Well I said we would be taking a booze cruise across the gulf to Estonia sometime soon.
We made it 2 weeks.
Jimmy's co-workers decided they needed a bulk alcohol run, so we figured, "why not tag along? At least there will be cheap booze." So I 5th wheeled it: Jimmy, 3 other tech guys, and me. One of these was not like the others....
We left Helsinki at 9:30 PM on Friday night via the Viking Line Ferry and arrived in Tallinn, Estonia at midnight. Along the way, a few rounds of drinks were shared, a bottle of champagne was used for cheersing, and we got ready for a long night.
One of Jimmy's coworkers had arranged an Air B&B for us to stay in that night. All we knew was an address and that the key was hiding somewhere around the ledge of the window. To be super helpful, the owner sent us a photo of where it was.
And by where it was I mean him pointing to it.
And by that I mean a picture of his hand, across the street, pointing to a window.
SO after the 20 minute walk from the ferry terminal to Tallinn's famous Old Town, the slightly tipsy key scavenger hunt began. Mind you, we had been drinking for 2.5 hours, so it was more of a race for the restroom.
And 15 minutes later, we were darn near breaking in to the building via an open window.
...Which would have been totally ok. The apartment was in a small side alley. Oh wait, it was also across the street from a raging dance club, complete with a 50+ person line and 2 large Russian-looking bouncers.
Don't mind us, crawling all over this window, we are supposed to be here.......have you seen this hand??
I was about to give up and back track to the McDonalds for the restroom, when, in a desperate attempt, I stuck my hand under the aluminum rain shield, saying "Guys, the key is not--" *jingle*
Everyone stopped dead. I touched something metal. And three locks later, we had gained entry!
Oh hey, did I mention that it was a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was built in the 1300s. Cause it was. It smelled like it too.
Getting ready to hit the town
But if you think the fun stopped here, you are soooo so wrong.
This is Tallinn. Helsinki's night club. And it was time to put on those college kid party pants and pretend you don't need sleep.
Note: the only all-nighters I have done in the last few years involved a computer screen, drafting programs, and secretly swigging out of a wine bottle under my desk. Friends, we're not in architecture school anymore.
We started by meandering through Old Town, packed with partiers of all ages, lined with bars and clubs, and stopped at a brewery to hydrate.
At this point, it is approximately 2AM. And the buys want to find a club that they went to last time.
Next Stop: The Labor Bar
Yes, a laboratory-themed bar. Give your order to bar tenders in ripped lab coats and receive shots in test tubes and glowing cocktails in beakers. Go downstairs to dance it all off in the techno dance club.
Long story short, we left there at about 530AM, when they turned the music off.
I stopped for a street coffee on the way home, and we arrived back to the apartment to find that the 2 guys that had left 20 minutes earlier had only just managed to unlock the doors (boys, I swear) and that one of them decided to sleep inside the trunk.
He had just declared that he was "Stone sober"....and then closed himself inside of a trunk to sleep. When he crawled out at 11AM, he retracted that statement.
Our ferry on Saturday did not leave until 6PM, so we spent the day wandering the town, grabbing lunch in the town square, where a hoaky festival was ongoing, climbing up towards the city walls, exploring some churches, and drinking on the battlements of the old city wall.
It happened to be a stunningly gorgeous and perfectly cool fall day, so the ciders went down merrily and the setting was simply surreal.
Tallinn feels a lot like Prague, but smaller, more quaint, and less full of people.
The wall where we eventually cheered ciders and smiled the fall away.
Who's that cute kid?
A liquor run was made on the way back to the ferry. Jimmy and I stayed within our carrying capacity. The other boys were a little over zealous, however, and had some trouble wheeling their carts home.
The trip was topped off by a gorgeous Baltic sunset.
And we ended the night with a hearty meal of meat and potatoes and slept late on Sunday.
It was a completely ideal weekend, but I cant say that we will be doing it again in a long long while.
