Summer in the Baltics is incredible! The weather is amazing and the crowds can easily be avoided, in fact the majority of locals in Helsinki and Tallinn, leave the cities for the country side!

I spent two nights in Helsinki, with one full day to explore around the empty city. The marina and the main park that leads from it to the city center is where I spent most of the time. The market at the marina is great, very similar to the Pike Place market in Seattle meaning you can buy anything you want from food to pants. Locally caught salmon on Finnish rye bread was my main staple while walking around. I hope you will agree with me that the fermented herring that had been buried in a cabbage roll for a year did not sound that good.

My hotel was right on top of THE place to go on Thursday nights, but the 90 minute wait in line was not on my top ten list, so I stayed quiet and jumped on a ferry the next day to Tallinn, Estonia.


Nordic Jet offers a direct ferry across the Baltic in 2 hours 15 minutes for only about $20. Not bad, and it was pretty cool to think about where I was on the map.

Tallinn is a very pretty town built in the early 1200’s and attacked by every country with in 1000 miles…Danes, Germans, Slavs, the Czarist Russians and finally the Soviet Union all had their say in the development of the city, making the architecture quite amusing. Mid-Evil, Czarist Russian Orthodox Churches, Christian Churches, and Communist Soviet era apartment and office building blocks were all intertwined around the city. The recent infusion of capitalism after the fall of the USSR has also led to new and large construction sites where high rise office and hotel buildings are going up amazingly quickly due to the lenient lending policies that Estonia has now! You can read this as CHEAP if anyone is looking to buy an office building…..

You can walk around the cobblestone streets, squares and churches in Tallinn in about 3 hours, so I was done by 5 PM. The city does not start until well after 1 AM! My first night was spent walking from bar to bar and club to club that I read about in the weekly magazines. I was shocked to see the relatively few number of people around, especially after reading what a hot spot Tallinn is for night life!

Around 1 AM, I was tired and on my way home, when I ran into two Canadians who were headed to a disco so I tagged along. I was ready to hang with anyone that would look in my direction! The Estonians are not the most approachable people, and the number of Russian Mafia in Tallinn makes it even more difficult to meet people!

The club was called Hollywood and there were a few hundred people in the club, mainly locals and most of them were on the dance floor dancing in front of a female singer on stage. Turns out she is the Blondie of Estonia….something like 47 years old, and still well loved. She was dancing around and singing her songs that were a mix of Blondie, Madonna and Heart. Pretty funny scene, especially when she would do a cover song of Madonna in a deep Estonian accent. The Canadian (one left at the register after waiting for 45 minutes ‘cause he did not want to pay the $5 entry…) and I were ignored for a while, and we headed to another club he knew that played good R&B and hip-hop. Turns out this guy is a hip hop dancer by night….cool club, good music and I was able to work up a good sweat before heading home around 3. Fun walk passed all of the strip bars where the touts were trying to force people into the bars!

The next day I was hung over but needed to get my travel plans sorted out, so I took a quick sauna, in what is probably one of the greatest exports that Baltic countries have provided to the rest of the world! I needed to get to the US Embassy to add more pages to my passport, and while there I met Sean. Sean is a teacher from New Orleans displaced by Katrina. He was in the Embassy trying to secure an emergency loan, and I could overhear the conversation.

No house, no friends, no money, no way to contact his parents (says they don’t have a phone yet after the hurricane), and Oh yeah, he is HIV positive and needs to buy medicine…..why the hell this guy decided to go to Tallinn, Estonia is beyond me, and my money bets that he is a heroine addict, and needs money, BUT he was down on his luck and needed some help so I gave him about 40 bucks and wished him luck. Luckily I have never been, and hope I will never be in that kind of situation, and I felt bad for the guy, so I wanted to help out. Could have done more, but I feel good that I could at least buy him some food (or a $20 bag…)

Next stop was the travel agent to get a ticket to St Petersburg where I found out that the flights would be $600, hotels $200 a night and that the visa would cost $150 and take TEN DAYS! What is it with me and visas? I could get an express visa for an additional $400! Hmm….Russia for 4 days would cost me over $2,000??? Pass.

Next stop, Riga Latvia! Why? Why not! The travel agent COULD NOT FIND ME A HOTEL! Apparently Riga has a tremendous shortage of hotel rooms! Who knew??

Stockholm? Flights available! Ok lets go. Hotel and ticket done, lets eat.

I spent another evening alone in the city, and ended up staying in that night, and the next. Eating bad pizza in a small hotel room watching CNN over and over and over is what my last two nights in the Baltic region was made up of.

I woke up on the AM of the 25th, and just did not have anything left. I was tired, I was lonely, and I was a little bored. The thought of packing up again and moving to another place just did not excite me anymore. The 25th is also the two year anniversary of the death of my good friend Robin. I asked my self ‘What would Robin Cosgrove do at a time like this?’ The way I felt at that moment must have been like the time when Big Greg rode Robin down a flight of marble stairs; hurting. What did Robin do? HE WENT HOME! Good call!

I called NW Airlines and was again amazed that I could get a BUSINESS class seat the NEXT day to Tokyo with no extra charges!

Now we are talking! A sudden rush of adrenaline took over, I’m going to go see some good friends and hang in the city that has been my home for over 10 years!

I hit the church, lit a candle and thanked Robin for his black and blue backside, and headed out! Of course I did sit in the sunshine and drink a bottle of wine before I headed out! I got to the ferry terminal with 10 minutes to boarding time, and all that were left were the $80 business class seats, and I figured it was still a bargain, and I would pay anything at that time just to get home.

This is where I met Johan. Johan is Finnish and is a partner in Finland’s largest commercial real estate development companies, and he is in charge of all of the development his company is doing in Estonia. We had a great chat about his time in Tripoli from ’85 to ’92. He was there when Regan bombed Tripoli, and was about a mile from the airport watching the explosions from his balcony!

When we arrived he invited me for a beer, and dropped me at a pub close to his home and asked me to wait for him. While waiting, I met Rina and Erika, two lovely ladies who were having a quiet drink after work. Rina speaks fluent Nepalese, and Erika is a housewife working in a law firm. Great chicks! The three of us ended up having a great dinner in her favorite Nepalese restaurant ordering for us in the local language. Pretty cool.

Before we headed out, Johan rejoined us and proceeded to tell the ladies what an important man he is, an that he would negotiate with me to sell him my dive watch. Seems that you can not buy a citizen dive watch in Europe, and this was the second time I have been approached about my watch! Its only about $300 for the watch, which is a great price for a solid watch.

Johan told the girls while I was in the bathroom that he would get it off of me, as he is an important man, and has NEVER in his life, not gotten what he wanted….the guy was PISSED off when he could not have it. I told him I would buy him the same watch in Tokyo and send it to him FREE if he would just leave it alone! No deal, he walked off pissed off leaving me alone with my new friends!

I got my hotel in Helsinki around 11 PM, and needed to be at the airport at 4 for my flight. I did not want to miss my flight so I watched bad movies all night. I had a 7 hour (yikes) lay over in Amsterdam, so I decided to head into the city and do what you can’t do in most cities…..legally that is...

I wandered around the city, which is amazing in summer by the way, stopping for coffee every couple of hours, and decided on a destination in the city. If you have never seen the red light district of Amsterdam, you are in for a real treat. I was there about two years ago, and its amazing. Anything you want is waiting in the windows. ANYTHING.

Funny and TRUE story, but I could not find the fricken place! I left the airport with no map, and the last thing I wanted to do was ask someone ‘Excuse me, do you know where I can find a big penis?’ For those that don’t know, there is a 7 foot statue of a penis in front of the sex museum…

In the end, I did end up asking for directions, TWICE! I still got lost. It all looks the same, and who the hell can remember the names of the streets! They all have like 10 letters in them! I wandered for TWO hours, and finally gave up on trying to buy a stuffed penis and testicles for Aunt Debbie. I found a taxi and headed back to the airport with 30 minutes to make my flight. Slept like a baby on the flight home!

I am now back in Tokyo and will most likely be here for a couple of months to start the job search.

Is the trip over???? Not sure yet, I may have a couple of more weeks in me for Bali or Hawaii, but for now................

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME!