected both at the same time. I am finding that seems to be the way most places present themselves to me during trips these days. Upon arriving we got a (cheap) taxi to our hotel. The drive and the surroundings looked so much like Russia. Big trees on one side, old run down buildings on the other that made the town seem very cold, dark and almost as if the Soviet Government was still there. But it wasn't. As horrible as that description sounds, it made a huge smile grow on my face and somehow I found comfort in the dark Eastern European atmosphere. Though I suppose that won't surprise some people. Along the way I watched Michael look out the window to see what his reactions of this would be as he had never seen anything like that before. Once he heard the words "This reminds me soooo much of Russia" come from my mouth his look of apprehensions of what he had already seen had somehow immediately left.

Our hotel was cute, tiny and quite. It was a pleasant 10 minute stroll from what is known as "old town". Without staying where we did, we would have never seen the "real city" and probably just the small area we spent most of our days in.

Tallin's old town was AMAZING. This area was so well preserved from the Medieval Times complete with a giant wall, towers,really old buildings, and lots of cool churches. We spent our days wondering around all the narrow curvy cobbled stoned streets in Old Town, sittings in cafes and restaurants drinking coffee, tea, wine, beer and eating. There were so many cool restaurants and cafes. Generally we aren't food people, we usually enjoy going to the local grocery stores and getting our own food but we couldn't help but be sucked into the food culture in Tallinn.

Michael Eating

Best Cheese Plate EVER....EVER EVER, and we have had ALOT of good cheese plates!

View from a cafe from the first day

Me in the cafe shown above

Texas Honky Tonk Restaurant. We didn't eat here, but of course needed a picture

Amarillo Restaurant , also didn't eat here, but also needed a picture.This became our favorite cafe. We went three times for tea. The atmosphere was perfect. Dark, low ceilings, great music, good cake and wonderful tea.

The second night we were there we ate at the coolest restaurant ever. It was like "Medieval Times" but 1000 times less cheesy and actually felt real! The food was typical from the time period and typical to Estonia. We both had fillet mignon. Mine was peppered and Michael's had a nice mushroom sauce. They were both excellent and came with some wonderful sides too. The entire 3 floors of this restaurant were completely lit by candle light. Even the chandeliers. The waiters/waitresses were dressed in Medieval garb and during dinner there were traveling bards. They had a tiny platform at the top of the room and came and played music. It was awesome. The beer there was to die for. Seriously. Best honey beer ever. It had a hint of cinnamon in it. yum.

Michael with Olde Hansa in the Background

Being shown the way to Olde Hansa

Drinking honey beer

Even the bathrooms were cool!

Heres a couple videos too. They are both dark, but you can hear the music and in the second one you can see all the candles in the room.





One of the best things for us about Tallinn was how cheap everything was compared to Denmark. The Danish Crown and Estonian Crown was about 2 to 1. So we were able to just cut everything in half to figure out the cost in Danish Kroner.

Heres some random pictures,

Me and a Russian Orthodox Church

Over a View of Old Town Tallinn

Michael in a Park

Michael in Lower Old Town

Upper Old TallinnThe City Wall

Train Station

Flower StandsMichael with the Baltic
Me and the Baltic Sea. It was windy, can you tell??
Main Town Square

So in the end, we had a great time. It was nice and relaxing, we got to see a bunch of really cool things, and get to know a new European town. It was definitely one of the coolest, not very discovered, cheap and stereotypical European town in my eyes. I'd go back in a heartbeat.

Here we go!

We are off in about an hour!! We are excited to hop away for a few days. I've had a lot of people ask , "where is Estonia" well here, you can see for yourself. You may need to click on the map though to make it big. I put a star on Estonia, and hopefully by now, if your a reader of our blog you should be able to find Denmark pretty easily, because for some reason, Denmark isn't labeled on this map. But you should be able to find Copenhagen.


We'll be back on Tuesday!! Have a nice weekend :)

I AM "000 123 456"

I love Skype.

Since we got here, we have been using this program to keep in touch with mostly our family and a couple friends. It allows us to not just send IM's but also use it as a phone almost. As long as the other person has the program we can talk through our computers and use webcams and it's GREAT! Unfortunatly the only people we have been able to talk with.. are people with Skype also. Did I mention we get to talk for FREE!!!!??? awesome.

They have a service where you can pay for minutes to call people from your computer to a telephone for the low low price of .021 cents a minute..thats.... .021 cents a minute!!

Its been great calling the people we haven't talked to in FOREVER. Mostly all friends (about 6 of them), but also my brother, my mom, and Michaels cousin Derrick with all those calls and some lasting as long as 30 minutes, we have only used... 3 dollars!! crazy!

Can't beat that. It's been funny because so far everyone I have talked to I have gotten the same reaction from. First, a "hello" and then I say something, they reply with a "hello??" and then I have to say, "This is Nichole" then there is a big surprised voice on the other end of the line (well with every except my brother because he knew I was calling). Then the surprised voice is followed by a "I had the strangest number on my caller ID and I didn't know who it could be. It says, "000 123 456". Haha, its been entertaining to me.

Our Danish Weekend

What a FUN FUN FUN weekend we had!!
Saturday we went to Sarah's house to have dinner with her and Jens. She lives in the Nørroboro area of Copenhagen. We had FANTASTIC food and really had a great time just sitting around talking with them. After dinner we watched the Denmark - Spain Soccer game on TV. It was surprisingly not as boring to watch as we had always thought it might be. Actually it was really interesting to watch. We have always wanted to see a live match and now after seeing that game on TV, I think we are even more excited to see one in person.

Sunday we helped Klaus move into his new home. Actually Michael helped move him. I sat around and hung out with his sister and mom. It was great to see his mom and dad again since we hadn't seen them since Christmas. His mom is really good at speaking Danish to us even though we don't know a ton of it. She speaks English, but not as much as many other Danes so I think its easier for her to speak Danish to us more because its just easier. It was nice to see that we actually understood a lot more of what she was saying this time. She made dinner for us as well which was also very tastey. All the Danes just seem to know how to make and cook wonderful food.

Spring is finally starting to show up here. We finally got past the 50 degree mark and we have been having days in the lower 50s and it feels soooo wonderful. We have been sitting in the sun room and on the balcony. We can finally go outside without a heavy jacket from time to time and after we leave the gym since we are usually really hot after that, we don't even need a jacket on at all. Its great. We had Daylight savings time and we were thrilled to see how long the sun was up yesterday. Longer and warmer days make us happy!!!

Finally, Some Things Worth Mentioning!!

Yesterday everything was so boring and today is suddenly exciting!

As it turns out, we will be going somewhere new and cool before we head to Dallas, in 9 days AKA a week from Saturday.

These are the streets we will be wondering

In This City

Any guesses to where it is?

It seems like it is going to be a really cheap trip. The plane, and hotel were REALLY cheap and doesn't seem like anything in the whole country costs just a whole lot. We booked it all last night. I'll be really surprised if anyone notices the city by the pictures. So, where are we going????

*drum roll please*

Tallinn, Estonia!!!
check it out here: http://www.tallinn.info/flash/

I know a few of you are probably saying ... Estonia?? really??why?
Yes! Really! And because we want to and because we can! :)
I love that we can say, Hey, you wanna go to *insert cool European country here* next weekend? Sure! Ok, Lets go! and then a week later, go. Life is good. It makes us feel fancy.

Michael gets a lot of time off for Easter. He will take 2 days off and in total will get 10 days off from work. He gets Wed, Thurs, and Fri. off because they are holidays. We will only be in Estonia for 4 days then back here, but he will enjoy the long break.

Second, Mary and Jason are coming to visit us!! They will be here about exactly one week after we return from Dallas. Our first guests!!! We are SOOOOOO excited!! Jason has never been to Europe before and we are excited to get to be with him when he experiences his first tastes of the continent. Mary has been over here a couple times but has never ventured as far north as Denmark. I'm anxious to see their thoughts and reactions to the country we have come to love so much over the past almost 5 years!! Michael is going to take the week off from work that they are here. We always always always have a fun time with them, and we had such a BLAST in Costa Rica and are still talking about that trip. We are anxious for them to get here!

We have a pretty good feeling that April and May are going to fly by, at least they should be a blast and we are really looking forward to it all.

More Snow!!!

We got some more snow today! Nothing big, nothing stuck, but it was still falling from the sky. The days are quickly getting longer and longer. The sun is rising at about 6am, and setting it seems about 6:30ish. It is kinda funny to see it bright outside at 6:00. Actually we don't see it until about 6:30 when Michael starts hitting the snooze button for the next 45 minutes! We haven't set our clocks back yet. That will happen this weekend for us. At which time, it is going to stay bright even longer! I can hardly wait!! Now if we could just get some spring weather. I'm not expecting it though till mid-late April. You know, about the time we leave for Dallas.

Michael has 3 of his bosses in town right now. One of them had never been to Denmark before and within the being here not long at all, he was already in love with the country and kept telling Michael, "I can see why you wanted to move here" He had only seen the airport, the highway , the walk from the hotel to TI (which is the same walk Michael does every morning) and TI. Its nice to know we aren't crazy and other people find it as charming as we do as quickly as we do. It was almost a nice reassurance for us as that it really is as nice here, as we say it is :)

We STILL have absolutely nothing going on. Saturday Jens and Sarah are having us over for dinner. Jens is the latest student to return to Denmark from Lubbock/Dallas that participated in the TTU/DTU program, and Sarah is his girlfriend. We hung out with them in Dallas a couple times, and they have been over here. It should be fun, and we are looking forward to that, but other then that... we have NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING of interest going on here. I need to find something fun to write about... Keep watching. Ill find something. :)

Finally ... A TRIP!!

So wanna know where we are going???? Get ready....

DALLAS TEXAS U.S.A. !!! hahaha

Not really what we had in mind, but it'll do for now. You might remember waaaaay back when almost a year ago actually, we bought tickets to see "Wicked" for this coming May. Well we have been wanting to see it for a couple years and have been anticipating seeing it for the past year, so we just HAVE to go. So our $175 dollar Wicked Tickets just turned into $675 dollar Wicked tickets. This all actually works out really really well for us. There is an "inner circle meeting" at TI the week before that Michael was asked to be at. So, because of that, his ticket/hotel room/ and rental car will all be paid for. It turns out his chip will be back from production around that time as well so he will be in Dallas to run some tests as well. For me the weekend before Wicked is "World Tai Chi and Qigong Day", So I will get to participate in that with Chris and Fayne. We can see Marys brand new Starbucks Store and I will probably hop over to El Paso for about 4 days. We will be in Dallas 2 whole weeks. Long time! I couldn't get over the fact that my rountrip ticket from Copenhagen to Dallas was only $500 AFTER taxes!!! That is INSANELY cheap. We already have my ticket. Michael has to book his through TI. We will be on different flights, but will get in and leave the same days. No, biggie for us though. But it will be funny to go to the airport together and leave separately and then meet back up across the world!

As for a real trip here in good ol Europe. We have a couple planned all out but because we will be heading to Dallas in a little over a month, escaping elsewhere before then seems a little tight. Maybe something will fall in our laps to work out perfectly. We shall see.

Quack Quack

The other morning we heard a noise at about 6:30am. We thought it was someone already working away with a hammer. No big deal and we ignored it. Then it got really loud and we could tell it was closer. I peeked through the blinds and was surprised to see a duck sitting on our railing. Since we have been waking up to ducks honking away on our balcony and other peoples balconies in the mornings. Usually there are just somewhere between 1 and 5 of them around the area at that time so it's not too bad. When I think of birds that perch, I don't typically think of ducks. I think its funny to look outside and see ducks out there. Something I am not use to that is for sure, or perhaps I am just easily amused!! Sometime I will have to write about the fascination and obsession the Danes have for Donald Duck. It cracks us both up.

I am not sure why all of a sudden we have nothing of interest going on around here. We had a nice relaxing weekend. Well I did :) Saturday morning we headed to Copenhagen for the day had some coffee, had some lunch and just wondered around. Then the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday and most of last night, Michael and his group have been busy busy busy. So he has been at his laptop almost every moment he is home. His group just turned in a chip last night so finally that is all done with. But he still has 2 weeks of hard work ahead of him, just not as bad as this past weekend.

Our new Danish classes are going well and hopefully will continue to do so. I can already tell these classes are going to be more challenging and that the pace is much quicker.Michael and I can carry on a VERY basic conversation with each other, but we know enough that we can stay in conversation for a longer then we thought we would be able to by now and include silly questions and answers, but its a good start.

Us at Nyhavn

We Live Where?

The 3rd most expensive city...IN THE WORLD!!

Thats right, thats where we live. We don't REALLY live inside Copenhagen, but the town we live is one of the more expensive areas to live in and we still basically live in greater Copenhagen.
I always know that Copenhagen comes out pretty high on the list every year, last year it was 6th, but this year jumped up to 3rd right behind Oslo and Paris. While it doesn't surprise me, because I know it is expensive, I was surprised to see in coming in front of London, which came in 4th. With this information, I know Michael and I can live anywhere in the world (besides Oslo and Paris) and the cost of living won't feel as inflated as it would prior to us living here. New York didn't even show up till number 28!!!

My summery so far, Copenhagen is dark, cold, expensive and they take all your money from you in taxes, yet somehow, we still love it and are happy here. Along with the majority of the country... as Denmark this past year was ranked as the worlds happiest country!!

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/10/happiest_countries/index_01.htm?chan=rss_topSlideShows_ssi_5


Michael has been back a whole week now. He is recovered and doing well. I got my haircut this morning, and while it was by far the most expensive haircut I have ever had (again things are $$$ here)...I must say, it is by far the BEST haircut I have ever gotten!! They even gave me a cup of coffee to drink while it was being cut! So that alone was worth the extra money ;) Actually I think most places you get your haircut at here, they give you coffee/tea/cappuccino or whatever. I think thats cool. Other then all that, nothing terribly exciting going on. Just livin' life and enjoy it... :)

Dirty Dancing

Oh my gosh! Have you seen this yet? This is soooo cute!! Why didn't Michael and I think to do this?? Oh ya, because there is no way I would have ever gotten him to agree to do this!!