i c ice

The bed, pillows and tiger taking a nap on the duvet tempt me more than is reasonable at two in the afternoon but I am not here to sleep. The GLO Hotel exudes swank notes, tuned with great care to promote self indulgence. Refined and elegant, not stuffy or stiff: in the trendy moment.

Recessed lighting accentuates a sleek design and contemporary touches. The Palace Kämp property peddles more than a good night’s sleep. Like many boutique hotels, it capitalizes on the allure of its brand identity to pursue revenue beyond room rate alone. In another city, in another country, the fluffy tiger may roar to life and rekindle memories of seductive luxury. The tee-shirt and bathrobe will (re)cover and cuddle anew. For a price.

It took but two hours to cross the Baltic Sea’s Gulf of Finland from Tallinn. The Tallink ferry that I imagined to be a standard-issue affair of modest proportions turned out to be a grand ship. Comfy café seating has replaced the traditional rows of institutional plastic chairs. A three-storey atrium reaches from the sixth floor to the ninth and arches over a stage and dance floor. Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Waters” kicked off the entertainment, a choice that puzzled me given the nautical nature of the voyage. The Tallinn memorial to the 1994 sinking when hundreds perished came into (sharp) focus.

Fast images of Formula 1 race cars on television monitors reposition my morbid anxieties to the KL circuit for the Malaysia Grand Prix. Fresh from his fist success in Melbourne, Jenson Button would go on to score another win with his Brawn Mercedes, albeit abbreviated when officials stopped the race because of torrential rains after 31 of 56 laps. (He would place third in Shanghai two weeks later but retain the overall lead.) The roar of engines capable of displacing zillions of horsepower tickles me greatly. Formula 1 races don’t come around every week (never, in fact, in the US) but every time I receive a call my phone throttles to life. It also vibrates nicely.

Tallink throws in free wireless internet access and I composed my first high-sea missives on mango. With 60 EEK left in my pocket I studied ways to spend them in one of the cafeterias. Prices are expressed in Estonian crowns and European Union euros, which the clerk allowed me to combine.

I expected a touch of Cold War nostalgia – somber skies, vertiginous waves and low fog - to shroud the transition between the East and the West but the seas were calm and free of international incidents. Except for the disturbing sight of a massive amount of garbage floating off the coast of Helsinki. As the ferry sailed closer I realized chunks of ice littered the ocean beyond the ships’ blue windows.
Estonia and Finland are both E.U. member countries and are signatories to the Schengen Agreements that remove internal border controls. The days of suspicion and restrictions have vanished. I disembarked without being examined. The last furtive glance at my passport dates back six border crossings. Customs rules remain in effect for excise tax products such as cigarettes and alcohol. Travelers may transport a minimum of 10 liters of spirits, 90 liters of wine and 110 liters of beer without duty if intended for personal consumption. The many passengers lugging booze by the case must have been aware of the generous allowance and customs officials let them and their clinking cargo in without question.

A short cab ride later (short but pricey at 15.30€, thanks to an inflated Sunday flag charge) I dropped my bags at my GLO chateau. It is the second time I find myself in Helsinki in a few days. I had time for a smoked salmon and longonberry on rye chased by a cappuccino when I waited for my connecting flight to Tallinn at the airport. I could go for the same menu right now. An abridged stay forces me to ditch my room’s creatures of comfort and venture out into a chilly spring afternoon that everyone else welcomed with relief. Food and drink anybody?

The second northernmost capital in the world (Reykjavik takes the honors), Helsinki bathes in a bitter climate on the same latitude as Seward, Alaska. The capital sits in the comparative warmth at the very southern end of the country. From there meteorological conditions don’t improve. The city of Rovaniemi, at the Arctic Circle, is 830 kms away. A full quarter of Finland - mostly the province of Lapland and lots of reindeer - lies above this line. It is another 280 kms to Ivalo where an arcing finger of Norway meets Russia and cuts off access to the Berents Sea. The Saami, the last indigenous people in Europe, hang around these parts. I suspect a visit to Helsinki conjures visions of tropical heat...

But it is barely 4 degrees under brooding grey skies, an invitation to seek shelter and energy inside a coffee house. I set out to partake of the two at Café Krypta located with spiritual convenience inside the Lutheran Cathedral. Except that after visiting the sparse interiors and walking the perimeter I don’t find it. I have another address on the Esplanadi but since the Uspenski Cathedral is two blocks away, I delay refueling some more.

Before I figure out how to circumnavigate the construction around the hillside red bricks, verdigris copper roof and onion bulb Orthodox church, a trio of young men stops me for direction to a hostel. Unable to help them, I point them in the direction of a nearby guard. As I walk away the presidential palace guard motions them not to come any closer. Another guard exits the building and after a few cute maneuvers with his rifle approaches them, presumably more loquacious.

Uspsenski smells of incense like all Orthodox churches and since a visit to the Serbian Orthodox Church in Dubrovnik I love it. Unfortunately I have all of five minutes before someone announces that visiting hours are over and I have little time to admire the richly decorated interior of marble pillars, gold-leaf paintings and icons.

Too late, much too late for new Tsukiji fish stories at Kauppatori but right on time to watch a ferry jostle its way across an ice-covered harbor. I am mesmerized by the sight and resolve, illico, to postpone coffee in spite of the growing urgency to revive my senses. My Helsinki Card includes public transport including this ferry-cum-ice. An informative booklet describes pages of complimentary or reduced admissions and fees at museums and attractions but I suspect it takes judicious preparations to maximize its cost.

Minutes later I observe the ferry plow over ice floes and it head towards Suomenlinna, an island fortress that occupies a prominent spot in the Finnish consciousness. Its strategic location made it attractive to Sweden, which ruled the country for four centuries until 1809 when it ceded it to Russia. A century later, enterprising Finns seized the opportunity to divest themselves from a budding Soviet Union distracted by the events of the 1917 revolution.

The island showcases fortifications, churches and museums in a lovely park setting that is sure to become lovelier when the thermometer leaps far past the freezing point I summer. The third week of July is ideal, I hear. The visitor center, 800 meters from the landing dock, was on the verge of closing, too. Nice interpretive displays but with signs in Finnish and Swedish only, the country’s two official languages although speakers of the former dominate. A century of Russian rule did not endear the population to the language. It would have been a third unrelated possibility as Finnish and Swedish share no linguistic antecedents. Like Estonian and Hungarian, Finnish belongs to the Finno-Ugric language family, a collection of dispersed relatives that traces its roots to the Ural Mountains.

Suomenlinna (Sveaborg in Swedish) is a UNESCO world heritage site. About 800 people live on the island. A long waiting list awaits would-be dwellers but rents are likely less than on the mainland, an employee at the visitors center said. After playing around bunkers, I could not delay getting my afternoon beverage and retreated inside a tiny café at last. I joined a conversation between two women, one from Italy and the other from Michigan, on a break from study in Copenhagen. In the warmth of Café Vanille, we talked, what else, about the collapsing real estate prices in Michigan. I shared a news piece I heard about North Detroit, a neighborhood of catastrophic depression, where homes sell under $10,000, some under a grand! The Michigan lady knows a friend who purchased a condo in Detroit for $6,000. “You still might not want to move there,” she said, unsure that homeownership in her home state’s largest city is a deal at any price. In a country where preposterous real estate speculation ruled until a couple of years ago, such prices defy belief. The promissory carrot lies within reach. Not so in my home state where a study demonstrated that a couple who earns the average wage in any of California’s 58 counties cannot afford a home in any of them. Hence the importance of “creative” lending practices to qualify applicants when incomes bear no relationship to the cost of housing. Until the fraud collapses, fictional industries reel and the debacle spills over onto the rest of the economy.

Kiasma’s 18:00 closing time on Sundays leaves me with less than an hour to get to the contemporary art museum by tram. I sweet talked the admission clerk into letting me in for the last 30 minutes and whizzed by the colorful and exuberant Ola Kolehmainen photographs in the “A Building is not a Building” exhibition to scoot over to “Choosing my Religion.” The first photograph to confront me was of a woman clad in a burka. The oft-seen yet still troublesome image of a human being hidden from view, subjected to visual censorship, set a provocative tone to the spacious installation with light coming in through skylights draped with images of blossoms on screened panels. Using pictures, music, paintings and iconography Marita Liulia contrasts the viewpoints of nine religions. She posits a question that is seldom asked since most adherents of religions did not select their faith but rather inherited it from geography. If we were to choose rationally, would we still pick the faith assigned from birth? Compare and choose!

The exhibition injected an unreasonable amount of energy for a Sunday evening at the end of three weeks around Europe. Viewing contemporary art often infuses similar inspiration. After play acting dinner scenes between members of the Medici family over the single subject matter of what would become the collection of paintings at Florence’s Uffizi Gallery (“Honey, guess what I commissioned today,” he asks. “Another ‘Madonna and Child’ perhaps?” she coos), the freedom of Paris’ Beaubourg (officially the Centre Pompidou but a name that has not stuck with French audiences) had filled me with enthusiastic visions and refreshed spirit. Modern art at its core epitomizes the liberation from artistic constraints, the very same that enshrined previous art movements. Established religions thrive on the enforcement of rules. “Choosing my Religion” exposes practices and dogma to dare us to invent our own interpretations. It closes with a few choice words like:

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” - the Talmud

“Everyone has their own truth.” - Chinese saying

“What you think you become.” - the Upanishads

“Every established religion was once a heresy.” - Henry Thomas Becker

“A too ardent faith can lead past paradise.” - Japanese proverb

I rushed to the museum bookstore to buy a copy of the exhibition catalogue. Unfortunately its hardcover-only price (45€) allowed me to peruse but not acquire.

The excitement freed me to affront the deteriorating conditions outside as if it was truly springtime. A low fog descended upon Helsinki by the time I reached Järnvägstorget next door and tinted the sky a disturbing grey. Like a turtle I withdrew behind the protection of my jacket’s high collar, eyes big at the cold all around me. From this station next year, a high speed train will shorten the journey time to St. Petersburg (Санкт-Петербург) to 3½ hours from the current 5 hours. I wanna go!
The menu at Sea Horse featured reindeer steaks but by the time I showed up for dinner with guide Leena Kuosmanen they had run out. We settled on pike perch à la Mannerheim, a man with a distinguished military career who became president for a short while. I recognized his name from a statue in front of Kiasma.

The traditional restaurant in the residential Eira neighborhood displays the sort of charm and respectability that come with age. We talked about sisu, the fortitude and resilience of the Finns, the stoic toughness that also exhibits a simple side. “We are relaxed, we don’t worry,” Leena said. “When you hear the trams, you know everything’s fine in the country.”

A coffee consumption more than twice the European average might help keep the population sanguine. Sisu in a vacuum it is not. Like other nations on the continent Finland privileges the collective welfare of its citizens. Access to health care, education, work protection and paid holidays is not construed as reward for certain professional or social classes. The U.S. system is as unfathomable as it is unconscionable even if it might result in lesser taxation. The promise of a new, radical occupant in the White House will not bring about an end, even a change, to the stranglehold of inequalities on the country. The national debate barely includes universal health care. The notion of morality and decency in labor laws is not so much utopian as it is nonexistent.

The tram squeaks across the drizzle of an early April night. Leena will board a train at Järnvägstorget, which she will top off with a 45-minute walk on snow-covered roads even as I insisted her husband ought to give her a lift. "A good time to think," she said.
I would opt for a sauna to mull on the end of kaamos, the dark season, but public facilities close on Sundays.

Tomorrow I will have fourteen hours and fifteen minutes aloft to contemplate the (eventual?) end of my own kaamos. ”L’Affaire Francis Blake” will stave off any introspective attempt. I will blame the Blake et Mortimer adventure for distracting me and postponing the (eventual??) end of an illusion.

I do not know it yet but I will land at LAX to be fingerprinted and photographed by an immigration officer, potential criminal that I am.

No illusion there. Welcome home.

EEK!

Photographs of idyllic tropical islands fill the pages of travel brochures that promise carefree holidays, toes in the sand under a warm sun. From my perch, azure seas lap at white-sand beaches that ring Koipsi Island. I can’t make out any palm trees but aren’t these sailboats bobbing without a care at the periphery of this exotic getaway? Fantasy fulfilled.
Not quite. Contrary to appearances, the Caribbean or South Pacific it is not: I am minutes from landing at Ulemiste. Koipsi’s location in the Gulf of Finland’s arm of the Baltic Sea guarantees the opposite of sultry although with 7 degrees and clear skies the day is paradisiacal by Estonian standards.

For several weeks I elaborated a series of travel plans articulated around a dual premise: my destination had to be in a country I had never visited and in a warm locale. The Alhambra still holds the same allure, but I have been to Spain three times. Granada, however, would have satisfied the temperature requirement. St. Petersburg most definitely would not, but blind obedience to rules - even self imposed - is not characteristic.

Amman and Petra looked great, too, as did Cairo and the pyramids. The problem was to find a way to be in back in Zurich in time for my transatlantic flight home. Then came the NPR program “Travel with Rick Steves” where the host and two guests extolled the attributes of Tallinn. Well below the radar of American consciousness the Estonian capital suited the desire to step off the beaten path. A perfect fit except for those meager seven degrees.

Tallinn, the largest city in a pocket of a country of 1.3 million inhabitants, radiates medieval charm. With neighbors Latvia and Lithuania, it is one of the three Baltic Republics to have declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. All are European Union member countries and entry into any of the former Soviet Republics is trouble-free, a departure from the days when Moscow controlled access as it does to St. Petersburg. Part of my decision not to go there (for now) stemmed from my inability to figure how whether I need a visa and how to obtain it.

While in France I saved time for an overnight at my sister Anic’s and a first medieval foray at the Tapisserie de Bayeux, an embroidered chronicle woven by monks after the conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy, in 1061, which earned him the new moniker of William the Conqueror. We stepped inside the Norman Romanesque Gothic Cathedral, consecrated in 1077 (the construction lasted several centuries) with William in attendance. The Tapisserie was once housed there. We plodded in the footsteps of more recent history on the wet sand of Utah Beach where the Allied Forces unleashed Operation Overlord on June 6, 1944. American troops had a comparatively easy time landing and did not suffer the staggering casualties of Omaha Beach. A few days before D-Day, the BBC had broadcast the obscure half of the first stanza of a poem by Verlaine. “Les sanglots longs des violons de l’automne” would be followed in the early hours of June 6 by “Blessent mon coeur d’une langueur monotone.”

“The long sobs of the violins of autumn wound my heart with a monotonous languor.” It was a signal to the Resistance to attack German positions and sabotage the infrastructure.
The brisk winds at dusk forced me to zip up my coat and seek shelter from the violence that visited these shores 65 years ago. The evening brought an unexpected guest when a call came that my nephew Sylvain’s kid was being expelled from the boarding school where he had been a student. I last saw Quentin 12 years ago when he was five years old in Lisbon. Perfect timing, if I may say so myself.In Paris I stayed at my mom’s new place in the 18th arrondissement where she moved in September after almost four decades in the 7th. My other sister Josiane picked me up at the Gare de Lyon where my train from Lausanne arrived in mid afternoon. Six hours later I started to feel sick, a repeat of the condition that plagued my last two visits to France.
My friend Nicolas moved in his new office at the Ecole Militaire opposite the Eiffel Tower. We ate at the officer school’s cafeteria that serves a full menu including beer, wine and spirits at unbeatable prices. It gave me a chance to revisit the old neighborhood and step inside the military graduate school for the first time. Nicolas expects to make it to the rank of general by 2368.

Seen on the streets of Paris, a trompe l’oeil billboard that declares enigmatically: Il faut se méfier des mots. One must distrust words.

Heard on the radio, a cheeky albeit untenable quote: Je voudrais me suicider mais je n'ai pas le temps. I would like to commit suicide but I don't have time.

A single Air Baltic plane was parked at a gate of the modern airport when I flew in on the super short jump from Helsinki. The wave of economic turmoil that swelled in the United States has washed on shores the world over. When communist regimes imploded, international financial and monetary organizations pushed Eastern European countries to adopt market reforms at a rapid pace. Once the fastest growing economies on the continent in the era of cheap money, the three Baltic states verge on collapse.

I settled at the Baltic Hotel Imperial, a cozy property erected against the fortification. Only a few kilometers remain of the original ramparts that encircled the town and protected it from attacks, but most of the buildings date back to the Middle Ages.

I climbed Toompea Hill to check out remnants of the Castle built by the Germans in 1227 and to gaze at the bulbous towers of the Alexander Nevski Cathedral. With the Cathedral of Saint Mary the Virgin, the Russian orthodox and Lutheran churches anchor the Toompea skyline, a district that was a distinct city until 1877.

Dozens of steps down steep staircases and I was back in the vicinity of my hotel. I wandered the cobbled streets towards St. John’s Church to attend a Christos Oratorio performed by young Estonian singers. The country has a strong choral singing tradition that articulates its national identity. Around 30,000 people sing in choirs. It played a central role in its march towards independence when hundreds of thousands would gather at Lauluväljak every five years to find inspirational comfort in songs banned by the Soviet government. The Singing Revolution succeeded in overcoming the occupiers. The next Song Festival is scheduled for early July.

Tallinn’s preserved medieval center holds great appeal. The town grew prosperous in the Middle Ages when it belonged to the Hanseatic League, a mercantile and military alliance around the North Sea and Baltic Sea centered on the northern German city of Lübeck. Cities and their guilds established a trade monopoly and pledged mutual assistance. Tallinn flourished thanks to its strategic position, then as now, between northern and western Europe and Russia.

New buildings compete for space with houses erected almost a thousand years ago. Often the medieval and the contemporary intermingle in a patchwork of polished stones and pastel colored walls. Narrow alleys and streets much wider than in other medieval cities radiate from Raekoja Plats, the Town Hall Square.

A light rain slickens the cobblestones and I hasten my pace with diligence. Darkness smothers the yellow lights that cast dangerous shadows. I imagine a nobleman hurrying about, the raised heels of his knee-high boots clicking wildly on the stones of the winding alley, his cape trailing in a coil of wind. The masons, furriers, blacksmiths, coopers and saddlers have closed shop. The jesters and troubadours shuttered their entertainment. Even the rat catchers called it a day.

Tallinn sleeps.The watchers are not sleeping. At the corner of Pikk and Pagari an inconspicuous and elegant cut-stone building played a central role in controlling the activities of the population. The KGB headquarter is noticed for the boarded up windows on the ground floor. Its location near St.Olaf’s Church is not accidental: the KGB made good use of the 124-meter steeple for its antennas during the Cold War, fueling a hysteria that permeated the United States but largely bypassed Europe.At the time of construction in 1549, St. Olaf was the tallest building in Europe. I climbed the narrow and steep stairs to the top of the stone portion of the tower to be greeted by a sea of red, green and burnt orange tin roofs and the actual Baltic Sea. On a clear day you can see freedom.

Independence has not ushered a complete, radical change of the political landscape. Some politicians who ruled under Soviet oversight escaped blame and retain power. “They say they did it to destroy the system,” said an executive with the Museum of Occupations, his voice rich with skepticism. The institution traces German and Russian rule over the country from the beginning of World War II to Independence. Once proudly exhibited around the city, busts of Lenin and other communist leaders gather dust in the basement.

The old town section of Tallinn is blessedly free of examples of Stalinist architecture. The unadorned, drab slabs of concrete have been relegated to outlying areas. At the Balti Jaam train station I boarded Tram 1 and headed to Kadriorg for a taste of tsarist housing practices. Like in Paris it seems that it is no longer necessary to show transit passes to conductors. I kept the Tallinn Card in my pocket. Beyond tram and bus lines, the card gives admission to museums and sights, guides tours and discounts at restaurants, shops and activities. A 24-hour card costs 375 eesti krooni, or Estonian crowns. The euro changeover date has been pushed back because Estonia is not yet able to meet financial and economic criteria. The exchange rate is fixed, however, and it is a matter of time before the € replaces the EEK, the current worldwide debacle notwithstanding.

A guided tour of Kadriorg Park, Palace and the Kumu Art Museum sounded promising but the English version was later in the day. At 300 EEK it would have been a bargain with the Tallinn Card. Instead I sidestepped the ducks walking on the pond’s (frozen) water for a self-guided tour of the palace built by Tsar Peter the Great for his wife Catherine in the early 18th century. As a summer residence, of course, as one would not want to be caught in the same house year-round. The splendid northern baroque estate houses a museum of modest pretensions. On this early spring day the landscape gardens were barely thawing and more muddy than manicured.

I fortified myself with a potent Estonian coffee made with Vana Tallinn liqueur at Reval Café. I got buzzed quickly and the hints of vanilla, citrus, anise and spice were lost on me. A second pastry mitigated the effect of the alcohol. I could have spent the better part of the day in the cozy coffee house named after Tallinn’s official German name until the country’s first independence in 1918. Cappuccinos may not be the drink of choice of knights but one would not have been out of place at the Reval Café, stone walls and all.

Intrigued by the “new Estonian cuisine” descriptive in a Finnair’s in-flight magazine piece on gourmet dining I made a reservation for dinner at Restoran Ő. The atmosphere was most subdued and reminded me of the sophisticated ultra lounges of Las Vegas. Rail-thin waitresses wear white gloves to deliver impeccable dishes but I could not get over the sensation that it was too formulaic, that the restaurant’s personality did not develop as much as it was marketed. My request for tap water delivered a tiny bottle of Evian without explanation but with a charge on the bill.
After a stop at the Rimi supermarket very busy with a crowd hoping to beat the 22h00 deadline to buy booze I peeked inside the DM Baar, curious at the musical selection that spilled onto the street and that I recognized from walking by earlier in the day. True to their model, Depeche Mode tunes –to the exclusion of all others - make up the perpetual rotation of the playlist at the DM.

In the fortification towers above the ramparts I looked for a meurtrière from which to respond to a potential attack. From the narrow opening I scanned the flatlands beyond the moat for ambushes and prepare to counter the enemy. Hot oil poured from a cauldron or a shot from an arquebus? Ideally I'd prefer to abstain from hand-to-hand combat even if I imagine I would look hot wielding a sword.

I climbed stairs angled like ladders into turrets of the Epping Tower Museum, ducked under wooden support beams that almost decapitated me and wondered if I could get fitted for a coat of chainmail. How heavy are those outfits? About 20 kilos, a perfect fit with the baggage allowance on airlines. The plate armor is subject to excess-weight fees.

Estonia flirts with a pseudo reversal of Russification, the policies that encouraged Russian settlement to dilute Estonian culture during the years of domination by the Soviet Union. Finnish or English language signage informs visitors but Russian is absent from the landscape even while two thirds of Tallinn’s resident claim Russian ancestry. Aleksadr, a young desk clerk at my hotel, was born and grew up in Tallinn of parents who moved to Estonia from Moscow when the region was part of the U.S.S.R. No longer a Russian citizen, he is also not considered Estonian in spite of his birthplace and fluency in Estonian. He holds an "alien passport," he said. From his upbringing he feels Estonian but for the moment, his ancestry labels him a man without a country. He is therefore not eligible for posts where Estonian citizenship is required, and spoke of cultural friction between residents of Estonian stock versus Russian stock.

Behind the heavy wooden doors of the Bonaparte Cafe I dug provocatively in an apricot tart with cheese curd while Charles Trenet's evocative “La Mer” lifted me out of 13th century Tallinn into contemporary melancholy. I reached for A. Le Coq, the most popular local beer with a French name that reflects a Huguenot ancestry largely disconnected from Estonia.

Time was running out and I rushed to inspect the tombstones of the former sanctuary on St. Catherine’s Passage. By accident I followed a cobblestoned path to a courtyard and Pizza Grande, Aleksandr's pick for a last supper should he ever leave Tallinn - and he wants to move to Florida.
The youthful restaurant inhabits a maze of several rooms with low ceilings linked by arched doorways. Of the 33 pizzas, I picked the vegetaarne (vegetarian) Zanettorro for its asparagus, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, capers and pesto. I steered clear from the vanilla cream and cinnamon, two of the magus (sweet) toppings. The price of soft drinks hiked up from 15 to 18 EEK, close enough to tempt a dip into a glass of Finlandia, Saaremaa or Viru Valge vodka for a mere 25 EEK.

One last spin through Tallinn. The high seas are calling. A taxi overcharges me before delivering me to the Tallink dock. I’m not saying anything but it’s the third time I catch someone trying to cheat me out of a few EEKs…

On a clear day you can see freedom. I'll be there in two hours.