(NB!  This post is long, rambling, and rather bathroom-focused!)

I wish I had done something more interesting today, but really the record shopping was the highlight.  The cold I mentioned yesterday has developed into a full-fledged sickness today.  My hope is that it’ll be two days developing, one day being actually sick (today), and then a day of recovery.  Point being, I only left the hostel for a couple hours today.

I walked to the harbor (sadama, I think) to buy some tickets- I wasn’t able to get them online for some reason.  On the way back, I got caught in a rain storm, so I had to wait it out in a little shopping mall-let.  The good thing about that was I got to puzzle about some pay-bathroom quandaries that I otherwise never would have considered.   Basically, I walked up to the bathroom, realized I had to pay for it, and then quickly realized I didn’t have any change.  ( .2 euros)   So I stood there, kind of in a daze.  This is not a problem I’d faced before: no money for the bathroom.  Just as I was about to come to terms with not entering the bathroom, the door opened!  Out came a prior customer.  In a moment, I wondered what the etiquette was.

It seemed to me kinda like when you put a bunch of money in a parking meter, and then you leave with a substantial amount left on the meter.  If you see someone hovering around to park, you might be inclined to get their attention and somehow communicate that there’s still plenty of time on this meter.  “Hey dude!  I may have gotten screwed into paying too much for something that should be free, but that doesn’t mean you should have to as well!”*  Of course, a lot of people have the opposite reaction: “I paid for no g-d good reason, this guy should have to, too.”  Being my first experience with a pay bathroom, I didn’t have any kind of intuition what the average person thought, and being (obviously) scared to death of bothering anyone ever in the least (especially while visiting their country!) I didn’t know whether to just slip in to the bathroom, or to continue fumbling in my pockets, trying to look like I was, in fact, a respectable paying customer.  Bear in mind, this entire time I really do have to go to the bathroom, so I only hesitate a moment longer before I enter and relieve myself.

Now, some time passes.  Remember, I’m waiting out a rain storm.  Also- I’ve been sick, which circumstance I react to by constantly guzzling water.  ALSO, I’m bored, and at a mall (!) so I’m working on my flash cards and drinking espresso.  Point being, it isn’t too terribly long until I have to use the bathroom again.  On the second encounter, there is a line of perhaps six men, all waiting outside the bathroom, all being patient for someone to either leave the facilities or for some cash-having person suffering a real emergency to pay our fee for us.  Just as I walk up, someone leaves the bathroom, and the seven of us file into the bathroom, then awkwardly wait our turns, avoiding eye contact, like at a baseball game.

So then I walk home, take a couple pictures.  On the way, I stop at an apteeka (think apothecary) to get some cold medicine, which medicine I decide upon by choosing the one with a cartoon marked with stars on areas corresponding my my discomfort.  It worked relatively well, I guess.

I spent some time talking to more Scottish people (have I mentioned them?  There’s a lot of them.) and doing flash cards.  Getting pretty comfortable with my chapter four vocab, though chapter 5 is still tricky.  (Apelsinimahl is orange juice, not apple juice.)  Then I went for another walk just to get out of the building, and almost immediately came across a record store!  With records and CDs and an indie rock section and 7″s and 10″s (well, really just one, but still) and DVDs and a helpful clerk (that was actually kinda weird.)

I tweeted earlier that I saw a Twin Shadow cd, which was neat, cause I’m at a tiny store in Estonia, and I really did think about getting it, because I somehow never got around to putting that on my iPod, and am thus rather Twin-Shadowless for the summer.  I bothered the clerk about some Estonian music, and he brought me four cds and sat me down in front of a player with headphones.  As I’m skipping through the third cd, he brings me a stack of another five!  I dutifully listened bits and pieces of all of them (many of which were comps, so I’m sure I missed something good) before settling on Ans. Andur (wikipedia link only good in Eesti and, oddly, Portuguese) and a band called, ick, Dallas (kind of un-googleable, sorta, kinda).  The Ans. Andur case is particularly cool looking- check out the picture.  There seems to be one big-deal indie label in town (Estonia’s Flying Nun, perhaps?)  called SekSound, though it very well could be the name of a coffeeshop or the Estonian wing of EMI.  Anyhow, reviews forthcoming…  perhaps.

Did laundry.

Now preparing for bed.  Headed to Haapsula tomorrow.  Who know’s what will await us there?!?!

*I actually think paying for parking in urban areas is certainly reasonable and probably underpriced.

Another rainy day, but now with the added bonus of having a cold! KIND OF A BUMMER!

That’s okay though, because, though I’ve got a mild cold and I am a total baby about being under the weather, I’m not sick enough to stop me from studying. I spent a solid five hours at the library today, which I hope to replicate tomorrow. Afterwards, I did flash cards for a few hours, and I made my plans for the next several days.  Basically, I don’t want to spend too much time in Tallinn now, because I’ll be here for almost all of July.  So, Wednesday I am going to go to Haapsalu, which is out west, and spend the day there and sleep in a hostel that claims to have a bowling alley!  We’ll see!

Thursday I’ll go to Parnu, where I’m not really sure what to expect, and then finally on Friday I’ll go to Tartu, which is kind of where I’ve been wanting to be all along.  I’ve heard a bunch of good things about it, and it’s the real university town here in Estonia.  Should be a good time.  I will probably stay in Tartu until Mr. Sutton gets here next week, but maybe I’ll keep on trucking and try to check out another city.  We will see.

No photos today: all I did was blow my nose and practice saying different kinds of pies.  Like meat pies (lihapirukad), curd pies (kohupiimapirukad), and, most deliciously, mushroom pies (seenepirukad).  Not a lot of opportunities to take photos.  I’m going to scope out hotels tomorrow, so maybe there will be time then.  I’ve actually kind have been avoiding seeing too much of Old Town Tallinn until my dad gets here, cause I figure we’ll get out share then.  But maybe I’ll have to see it tomorrow anyways.

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Earlier today I alluded to my first nightlife experience in Estonia.  Yike.  As a result of that night, I had something of a slow day, and may have not woken up until well after noon.  Anyhow,  Estonian bars.  I went to two, so it’s probaly not really that representative, but maybe it is?  Yeah.  What about Estonian bars?

They love flaming shots.  Seriously, they light every shot on fire.  And they don’t just have shots of whiskey or tequila, they’re these elaborate concoctions that involve four or five different things.  Also crazy: they drink their shots out of straws.  Seriously.  It’s about the silliest thing I’d ever seen.  Like, they line up the shots, light them on fire, and then everyone grabs a straw.  I just picked one up and drank it like an American (aka like it’s supposed to be drank!) and everyone got angry with me.  Also, they sell them in sets of five, and the glasses come in these cute little trays.  Anyhow, it was weird.  I didn’t actually drink that much cause I didn’t want today to go to waste.  Unfortunately, the fact that I left at 2am pretty much already meant today was going to be less than productive.  Silly silly.

So how unproductive was today?  I did flash cards for a couple hours, so that was nice, and I took a nice walk, but for some  really silly reason I decided to go see a movie.  Seriously, I never see movies, but I was standing in front of a theater right as the new X-Men movie was starting, and before I knew it I was inside with a large Pepsi, sitting in my assigned seat.  Yeah, they assign seats.

Last bit- there’s a music festival thing going on this weekend, and the city has posters for it everywhere.  Filter and PiL are the only bands I’ve heard of (incidentally, Filter came up on my iPod the other day.  What a mind-melting coincidence!!!).  Some of the bands have pretty cool names, though I won’t comment on which ones in particular caught my attention.

Yo dudes.  Another good day! I woke up a little late, but I was up a lot later than I planned, so it’s okay.  I was just falling alseep when a very chatty Australian came in.  Not complaining, we had a very nice chat, just kinda postponed bed time awhile.  Did get up by 9:30 though and went for a run again.  Two for two!  Maybe I take tomorrow off.  Anyhow, first thing I went to this little shack where they book bike tours.  They made it seem like they sell  out all the time, so I went there first thing!  I didn’t want to miss my chance!  OF course, only one other person had signed up, so it wasn’t quite necessary.

The tour didn’t leave until four, so I went to the Tallinn University library to study.  It’s not impossible, but kinda hard and totally distracting to try to work at the hostel.  I went and asked the guys at the front desk if I could study there, and after some discussion they let me, but told me I’d have to pay.  I was a little concerned about that, until they told me the fee to use the library was .32 euros.  Basically, I rented a desk for four hours for fifty cents.  I can deal with that.

Interesting thing I discovered about Tallinn University is that up until like five years ago, it didn’t exist.  There were several smaller universities around town, and around 2005 or so, they decided to all join forces and call themselves Tallinn University.  Quite different from University of Tartu, which was founded by the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus in like 1630 something.

Around 3:30 I went and got lunch and a better Estonian dictionary, and took a picture of a store:

We usually shy away from admitting it...

Then I went on the bike tour.  Now some photos.

Observations:

• The Soviets didn’t have a lot of respect for graves apparently.  When they built to one monument with the hands, it was already a graveyard.  They moved all the headstones, but according to the guide, they didn’t bother with moving the bodies.
• The guy whose name I photos is famous for, among other things, writing the definitive version of some Estonian folktale, which tells the story of the “great^n-grandfather” of all Estonians, who was apparently also a murderous drunk.
• The Lenin with wings is actually a mermaid, commemorating a boat that sank off the coast.  During Soviet times, they removed the cross from her hands, and said the empty weird hand was actually pointing to  where the ship sank.  The guide told us she once overheard a child ask an old lady what it was, and the lady replied it was Lenin with wings.  “The first time Lenin was mistaken for an angel.”
• Estonians are  not very stoked about their time under Soviet rule.  They don’t seem to terribly mind previous Russian or Swedish rule, but they’re still pissed about the commies.
• Nearly all the monuments and sculptures we saw were commemorating a tragedy, not a victory or something else nice.  Also, I heard two other stories about graves being missing or bodies misplaced during construction of the various memorials.
• It’s raining now, and time to study vocab.  Oh!  There’s also a video.