Slip Sliding Away

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Hails

In a moment of extreme bravery/stupidity, I have ventured outside in spite of the continued presence of the mad snow.

I have been forced outside by necessity, as Riho has apparently barricaded himself indoors until March and we are out of bread and milk, and as I also need to buy wool and post another Silly Hat to a customer, I have more reasons to leave the apartment than he does. I lose.

It is no longer blizzardy, but the snow continues to fall thick and fast here in Tallinn. I have watched unhappy workers from the offices opposite the apartment attempting to dig their cars out from beneath snow drifts; one of them simply walked to his vehicle and then walked away again in defeat, as I have surmised from the lonely set of footprints leading to and from the all but invisible car. Snow ploughs and diggers are out in force around the city, but they can’t keep up with the snowfall – huge white mountains, cleared from roads and footpaths, line the streets, waiting to be shifted by the flat-out snow patrol (or snow men, as I like to call them).

Walking is as close to impossible as anything can be without actually being impossible. I slither and slide my way to the Old Town, which, at a five minute walk away, takes me around half an hour to get to – mainly because I have to stop and take calming breaths every time I narrowly avoid sliding helplessly under the wheels of a bus. The Old Town – its narrow, uneven streets difficult to traverse at the best of times – is now only fit for nutcases and people with skis. I do not have any skis.

Whimpering pitifully, I take tiny nervous steps towards my destination, getting completely lost due to all the streets that already looked quite similar now being covered in snow. I take a brief detour to the Christmas Market. This is totally unintentional, and happens mainly because I am lost and also because I start an uncontrollable slide downhill and have no idea how to get back up without breaking a leg. It is easier to go with the flow. I slide gracelessly into the Square and try a different route, unable to take in the delightful Christmassyness right now because I cannot remain upright for long enough to do so.

I stagger up the steps to the wool shop, purchase my wool, and ask my friend the wool woman if she knows where I can buy some wellies. The wool woman does not know what wellies are, and we have a language barrier sort of conversation that would be very amusing under different circumstances. Glumly, I leave the wool shop, step on to the street, and promptly land on my arse.

dsc01956By the time I make it back to the city centre, I am wet and sore and have a twisted ankle, and I have reached the Death Slide path leading to the apartment, where heavy pedestrian traffic has turned the pavement into a lovely ice rink. I stand at the edge of the scary road, which has two lanes of cars, an island, two lanes of trams, an island, two lanes of cars, an island, and a little filter lane for good measure. This is usually daunting enough, but now I have to climb knee-high mountains of snow to get on to each bit of road, and am limited to very slow baby steps as opposed to my usual gallop, regardless of how many cars are skidding towards me. With a feeling of impending doom, I wait for the green man, and a joker beside me climbs on to the first snow mountain, creates a makeshift starting block out of slush, and braces himself as if waiting for the starting pistol. He says something to me. Ma ei räägi eesti keelt, I reply, and he shrugs, switching to English. That’s OK, since I wasn’t speaking Estonian, he says, embarrassingly.

Markus is from Finland, and he thinks that Tallinn covered in snow makes for a great day trip. We chat until the lights change, and then he notes the change in my tone and expression as we prepare to leap out from behind the snow mountain on to the icy road. You are OK? he asks, striding along confidently as I stagger around in an intoxicated manner. I just… I can’t… I don’t… I can’t walk!! I wail miserably. He looks at me and then grabs my bag, which might normally panic me, but I no longer care about anything other than not being killed as I cross the roads, and anyway, it is much easier to balance with my arms out at my sides and no bag weighing me down.

We make it to the first island. Would you like me to carry you? asks Markus helpfully. I force a smile. You might need to! I am joking, of course, but to my alarm he nods seriously and moves towards me as if he is going to throw me effortlessly over his shoulder. I foresee terrible injury and disaster for us both, and rush hurriedly on to the next bit of road, saying Err, no, no, you really don’t need to aaaaaaarghhhhh!, which is the point where I slide and fall on to the tram line, thus realising my worst nightmare. Markus does not hide his amusement very well, but he does grab my arm and haul me up, half-carrying, half-dragging me across to safety, where he gives me back my bag, wishes me well, and bounds cheerfully off into the snowy distance.

I have investigated the contents of the freezer and decided that I do not need to go outside for at least a week. Enough is enough.

Snow? Bah, humbug.

Filed under: conversations, decisions, Estonia, Fear, how embarrassing, sheer silliness, snow, stress, walking, weather | 9 Comments »

“!”

Posted on November 23, 2008 by Hails

I’m not normally the sort of girl who finds herself stuck for words.

However, as I clung to a lamppost this afternoon while the wind howled around me in an effort to fling me into the middle of the road, with my feet sliding about underneath me and the blizzard stinging my face and making it difficult to breathe, I must confess that words did not come easily.

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“Hhhhhh…. gaaaaaa….. uggggggg….” I spluttered eventually, letting go of the lamppost and allowing the snowstorm to hurl me effortlessly across the road, where I came to rest in a large snow drift. Riho gazed mournfully at me from the other side of the shopping centre’s glass door as I fought in vain against the driving snow that refused to let me climb the three steps to the safe haven of Indoors. “I told you so,” he mouthed through the glass, looking glum and slightly shell-shocked, having abandoned me some time earlier as I struggled to cross a road. It is every man for himself in these conditions, and I am not entirely convinced that I’m even vaguely likely to survive, to be honest with you.

I’m still excited about the opportunity to experience new and different things, don’t get me wrong. I still love snow, and winter, and all that sort of stuff. It’s just that, until today, I don’t think I really had any idea exactly how new and different the Estonian winter would be to me, despite Riho’s grim warnings.

I can’t quite describe how utterly wild it is out there today. If I had a small child, I would be seriously hopeful fearful that it would blow away; as it is, I did become a little panicky when the wind swept me along and I simply skated, powerless to stop or change direction, and unable to even see where I was going because of the blizzard. It has not stopped snowing all day, and it is not just “snowing”, either – snow is coming down from the sky in torrents, sweeping across the land in sheets, being whipped from the ground and tossed upwards, whirling around in the air and piling into huge drifts. It is snowing vertically, diagonally, horizontally, up, down, across and around. It would be like a snow globe, if the snow globe was being shaken vigorously by a child in a temper tantrum, who had the energy to keep up the shaking without a break for over 24 hours.

The snow hits you in the face with a ferocity for which I was completly unprepared, stinging your skin so sharply that tears stream down your cheeks, and making you involuntarily splutter things like “Hhhhhh…. gaaaaaa….. uggggggg….”. It is impossible to complete a word, because the iciness of the wind both snatches away the sounds from your lips and makes breathing so seriously problematic that it requires all of your concentration.

So, it seems that winter is going to be an interesting experience.

One additional small concern is that the temperature today was something like -3°C. And I don’t want to sound like a wuss or anything, here, but… well… if that’s what -3° feels like, what does -25° feel like?!

Gulp.

Filed under: cold, Estonia, Fear, snow | 6 Comments »

Tickets, please!

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Hails

In Tallinn, as in most European cities that I’ve visited, public transport fares are paid using an honour system – that is to say, you buy your book of tickets at a kiosk and then it’s up to you to be honest and stamp one of them once you’re on board.

I always do this, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, I’m a good girl. Honest, obedient, law-abiding – a model citizen. Secondly, I like using the machines. I think it’s fun. And thirdly, I could not handle the fear of being caught riding without a ticket. Despite my declaration that I always have a ticket, I’ll never forget the one occasion when I made quite a lengthy bus journey without one. I was in Bratislava, and it was not at all my fault, obviously. Bearing much luggage, and having just arrived from Vienna or somewhere like that, I stumbled around the decidedly frightening and smelly station, engaging in my favourite pastime of asking random strangers if they spoke English.

Absolutely no one did. Not even enough to understand the question, which was a first. All I wanted was a bus to the airport, but not even an intensive gaze at information posters was any help to me, since the Slovak word for airport is nothing even remotely like it is in other European languages. Normally you can at least take a guess, or they’ll have a helpful little plane symbol next to the word, but not here! I stood there, surrounded by rather scary, greasy men in Rab C. Nesbitt vests, and regretted having given up smoking several hours earlier.

Thankfully, as I was purchasing cigarettes (by way of pointing, miming smoking, and nodding frantically), I overheard a backpacker couple leaving the shop and talking in French about the airport bus, which left the station every half hour or so from stop 45. Having completely abandoned all hope of ever figuring out how to purchase a ticket, never mind where, I located the stop and got on to the next bus without the faintest idea if it went to the airport or to a small impoverished ghetto where I would be stabbed and eaten by hungry locals upon my arrival. I sat there, becoming increasingly nervous with every stop the bus made. Never mind the fact that I might have been on the wrong bus; there was also the deep fear that an inspector would appear and throw me into a very scary prison cell with cockroaches and a crack addict called Marge, for not having a ticket. The sight of the locals dutifully stamping their tickets – to the extent where, if it was not possible to get through the crowd to the machine, a ticket was solemnly passed along from hand to hand until it reached the person nearest the machine, who stamped it and passed it back to be returned to its owner – did nothing to reduce my terror. I spent the entire journey playing out all the possible Getting Caught scenarios in my head and trying to come up with a better defence than bursting into tears and playing the clueless foreigner card. I was never so relieved to get off a bus and enter the relative familiarity of an airport.

Anyway, to return to the present day, on my way back from the supermarket I saw the Tallinn tram police for the first time. Since July, they’ve started conducting random spot checks to ensure that people aren’t abusing the system. Sneakily, they park by the tram lines and stop the tram between two stops, so that nobody can sneak off out the back door or anything. Nosily (and almost getting run over in the process), I watched as several luckless stowaways were hauled off and – to my horror – taken into the back of the ominous-looking green van. The door was slammed shut. Filled with morbid curiosity, I lingered for a while, but no one emerged, and I reluctantly left the scene. What do they do to you if you haven’t punched your ticket? As a deterrent to fare-dodging, this sighting has certainly worked on me. Online sources say they fine you, but this definitely looked a lot more worrying than that.

I’m going to be so nervous when I’m on a tram now. There’s the added complication, you see, of the machines being different here. Unlike the electronic ones to which I’ve become accustomed during my travels (which make a reassuring BEEP and spit out your ticket with the date and time clearly printed across it), these ones are nothing more than glorified hole punches. Insert ticket, pull lever with some force, remove punched ticket. I always worry if my ticket doesn’t punch properly. Sometimes I attempt to repunch it, and inevitably find that this makes matters worse, since the holes don’t line up properly and it looks as if I’ve reused an old ticket, and the whole thing just makes me panic horribly and wish I had a car. In addition to this, the pattern of holes on the ticket is different every time (I believe they have a different pattern for each tram, so that you don’t just use the same ticket over and over again), and I have an irritating habit of shoving the ticket back into my pocket, only to realise to my dismay that there are also half a dozen old tickets in there, too, all with different punched-hole patterns, and there is no way of knowing which one is the right one, which would be difficult to explain in Estonian to a ticket inspector torturing you by inserting sharp things underneath your fingernails in the back of a van, when you’re still struggling with the present conditional tense.

It’s not easy being me.

Filed under: airport, bus, confusion, Estonia, Fear, foreign languages, trams, travel, uncertainty, worry | 3 Comments »

I’m going deeper underground

Posted on October 18, 2008 by Hails

My birthday treat this year was a guided tour around Tallinn Old Town, including the secret underground tunnels and passages. Yay!

I got to picture the Old Town as it was all those years ago, and hear stories that made it come to life in my head. I was also delighted when, as we were standing in a dark underground cave, the guide shone her torch at the ceiling and said “and you can see here some stalactites – they are very little, but they are there!”. And they were indeed. I’d never seen stalactites before. They’re another of those things that I used to read about all the time in Enid Blyton books, and so they’ve got a strangely mystical, enchanted significance for me.

It added to the surreal feeling I always get from walking through hidden passageways. The faint light, the shadows, the echoes, the inexplicable urge to speak in a whisper… it was great.

“May I ask if anyone is scared of spiders?” asked the guide, as she prepared to lead us out of the magical stalactite cave into an uneven-looking tunnel. Several girls looked slightly nervous. The guide continued. “There is a spider who lives in the tunnels,” she explained gravely. “It is the biggest spider we have in Estonia… I tell you this because it is protected.”

I’m not overly scared of spiders, as you know, but really. This girl had just described some sort of legendary resident of the tunnels, probably about a metre tall.  I imagined a monster spider with hairy legs as thick as lampposts, who ate unsuspecting tourists, and would win every fight because it was protected by law, and perhaps even bodyguards. If this spider jumped out at me and started to gnaw off my leg, I would be powerless to stop it, because I’d be a convicted criminal if I injured it in self-defence. I began to panic about going deeper into the tunnels.

The guide seemed to notice my horror. “Oh, I don’t mean one spider, obviously” she added hastily. “I mean a type of spider. And when I say big…” She made a relatively unfrightening measurement with her thumb and forefinger. “And anyway, they are scared of light,” she concluded with the smile of one who had unnecessarily terrified several complete strangers, “so when you are taking lots of pictures they will run away and hide. You probably won’t see any. I just thought I’d mention it just in case.” With that, she led us further into the passageways, camera flashes going off all over the place as a kind of protective barrier between Us and It.

The tunnels are quite empty, but for the occasional bed here and there – the underground passages have, in the past, been used as bomb shelters. More recently, they’ve been used by the more resourceful homeless people! What was most intriguing to me was the fact that several of the tunnels were only discovered as recently as 2005, and that they still don’t know where some of them end, owing to a combination of factors such as them being both bricked up and flooded. Divers have been sent down to no avail. This is the sort of thing that gives me my Famous Five thrill, you know.

Best of all was hearing the stories behind the construction work that’s been ongoing at Tallinn’s Freedom Square for some time now. They’re building an underground parking lot, amongst other things, so obviously they’ve been doing a bit of digging. A bit annoying, then, to be going about your work and unexpectedly discover entire sections of old walls and evidence of a stone-age community, wouldn’t you say? It’s quite funny to go and look at the site, where you can very clearly see the deep, excavated area that they’ve prepared for the car park, but with incoveniently positioned bits of Very Old Wall in the middle. I’d imagine that caused a bit of head-scratching; they have, however, gotten around it by deciding to put a glass roof on the parking lot so that the unexpected discoveries can be exhibited.

I have not, however, heard any details about the who the bones belonged to. Yes, bones. It’s like a fast-paced drama series around here, it really is. You can read about the bone discovery by clicking on this link; in the meantime, I’m off to do some sleuthing of my own. I’ve packed my ginger beer and hard-boiled egg. Now, where’s Timmy…?

Filed under: caves, children's books, Enid Blyton, Estonia, Famous Five, Fear, fun, homelessness, spiders, tourists, unexpected | 4 Comments »

Worrisome Walking

Posted on October 11, 2008 by Hails

I’ve just been reading one of Bill Bryson’s hilarious books and laughing merrily to myself all the way through it. The man both delights and saddens me: the former because he writes like I can only dream of doing, making the most mundane things seem utterly hilarious; the latter because, well, he writes like I can only dream of doing.

I was particularly amused by his observation that in some places it’s virtually impossible to to be a pedestrian in this age of getting into the car and driving 200 yards to the shop for a loaf of bread. While I must confess to having been guilty of this on many occasions, I now have a slightly different perspective, being well and truly Without Car, and Bryson’s observation has proved to be accurate for me on several occasions over the past few months. The reason I laughed so much at his earnest tale of trying to walk to his destination (to the horrified disbelief of the man he’d asked for directions, who tried to urge him to take a taxi because it was at least a mile away) is that I’ve experienced the same sort of issues – but, being me, I thought it was just because I was slightly dim-witted and was choosing to walk in the wrong places. It never occurred to me that actually there’s nothing crazy about walking a short distance through a city centre, and that it’s just a reflection of our general laziness as a species that there are large areas that are virtually impossible to traverse with only your own two feet to carry you.

Bryson was enjoying his saunter through the town, extolling the virtues of a walk on a nice sunny day. You saunter. You amble. Then you come to a mad junction at Burger King and discover that the new six-lane road to K-Mart is long, straight, very busy and entirely without facilities for pedestrians… I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve found myself in a situation exactly like this. I’ve had some frightening moments when trying to do something as simple as get to the other side of a road. In several places, I was forced to conclude that you simply are not meant to do so, if you don’t have a car. The other side of the road is not for you. It is forbidden. In other places, I persevered and either made the suicidal dash across what Bryson calls six lanes of hostile traffic, or found an alternative route, usually adding at least half a mile to my journey, cutting through muddy/rocky/private grounds, and/or getting completely lost.

By far the craziest set-up I discovered was Budapest. The day that I explored the city on foot will remain forever etched in my mind. Vividly. With sound effects. My enduring memory is of the road along the Danube, between the river and the parliament building. I’d been walking all day and was exhausted, but I’d just crossed over the Chain Bridge from Buda into Pest and figured it would be a shame to not do the river walk while I was there. This was not as simple as it sounds. I could see the road, but I had absolutely no way of getting to it. Traffic was flowing quite madly in all directions, and I did my usual dance of crossing about 15 roads just to get to the other side of the one I’d started on. Once on the correct road, I had to figure out which side I should be walking on. The side nearest the river had an ankle-high barrier separating a narrow, pebbly pathway from the zooming traffic; the side that I was on had a separate lane that could plausibly have been used by pedestrians, but was instead occupied by hundreds of parked cars stretching as far as the eye could see. I opted to stay where I was, on account of the zooming traffic and the slightly dangerous appearance of the river “path”, and began to walk along the side of the road, getting odd looks from drivers and trying to weave in and out of the parked cars without setting off any alarms or actually getting wedged in (which almost happened on two occasions). Several times I had to wait for a brief gap in the traffic and step out on to the road to get around a badly-parked car, which was great for getting the adrenaline going.

When I reached the end of the row of parked cars (after about 15 minutes), I discovered that the lane, too, had ended and that there was not, in fact, any way to proceed on foot. Gritting my teeth and looking all around me in bewilderment and annoyance, I realised there was only one thing for it.

I turned and walked all the way back. I couldn’t cross the road at that point; it would have been complete madness, and I would not be here now telling you the story. No, I had to walk all the way back to where I’d started, and go in search of a safer, quieter spot to cross. I still ended up having a horn blared at me, but at least I was on the “path” now, with the relative safety of potholes, protruding objects, boat ropes and a sheer drop – mere inches from my feet – into the River Danube should any of these things cause me to stumble. All this, together with the slippery surfaces caused by the constant rain, made it a walk that I will never be able to forget.

The roads in general in Budapest were genuinely confusing, and I had several Brysonesque moments just trying to proceed along a single road before I realised that the reason for the complete absence of footpaths and crossing points was that there were ramps leading to a series of tunnels underground – you crossed the roads by going under them, not over them. Ingenius concept, except that for a foreigner with (a) no knowledge of the city and (b) absolutely no sense of direction anyway, it was near on impossible to figure out which exit you wanted to take when you went down there. I tried at least three at every one I came to, repeating the embarrassing process of emerging into the street, looking around to figure out where I’d been before I went underground, realising that I’d actually crossed to the wrong road, going back down and trying a different exit.

Still. It was much better than running out into the middle of six lanes of traffic, dodging three of them, and causing the fourth one (coming unexpectedly from the opposite direction) to screech to a halt and start blaring their horns as I stood frozen to the spot and panicking about whether to keep going to the other side or turn and run back. Not that that ever happened to me at any point, of course.

Filed under: books, confusion, decisions, driving, Fear, Hungary, laughter, road rage, sheer silliness, uncertainty, walking, worry | Leave a Comment »

I have a lettuce, and I’m not afraid to use it.

Posted on October 9, 2008 by Hails

Since recent posts seem to have involved supermarkets and customer service, I thought that this would be as good a time as any to tell you my tale about the time I was attacked with a lettuce by an angry Chinese woman. Doesn’t everyone have a story like this to tell?

When I was a student in Glasgow, I had a part time job at the Sainsbury’s Local on Sauchiehall Street. I didn’t mind it – the shop was always busy and so the time generally flew past. However, the one thing I hated was the appearance of the Girl With The Gun at the end of the day. It sent shivers down my spine to watch her walking around the shop zapping perishable goods with bright orange “reduced” stickers.

It was at this point, you see, that two distinct groups of people invariably emerged from wherever they’d been lurking. They were the old women (the kind with very hairy chins and trembling hands, who pay for everything in copper coins) and the middle-aged Chinese women. They all made straight for the sea of orange stickers, and began filling their baskets. Before you knew it, you had a queue the length of the shop, just before the end of your shift, full of women with overflowing baskets of reduced items. It made my heart sink every time one of those baskets appeared at my till, because it took a painfully long time to peel the sticker off each item, enter the reduction code, scan the item, type in the new price and then repeat the process at least a dozen times, while the next customer – generally a suit ‘n’ tie type of businessman only just getting home from work – waited impatiently with his solitary pint of milk or microwave meal for one, glaring at you in annoyance. In fact, I frequently tried to either rush through or draw out a particular transaction in order to avoid being the unfortunate cashier who got the next basket of orange stickers.

With the old ladies, it was an assortment of bread, milk, cheese, ham and those sorts of basic groceries. With the Chinese women, quite inexplicably, it was always vegetables; and usually an entire basket of identical vegetables. I never quite understood it – and it was the most annoying one of all, because you couldn’t scan in multiples of reduced items. They had to be done individually, one sodding carrot at a time, even if there were twenty all at the same price.

Anyway, late one Friday night, a basket of orange-stickered Romaine lettuces presented itself at my till. Wearily, I went through the peeling, typing and scanning process, packed the customer’s bag, smiled politely, took payment, gave change, and went on to the next customer. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I watched the lettuce woman inspecting her receipt. The orange sticker people were always the worst. They went through the receipt with frightening intensity, and were almost gleeful if they found a mistake. Not this woman, however. She was utterly furious. Slightly alarmed, I paused in my dealing with the milk-and-microwave-meal man to observe her approaching my till with all the gentleness of a raging bull.

She barely spoke a word of English, but from her raised voice and hand waving and brandishing of the receipt I managed to deduce that I had missed one of the orange stickers and charged her 20p more than I should have. It was an easy (and common) enough mistake, and I apologised and asked her to wait as I finished with my customer. This was not the right thing to do. Incensed, she removed the aforementioned lettuce from her bag and slammed it down in front of me, pounding the counter with her fist and shouting in a language that I had no hope of understanding. I tried to explain that I could not open the till to give her the 20p until I’d finished the current transaction; she, in return, screamed “Racist! Thief!” and tried to hit me over the head with the lettuce.

“Steady on, hen!” said my customer, looking nervously at her, as I panickily tried to open the till without properly completing the transaction. I was too flustered to think straight – everyone was staring, the sound of undesirable accusations filled the air, and an irate customer was trying to knock me out with a reduced vegetable. She flat-out refused to let me press any buttons on the till, and when she actually reached for me across the counter I hurriedly fumbled in my pocket, produced 20p of my own, and flung it down in front of her. She did not appear to want it, and continued to yell “Racist! Thief! Bad girl!” for all to hear. The duty manager, fetched by a customer who clearly feared for my life, appeared on the scene like a knight in shining armour, and I shakily explained the situation to the best of my ability (given that I didn’t really understand it myself). His attempts to calm the woman down failed completely, and in his polite but firm manner he asked the lettuce woman to step outside. By way of response, she attempted to slap me.

I want to assure you, dear reader, that I am not making any of this up. There exist people in the world who will wish to kill you for accidentally charging them an extra 20p for a lettuce. The manager hastily stepped between us and put his hand on lettuce woman’s arm to guide her towards the exit. “Racist!! Bad man!” screamed lettuce woman, pummelling him with her fists. I mean, honestly.

By the time he got rid of her, apologised to the customers, and gently escorted me outside to put a cigarette in my mouth, I was bright red and not sure whether to laugh or cry. The manager wore a similar expression when, at the end of my shift, he summoned me to his office and informed me that lettuce woman’s friend’s daughter had been on the phone to discuss a reported incident of racial discrimination. She was – of course – a lawyer specialising in that particular field. Thankfully she was also sane, and accepted the manager’s account of the incident with a laugh and an apology, but still. What an Utter Raving Lunatic.

As you can imagine, the sight of orange sticker baskets caused me a great deal more anxiety from then on…

Filed under: anger, boss, confusion, customer service, Fear, food, foreign languages, freak-out, Glasgow, insults, irrational behaviour, money, rage, Sainsbury's, sheer silliness, temper | 3 Comments »

Dark times

Posted on October 4, 2008 by Hails

Last night, feeling a bit restless from having been cooped up indoors for most of the day, Riho and I went for a spur-of-the-moment walk around the local area.

Tallinn by night is something of a new experience for me, given that when I was here in the summer I very rarely saw any hint of darkness. This is, however, a country of extremes, and the sillily long days are rapidly being eaten up by increasing periods of darkness. Gone are the midnight sunsets and 3am sunrises; when I got here last week it was already getting dark by 8pm, and now darkness only waits until late afternoon before going about its work. It doesn’t bother me – after spending my very first summer outside the UK, I’ve had my fill of long, hot, sunny days. I’m from Northern Ireland: there’s only so much bright light and warmth I can take before my brain explodes and my body melts in protest. I’m loving the cooler weather and dark evenings, and am suddenly feeling enthusiastic about the idea of spending winter in the Baltics. I mean, having just experienced the hottest summer of my life, it’s fitting that I now go for the coldest winter, too. More on that later, once I get photos of the Estonian winterwear that I intend to kit myself out in. It’s the first time I’ve ever been excited about fashion! If you can call funny hats and furry boots “fashion”…

Anyway, for now it’s just refreshingly cool – perfect for an evening stroll. We headed off through a residential area rather than taking the more familiar route through the Old Town, and I have to say that all the little wood-panelled houses look even more sweet and endearing at night, in the glow of the streetlights. It really is like walking through a fairytale sometimes.

The fairytale became more like a scary story when Riho had the bright idea of getting home by following the old disused railway track. I don’t mean by walking along beside it, on a brightly lit path, oh no. This railway track stretched off into the distance, crossing the road we were on and plunging into unknown territory of broken sleepers, rubble and long grass. We had to walk on the track itself, which gave me another of my Famous Five moments. I had just finished explaining to Riho about the one where they followed a railway track in the middle of nowhere (and then it broke off and they got lost and captured by a group of Bad Men), when I realised that we’d completely left the lights of civilisation behind and were now in near darkness, with only the faint lights from the harbour to guide us. Faint light is worse than no light, because faint light means scary shadows. And scary shadows play tricks with your mind, especially when the wind is making noises and the trees are rustling and you’ve just finished talking about Bad Men lurking at the side of an abandoned railway track much the same as the one you’re currently stumbling along.

Riho lamented my overactive imagination as I became more and more convinced that we were going to die at the hands of smugglers or be run over by a ghost train. I jumped nervously at every cracking twig or moving shadow, and Riho showed his sympathy for my nervous condition by yelling “what’s that?” at regular intervals and doing the age-old reaching around and tapping me on the shoulder furthest from him manoeuvre. When a small heap of rubble shifted beneath my feet and made a sudden noise, I jumped so violently that my instinctive grab for safety and reassurance almost dislocated his thumb (this did not go down very well with Riho, who did a whole big song and dance about his injured thumb as if I hadn’t just almost been killed), and by the time I inadvertently stood on something soft and apparently moving, my nerves gave up altogether. I screamed rather loudly, and shot along the track at a greatly increased speed. I have no idea what it was. Possibly a victim of the Bad Men. Or a large, poisonous rat. So much for a relaxing walk – I could’ve cried when I finally saw the main road in sight.

Darkness is all very well, but I much prefer seeing it by streetlight.

Filed under: cold, darkness, Estonia, Famous Five, Fear, freak-out, fun, paranoia, rats, walking | 2 Comments »

Feeling the Terror

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Hails

I’ve always been fascinated by the history of Hungary, after studying the 1956 revolution at school, many moons ago.

I was very excited, then, to actually be in Budapest and have the opportunity to see round the House of Terror – a step-by-step journey through Hungary’s history of Soviet occupation and ethnic cleansing. Sure, it doesn’t sound like your typical tourist’s idea of beer-soaked ‘fun’, but I’ve been looking forward to this for ages!

It gave me much the same feeling as the Anne Frank house: a sense of wonder as I walked around and felt history come to life, with a real chill as I realised just how horrendous this stuff actually was. The museum is really well designed – you start off up on the second floor, and walk through the exhibitions (each room with a helpful background leaflet in English to make up for the fact that everything else is in Hungarian), moving down until eventually you’re in the basement, which is full of prison cells and torture chambers.

The whole way, you’re accompanied by music that is at times soulful (I had to choke back tears in one room, where a child’s voice was reading out names of victims to a very moving soundtrack) and at others very dramatic and militant. It actually makes you feel quite tense and nervous, especially when you’re surrounded by all those Nazi uniforms and walking through Soviet offices and the like. I was a little thrown by the presence of numerous security guards, there to make sure nobody breaks the “no photos” rule. I’m sure that their uniform is a standard Hungarian security uniform, but the mind plays tricks on you when you’re being influenced by powerful images and emotive music, not to mention reading about terrible crimes against humanity by men in uniforms quite similar to the ones on the people prowling stealthily all around you.

By the time I got down to the basement, I was decidedly spooked. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I peered into prison cell after prison cell, including torture chambers (one was ankle deep in water, so that you’d always be cold and wet; another’s ceiling was about 4′ from the ground, so you could never stand up) and a padded cell, which was my first (but not necessarily my last) time in one of those. I sneaked some photos, jumping nervously every time I thought I saw a security guard, understandably frightened about what he might do to me, given our surroundings.

Waiting for a guard to disappear so that I could get a picture of the padded cell, I crept cautiously inside the warden’s office, which looked like nothing had been touched since it was in use. Old register books, a typewriter, an old wireless… turning round, I saw lockers, and a couple of old uniform jackets hanging beside them. It really did feel like the place was still being used, and that someone could come and catch me at any moment. Imagine my utter horror, therefore, when something in the dark corner above one of the lockers suddenly came loose of its own accord, and fell with a loud clank on to the top of the locker. The metallic sound echoed monstrously around the  musty room, and I was convinced I’d been shot or something.

I screamed. I really did. I screamed a really girly scream and backed away, bruised my leg on the desk, turned to flee, and ran straight into Stalin/a moustached security guard who’d come to see who was wrecking the museum. I was about to declare my innocence when I realised he was biting his lip hard and shaking with mirth. Well, really. Drawing my shoulders back, I fixed him with a haughty gaze and stalked past him.

I say stalked… actually, my knees trembled like mad for the rest of my journey around the museum.

House of Terror: full points for aptness of name.

Filed under: contemplation, Fear, freak-out, Hungary, unexpected | 4 Comments »

Tired and Hungary

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Hails

I was utterly unprepared for my trip to Hungary.

For a start, I completely failed to think about the fact that there might be a severe lack of English-speaking people here – probably not such a relevant issue if I’d been going to somewhere like Budapest (that’s still a few days away), but as it was, I flew into a little airport in the middle of nowhere, near Lake Balaton. The hostel’s website had apparently simple instructions for getting there – take the airport shuttle either directly there, or to a town called Keszthely. Since the airport wanted to charge me €40 (!!!) to go directly there, I chose the latter, “where there is regular public transport to the hostel”.

You can ask at that building for information, said the driver, pointing towards a desolate booth before leaving me standing at the dusty roadside, sweating profusedly. I trundled somewhat dubiously up to the booth. Excuse me, do you speak English? I gave the man my usual conversation opener. No, he said. We looked at each other for a moment. I was uncertain of how to proceed, given that the usual response to my question at such places is either “yes” or “not very much”, making it possible to proceed, however long the conversation might take with a few French/Dutch/Estonian words thrown in for good measure.

Erm… I battled on, showing him my scribbled hostel directions, train? Bus? I looked hopefully at him, and he shrugged. OK, I concluded with a weak smile. Thank you. He slammed shut the window, leaving me staring at the rather misleading “Information” sign.

I had an emergency cigarette under the ineffectual shade of a leafless tree, and located the train station. Nervously, I approached the woman behind the desk.  Excuse me, do you speak English? That’s going to be the name of my book, by the way.

No, she said.

Once again I waved my bit of paper, and once again I got a blank stare and a shrug. Defeated, I slunk off to a corner to open my laptop and check for WiFi availability. Of which there was, of course, none whatsoever. Seriously alarmed now, and picturing myself having to live forever at the side of this road in the arse end of nowhere, I used my phone to google the hostel, and found more specific directions. Trying to breathe deeply, I returned to the desk. Here? I asked, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

She looked as relieved as I did when whatever was on the page made sense to her, and she wrote out the train changes for me, and sold me a ticket (for 900HF, which I believe is something like €4, as opposed to €40: ha!). Rather naively thinking my problems were over, I went out to the platform. Nothing was marked, and it was one of those train stations where, if you wait for a few hours and are lucky enough, you might just see a train.

It was 29°C, I’d been up since 6am, I was at a train station somewhere in Hungary with absolutely no idea where to go or how to get there, and nobody spoke any English. I’d actually like a huge big round of applause for the fact that I didn’t curl up in a corner and burst into tears. And that I managed three changes of train all by myself, each with at least an hour of a gap in between them and nothing to indicate that they were the right trains. I slept for a long, long time last night.

It was, however, worth all the trauma. Just you wait till you see where I’m staying…

Filed under: airport, changes, confusion, culture, disorganisation, Fear, foreign languages, hostels, Hungary, sun, tiredness, travel | 8 Comments »

Things that go creak/crash/snore in the night

Posted on August 29, 2008 by Hails

Snore! Snore! Snore!

I stare sleeplessly at the bunk above my head. I have ended up in a hostel in Rotterdam, as you do on the average Thursday night, and it is a funky little place. Very basic, but not a mouse in sight, and I’ve had fun hanging out with cool traveller dudes from all over the world in the very studenty bar. Sleep, however, is proving to be something of a challenge in a dorm containing dozens of beds.

If it was just the snoring, it might be easier to get used to it, the way you can eventually adjust to the overly loud ticking of a clock that’s been keeping you awake. However, in this sort of environment, all sorts of factors come into play. Like people rolling in at regular intervals, just back from a night out.

Crash! Bang! Clatter!

Snore! Snore! Snore!

Then you’ve got the mattresses, which are plastic-covered things that squeak and creak and groan every time someone as much as twitches in her sleep. When the girl above me turns over, it sounds like the building is in the process of crashing down around my ears.

Creak! Squeak! Groan!

Crash! Bang! Clatter!

Snore! Snore! Snore!

I sigh softly to myself and cuddle closer to Eeyore, who seems unaffected by the Armageddonesque noise level in the room. I close my eyes and try to imagine I’m completely alone. I manage to enter a state that could be described as a light doze, but am disturbed by a man stealthily entering the girls only dorm – my bed is right beside the door, so I watch as he creeps past and appears to be inspecting the sleeping figures in the bunks. In my tired state, I can do no more than wonder what he’s doing, and then I forget about him until morning, when I awake to find the place in uproar. Everyone’s babbling about a man, an attack. There are police. They want to talk to anyone who saw anything suspicious, and I find myself being interviewed and identifying the shady-looking guy from the dorm. He is taken away, shouting that he is innocent, and a feeling of Atonement-like panic washes over me as self-doubt creeps in and accuses me of pointing the finger at the wrong person.

Creak! Squeak! Groan!

As the girl above me turns over again and the mattress resumes its earthquake impressions, I wake up with a jump and realise that that last bit was just one of those very “real” dreams. Dazed and confused, I continue my sleepless journey towards morning.

I am desperately in need of a good night’s sleep tonight, you know.

Filed under: confusion, dreams, Fear, fun, hostels, insomnia, Netherlands, night, tiredness | 3 Comments »

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