Pauliine the café tram

Posted on November 8, 2008 by Hails

It’s starting to get pretty cold here.

It’s nice – I prefer cold weather to the scary, baking temperatures I suffered through in Lyon this summer – but I really must get a coat soon, you know. It’s all very well having a scarf and a Silly Hat, but light summer jackets just aren’t going to be enough in a few weeks from now.

As I walked back from the supermarket tonight, rosy-cheeked from the cold air, I played my favourite game of pretending to be smoking a cigarette by bringing my hand to my mouth at intervals and then exhaling slowly, watching my breath form white clouds in front of me. It is not much of a game, I’ll agree, but it’s the sort of thing that gives a nicotine-deprived ex-smoker a very small feeling of pleasure with the memory. On a scale of one to ten, in terms of the satisfaction brought about by this activity, I’d say it was a three. No, a two. A three would be if I also had an unlit cigarette in my hand, just to aid the illusion/delusion.

Anyway, as I was walking along briskly, shivering underneath my light summer jacket and pulling my Silly Hat as far down around my ears as I could, I glanced casually at an approaching tram Then I had to stop and do a double take, for this was no ordinary tram, boys and girls! My first clue was the fact that all the windows had neat little curtains at them – sort of like the kind you’d get in a coach, only bigger, and tied back neatly and prettily. Confused, I stared at it. Trams do not normally have curtained windows. Then I realised that instead of the usual rows of seats with an aisle down the middle, there were large gaps in between the seats. A closer look as it rumbled past me revealed that this was due to the presence of tables. Tables! And then, as it passed under a streetlight, I saw the writing on the side of the tram: Kohvik-Tramm.

It is a café. On a tram. It is a tram that is a café. I cannot express how happy such a concept makes me. I looked enviously at all the people on the tram, sitting at the cosily-lit tables, drinking coffee and just trundling around Tallinn, watching the city all lit up at night. And there was me walking home in the cold like a sucker.

Excitedly, I raced home to google the kohvik-tramm. I am sad to report that it doesn’t seem to work like a normal café, in that you don’t appear to be able to just get on at any stop, have a coffee, and get off again when you feel like it. I suppose that would be unprofitable. Apparently, the kohvik-tramm is something of a celebrity in Tallinn, and has been for many years. Her name is Pauliine. Pauliine the café tram. And you can hire her out for an hour with a group of your friends for a silly amount of money, if I have deduced this information correctly from the Estonian-only articles on the subject.

Still. A café tram. Called Pauliine. Gotta love it.

Filed under: coffee, cold, fun, trams | 2 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 »

Where am I?

Posted on September 16, 2008 by Hails

I’m suffering from a severe case of haven’t-got-a-clue-where-I-am-itis, which means that the first few minutes upon waking up in the morning are becoming increasingly confused and disorientated. It’s a new ailment to me, since for much of my life it was a safe bet that when I opened my eyes I would be in Ballymena, Northern Ireland. Things are a little less certain these days.

I’ve had to develop a routine upon waking: firstly, don’t just assume that you’re in the last place you remember being, as sometimes the mind simply can’t keep up. Take a moment. Let your brain wake up before you attempt any complicated memory feats.

Next, try to remember which country you’re in. This is an extremely helpful step, and makes the next one much simpler. Which city? Cast your mind back to the day before, and gather all appropriate information: train journeys, names of stations passed through, people spoken to… it’s all relevant. Once you’re reasonably confident of your approximate geographic location, you can try to get more specific.

Open your eyes and look around – do you recognise the room? Initially, the answer tends to be “Erm… no”, but don’t panic: generally you can  retrace your steps from the night before, and at least recall the last person you saw before going to sleep. This tends to help narrow things down (consider what language they spoke, what their accent was like, that sort of thing – grab any stray pieces of jigsaw that you can find).

In the past week, I have woken up in Holland, England, and Hungary, and now sit dazed and confused in Austria. Three mornings in a row found me in three different countries. From a loft room in Utrecht, to a pink bedroom in Cambridge (I have been sternly reprimanded for calling it “London”, but it was close enough. I got to meet up with yet another internet acquaintance, mainly because of the proximity of his house to the airport, and to sleep in a real bed. Hurrah!), to a hostel in Balaton.  Since then, I’ve slept on someone’s couch in Budapest, and am currently in some guy’s flat in Vienna, looking out at the rain with a feeling of utter exhaustion. I do not want to see any more nice buildings. I do not want to ask anyone else if they speak English. I do not want to visit another museum, or climb another hill, or try to figure out how, where and when to validate tram tickets in yet another city.

I don’t mean that I don’t ever want to do these things again, of course. Give me a few weeks to recharge the batteries and no doubt I’ll be wondering which country I can visit next. For now, though, I’m knackered. I have no energy left: only this afternoon I got stuck in a set of tram doors, which rather inconsiderately closed on me as I was trying, in my feeble state, to struggle up the steps with my bags. I do not know the German for Somebody help me, I am going to be killed when the tram takes off with me half in and half out of it!, but fortunately Arrrrghhhh! seems to be universally understood, and a guy on the tram leapt forward to open the doors and haul my bags in with one hand, and me with the other, as the tram went merrily on its way.

No more! I want to wake up in the same bed for several days in a row. I want to spend an entire day sitting in one place. I want to spend some time with someone who actually knows me, and have real conversations. And so, after the weekend, I’m heading back to the familiar surroundings of Tallinn and the comfortable company of Riho. Ah, Tallinn: where everything is cheap, people speak English, and my biggest problem is being unable to identify the ingredients for my speciality dishes in the supermarket.

Just need one final spurt of energy for a whirlwind tour of Vienna, a train ride to Slovakia, a flight to Sweden, sightseeing in Stockholm, a flight to Latvia and a six hour bus ride to Estonia, but sure that’s nothing…

Filed under: airport, confusion, conversations, England, flying, foreign languages, friends, Holland, hostels, Hungary, normality, time out, tiredness, trams, travel | 7 Comments »

Big wheels keep on turnin’…

Posted on September 10, 2008 by Hails

Oi! Someone prodded me and woke me from my dream about a comfortable bed and a shower that didn’t have clumps of hair in the drain. This is the last stop!

Drowsily, I uncurled from the foetal position in the back of the van where I’d been sleeping for the last hour, and slid out of the door on autopilot in a most undignified manner. The hostel’s shuttle driver looked at me in amusement as he reached me my bag and took a leisurely puff of his cigarette. Do you need directions, or do you know Amsterdam? he asked kindly, watching me attempt to adjust to being upright. I looked around at the masses of tourists and clouds of marijuana smoke. I know Amsterdam, I replied gloomily. With a thank you and a goodbye, I left the excellent Flying Pig experience behind and let the crazed Amsterdam crowd suck me in and push me along. I was very nearly run over by a tram, which didn’t help my already less than favourable feelings towards the city, especially as the driver watched me pausing and checking him out to gauge whether he was stopped for a while or ready to go, and then launched forward with an evil grin as soon as I was in his path, getting my bag’s wheels stuck in the track as I tried to leap out of his way.

I grumpily lit a cigarette outside the train station, and was immediately and predictably accosted by a homeless guy. I reached him my cigarette before he could even begin his story, and lit another for myself. He was very keen to talk, and I was impressed by how polite I managed to force myself to be, despite the gloom, the rain, the noisy construction work all around, and the depressing crowds of ignorant, drunk and stoned tourists all around me. Halfway through the cigarette, he began his appeal, complete with background story and request for money for a hostel (and not, of course, for drink or drugs). I used to be a sucker for this sort of thing, and gave to every beggar I passed on the streets, until a woman at St. George’s Cross tube station in Glasgow called me all the names under the sun one day because I didn’t have any change – despite the fact that I’d given her 50p every day that I saw her for about 4 months.

I’m sorry, I explained to Amsterdam homeless man, I’m travelling around, and I’m broke. I don’t earn a lot of money, so I don’t really have any to spare. Just the cigarette! I’m sorry. His demeanor changed, and he scowled at me. His next sentence was in Dutch, and probably not very nice. And then he walked off in a rage – but not before he spat at me. Spat at me! And still holding my cigarette in his hand! I resisted the urge to swear loudly after him, and instead stubbed out my cigarette and marched very determinedly to the ticket desk.

Utrecht, please, I said to the bored looking guy behind the desk. One way or return? he asked. I smiled.

One way, I said firmly.

Filed under: anger, charity, conversations, ingratitude, insults, smoking, temper, tourists, trams, travel | 4 Comments »

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Posted on May 25, 2008 by Hails

Probably because he had a very strong death wish, if he was in Estonia at the time.

Crossing the road is one of those little things that I’ve generally taken for granted, and it’s never caused me a great deal of difficulty. Look right, look left, look right again. The wise words of the immortal Tufty, and they’ve never let me down. However, a large part of this seems to have been dependent upon a population of non-insane drivers. Crossing the road in Estonia fills me with dread on so many levels, and now my road-crossing endeavours consist of something like this:

  • Find designated pedestrian crossing point.     
  • Look right.
  • Upon seeing no traffic, recall yet again that they drive on the other side of the road here.
  • Look left.
  • Recoil in horror as maniac driver flies past at twice the speed of light.
  • Breathe deeply, unintentionally flattened against lamppost or wall in instinctive act of self defence.
  • Tentatively step out on to crossing, seeing next approaching vehicle some considerable distance away.
  • A few seconds later, begin to panic as said vehicle continues to approach rather speedily, showing no signs of slowing down to account for the fact that you are in its path.
  • Begin to run. Screaming is optional at this point. Although maniac driver cannot hear you, sometimes it’s good to express your feelings.
  • Gulp shakily as maniac driver skids to a dramatic halt at crossing.
  • Try to complete journey to centre of road in most dignified manner possible, despite ghostly-white complexion and trembling hands.
  • Repeat entire terrifying process from centre of road to other side, remembering to adjust ‘look left’ to ‘look right’.

That’s not even mentioning the bizarre, complicated road junctions where it is utterly impossible to tell where traffic might come from, or where the traffic in question intends to go, and indeed when it might conceivably be even vaguely ‘safe’ to cross.

And I can’t even begin to express my horrified amusement (or amused horror – I can’t quite decide which) concerning the rather poorly planned tram stop near here, where the trams just stop where they are (i.e. on the tram line, in the centre of the road, between the lanes of traffic) and throw you out, trundling off again and leaving you to either (a) duck and dodge your way through a stream of cars driven by apparently very impatient people, or (b) erm, die.

Mind you, at least it’s not snowing. I don’t think my nerves would survive a winter road-crossing experience.

Filed under: confusion, Estonia, Fear, road safety, stress, trams, worry | 1 Comment »

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