Reflecting on Tallinn
TALLINN – Thank God the pride parade in Estonia went peacefully last weekend.
I wrote this in Tallinn to a friend, but I think I’ll share it with all now that all Latvians have six toes.
I’m sitting in what could definitely be described as a bomb shelter. It’s an Internet cafe inside the Viru shopping center, in the basement inside the bus station, which occupies most of the basement. It’s always dark outside here.
There is a surprising lack of pretty girls in the capital of Estonia, at least, by Latvian standards. Maybe they all left to work in bordellos of Finland, bearing bastard-children. Or maybe a gay pride parade is not a kind of place one expects to see pretty girls. I don’t know. With just six hours spent in the capital, I really didn’t have time to look closer.
Last time I was here was when the country stood on the ruins of the Soviet Union and it still felt like we were together in the same post-Soviet crapper in some way. Now, it feels like a completely foreign country. In a word: civilization.
The country is filled with another language I don’t understand and has the money I’m not used to. 1 US dollar is worth about 12 kroner, so all prices seemed astronomical. This hour on the Internet, for example, costs 25.-.
But really, Tallinn has grown and improved greatly following my last visit in 1994. The only thing I remember from that visit was the Viru Hotel in the center and lots of small shops. Now, the Hotel transformed into a shopping center. And small shops were replaced by larger stores, including a McDonalds on Viru.
I had no problems speaking English. Unless it’s the older people I talked to.
One older woman who befriended me as we walked along the gay pride processional called Latvians “brothers”, complained about local Russians and Russia as a whole. I tried to speak English, at first. She didn’t understand. So we switched to Russian. She came to the parade out of curiosity to see whether any of her friends, relatives, strangers that she knows, are gays. And sure enough, she saw a woman who works in the health ministry marching in the parade.
“She always dressed in shirts and slacks,” the woman told me.
The other old guy who was watching “his friends” march asked me if I was living alone. I think it was a subtle hit on me.
“With wife and children,” I told him. “Many, many children.”
Well, if anything good came out of the parade, it’s fresh gossip information for the old lady, parades for those for and against sexual minorities. But it did seem like there were more people watching than participating. Like in Riga, the first time several years ago.
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