I Love Estonia

I finally met up with Bo and we are in Estonia, which I love. It is officially now one of my favorite countries I have ever visited. In Helsinki you can easily spend 6 dollars on a bottle of water. If you tried to give someone 6 dollars for a bottle of water in Estonia, they would probably hit you.

Bo and I went to a beach town called Parnu, basically the California of the Baltics. We swam in the water and then asked some people on the beach if they knew of any place that might not be completely booked and a girl said, "Let me just make a call." She called her mom who owned a hotel and a few minutes later we were on our way to an apartment that turned out to be impossibly nice, fully furnished complete with a book on modern Swedish cooking, for 77 euros. Somewhat pricey but this was also one of the nicest places I have ever stayed. Then we hit the town where communication instantly broke down.

Unlike Finland where everyone speaks English and often times as well or better than you, in Estonia there are many people who speak little to no English. In the beach town we bought sausage from a guy in the street and he literally did not speak a word of it. He shook his head angrily when we would try to speak English to him. I wanted a half a piece of sausage and I kept pointing at the sausage and every time I would point at the sausage he would take his knife and cut off a piece for me to sample. I was trying to communicate that I in fact wanted to buy the whole thing and not just have him hand-feed me tiny morsels for the next 15 minutes, but he did not understand me. I tried Finnish too, but that seemed just to agitate him even more. Finally I convinced him that I wanted to buy it and he charged me 2.50 euros and we were on our way. Everyone happy and me with more sausage than I could ever possibly eat.

Now we are in a smaller town called Viljandi and our room is beautiful and has a balcony and only cost us 40 euros. We're going to the beach in a second and I can't wait. I love Estonia.