tere tulemast Tallinna
Welcome to the Estoni-oni-oni-a blog. The land of no sun, hot chicks, good beer, and wild meats. This ladies and gentlemen is the tale of my greatest TDY trip thus far. May not be the coolest locale, but I had the best time here and I’m still not looking forward to going back to Bosnia. I have yet to go to Western Europe, so I don’t know how good or bad it is. However, I have spent more time in the former Soviet than all of Hanks High School 01, I extremely severely recommend the Baltic States to all of my XX friends. The ugly Estonians girls are better looking than Americans.
Friday
This is our standard travel day. Here to DFW and then to Frankfurt. We had a long long layover in Frankfurt then to Estonian. The flights were nothing to speak of. The movie selection was pretty bad. Although Eagle Eye was pretty awesome. The flight to Tallinn was alright. I sat next to some crappy French guy who insisted on having the window shade open. Frog, don’t you understand I’ve been up for 30 hours, I don’t need sunlight. Luckily, it gets dark quickly at 59 degrees north. So, I was able to fall back asleep. The Estonian airport was alright, I didn’t get a passport stamp from them. You can travel stamp free throughout the EU, so I got another Deutschland stamp. It was pretty cold the whole time. It hovered around 0 Celsius the whole week, but hardly any wind so it was durable.
Saturday
Normally it’s very hard to stay awake that first night. It’s key to stay up until bed time so you can adjust yourself as best as possible. So we went out to a restaurant. We found some pirate themed restaurant. I had elk and huge beer. It was very Viking-esque. Afterwards we went strolling through the old part of town. It was full of old buildings and cobblestone streets. Not much has changed in the last 400 years except for the addition of street lights. We came upon a cigar bar and two of the guys with me really wanted to smoke. Okay, so I’ll sit through it. I suck at smoking but, it’s always fun to break some trade embargos and have a Hecho en Habana. We went through another bottle of wine there. You’re only supposed to huff on these things, but I can’t, it was all up in my lungs and throat. So I killed like 7/8 of this thing and called it a night. A night at that place. We had one more stop to make. We saw some strip clubs that had our name on them. One of the guys had been there before and said it was awesome. It sucked though. I’ve never been to a good Euro strip club. Or at least the American ones are better. The reason I don’t like Euro clubs is that girls aren’t constantly dancing and when they do, they come to every patron and ask for a tip. Get to stepping, is what I’m thinking, but I hand over money because of the scary Euro door men. Well they take us downstairs into the Grotto and there is one girl for each of us. They are all soviets or Bolsheviks or Ukrainian, no Estonians. Very heavy accents. When I tell my girl I’m American, “Oh, you get me visa”, Yeah girl I’ll get you whatever you want just keep dancing. So these girls were good looking but they would not have made the cut for Motley Crues Girls Girls Girls video, because their dance skills aren’t up to snuff. The Estonian dollars are worth a tenth of what ours are. So a Twenty dollar bill is 2 US dollars, if you can’t do mental math. After one of the dancers dances on my friend, he puts a 5 EEK (that’s Estonian Kroon) into her undergarment. She takes it out and throws it in his face, she was pissed. He was pissed. I gave her a 100 EEK, just to appease the strip club gods and the scary doormen. After she leaves, I explain to him that he gave her 50 cents, which is not that bad. Most guys tip ones in US clubs, but I guess we weren’t in Kansas anymore. They don’t do dances there for less than 100 US, no thank you I said. I’m glad I only had so much EEK on me. Where you’re sitting with these girls you’re talking about whatever and they want drinks. Beer? “No, no beer, you buy me champagne, (the price is like 40 US for one glass), I don’t have that much, but I like it, but I want it, it’s not cost that much, Yeah but I don’t have that much EEK on me, you have plastic, you’re a big fancy American business man. Damn, got caught in my lie of small talk. Eventually, I get one of the other guys to leave with me, but one stayed inside for a little private VIP time. So we waited outside and watched a cool drunken street fight. We finally got home after getting lost for awhile. Lost in Translation happens a lot to me. But like always everything always works out in the end for me.
Sunday
That 8 am alarm came fast after getting to bed around 4. I was sweating something fierce, I wasn’t hung-over though. The whole day I was dragging though, about midday, I started to feel hung-over and it took a couple of naps and lots of fluids to get that feeling to go away. That day we just set up the network and everything worked pretty well. That night we decided just to eat in the hotel and call it a night. I turned my heater down a couple of notches. About 3 I woke up and turned the heater off.
Monday
I still woke up sweating and I couldn’t figure out why, so I left the window open and went to breakfast. In Estonia the sun comes up about 830 and sets about 4. It’s so odd to start the work day and not be light for at least two hours after that. Monday day was fine; it was just pre-conference and pretty boring. This was my first trip where I didn’t also have to do homework concurrently. So, I spent a lot of time on the Interweb that week. That night, I went back to old town for some food. We went to some Estonian place. The waitress stayed in character the whole night. Welcome lads from a far away land. I am but a poor humble servant girl. Here are your ales. We had rabbit and wild boar. Again, I felt like a Viking. We just came back to hotel after dinner. No need for Cubans and strippers again.
Tuesday
This was the first full work day and boy was it hectic. Everyone likes to forget their passwords and forget all network settings and basically they are like me. For everyone, except for a few, this is a vacation for them. Everyone looks forward to hanging out in a new country trying new things. So most of the time people are surfing the Internet also. That night we had the ice breaker and it was held in the hotel club. It was a pretty good evening. Free beer and wine is always nice. Hors devours were good. I talked with a few people, but wasn’t really in the mood for drinking and I wasn’t feeling good.
Wednesday
There were more sick people at this conference then I’ve ever seen before. I never got full on sick. If I were home I would have just drank lots of water and played racquetball. I couldn’t do either so I just relied on Ny/Dayquil. My teammates accused me of getting me sick, but I don’t think I did. This was the day of our cultural tour. Something I always look forward too. Unfortunately, by the time we left, it was already dark. So I fell asleep on the bus. We awoke at the Old Town and we had a pretty good tour guide. Went to an immaculate Eastern Orthodox Church, where I was foreboded from take pictures. It was snowing a little bit that night. We found a small Italian restaurant. I had pesto lasagna which was really tasty. Stopped in a liquor store and bought some souvenirs for my peeps.
Thursday
This was our first full day of work with no planned events. It’s my least favorite day. It was a long day too; I think I was there for 12 hours. That night, we just went back to old town and walked around. Old town was the shit, if you aren’t reading carefully enough.
Friday
Was the last day. We only had to work a half day and then we were given the rest of the day off. Yes, there is a difference. We got both. So I went and got a massage. It was given by this woman who I have since labeled Olga. She was old and strong and went to town on my muscles. She used these hot stones, which were scorching. I flinched when she put them on me and she snickered at me. She also gave me a hair massage. Yes, a hair massage, not a scalp massage. My hair looked like a troll doll from 4th grade, but it felt good. Afterwards I went backed to my room and chilled. We didn’t have to be downstairs for the cultural dinner until 630. The dinner was really good. Lots of meats that I didn’t know the animal origin of. I promise all of you that I didn’t drink too much, but I woke up hurting because I mixed and matched. The Canadians brought this whiskey that has maple syrup in it. Oh man is it good. Then I had some Armenian Cognac, my balls instantly dropped and I sprouted 22 chest hairs. It was pretty tough going down. I had some Salmiakki from Finland. It’s like Jager, but manlier. I also had some wine and champagne. Oh well, it’s like a buffet you gotta try it all. We left there about 10 and went back to hotel where everyone was partying. We all decided we had to go out to a club at some other hotel. It was called the Amigo club. There were lots of pretty girls there. None of them wanted to dance though. It felt just like every other time in my life….I need a Kleenex, one second. Okay, one girl finally agreed to dance with me. She was cool; spoke enough English to get by. She loved US 80s pop. So I danced with here for the next 2 hours. About 3, I was drunk, sleepy, and broke. So we hoofed it back to the hotel where I woke up and felt like death
Saturday
Since we didn’t leave Tallinn until 6 that night, we were able to sleep in and then we went shopping in old town. I got a really awesome ugly wool hat. I bought stuff for my friends and family. We went into some really cool antique stores and an old military surplus store. They had all kinds of US, USSR, and Nazi paraphernalia. It was really amazing. We came back to the hotel had some lunch and then just packed. I ended up missing my bus, but they came back for me, there are only a few flights a day to this place, so there was no worry. We flew to Frankfurt that night and just kicked it at the hotel. I was going to use the sauna but it wasn’t working.
Sunday
Finally time to come back to the You Es and Ay. I was upgraded to Business class on the long flight. It was amazing. The seat goes to 180 degrees. The movies are on demand, which is not a big thing, but AA coach doesn’t have that. Back to that in a little bit. My team lead found out that I got upgraded and was not please. Because he’s always ragging on me, I didn’t pay any attention to me, but my coworkers were saying he was calling me a smug son of a bitch. He was upset for like 30 minutes. Some of my coworkers told him to be quiet and knock it off, don’t be jealous. “He takes two trips to Asia, makes Executive Platinum and look at him, he gets upgraded and he’s all smiles” Had I known that’s how he really felt, I would have kicked him in his chest, gave him the finger, and told him to stop being a little bitch. He had the joy of sitting next to me in first on the DFW to Tucson flight. He was not a happy camper. I was non-verbal to him the rest of the trip and he didn’t like that further. He slept it off evidently because the next day at work he was pretty chill with me.
So that was my trip, pictures will follow next week. This was my best trip mostly because I was able to quench my tourist thirst. One of the guys who went on the trip was all about getting out of the hotel. So were able to try different restaurants at night and go see different buildings. We went out so much in the cold that my knuckles cracked because they got so dry. AWESOME. Alright, well this thing is pushing a quarter of ten thousand words. Time to wrap it up.
See you next time,
Jacob
