Trip to Tallin & Helsinki (I)

Last Wednesday I took the night bus and headed out to Tallin. It took almost 9 hours and I didn't really sleep a lot, just the last 3 hours but it wasn't as horrible as it seemed, even when I wasn't reading or listening music, just thinking.

Thursday 6th:
When I reached Tallinn I discovered that the bus didn't do the stops that it was supposed to do, that is: Terminal A and terminal D of the harbor and center of Tallinn, so I found myself in an unknown place with no money and no possibility of changing my litas to Estonian kroons. Well, since I brought two credit cards the situation was ok. But of course, one of the credit cards seemed not to work and with the other all the information was in Estonian. After waiting for a while to see if the currency exchange opened, someone told me that it opened at 9 in the morning and it was just 7... In the end I tried my Estonian skills and I managed to get some money just by touching the buttons. Kids, don't do that at home.

Someone could say that at that point everything was done: get a taxi and go to the D Terminal to leave the luggage at a locker. That would be the easy way of doing things. So I went out of the bus station and took a trolley that was supposed to go to the harbor but no idea in which direction. I took it and tried to pay but the driver rejected my money, probably because she considered I was giving a note that was too big. Great, now I'm going "somewhere" without ticket.
A couple of stations later I started to suspect about my way so I decided to go out of the bus and reconsider the whole situation. I walked a little and found another bus station where YES, there was a map of the city! I found my way to the harbor and draw it on a paper. Fifteen minutes later (well, maybe thirty minutes, because I entered a music store) I was leaving the luggage, changing some money and feeling extremely happy for having been able of dealing with the whole situation without using any kind of "shortcuts".


Free from the luggage, I walked around the city and had breakfast at a popular Finnish burger called HessBurger. Then I continued walking inside the old town until it was time for getting the ferry to Helsinki. I bought another burger with french fries and got inside the ferry, where I had to fight with a bird to eat my lunch. Yes, exactly that flying bastard that appears in the photo.

I spent the whole travel on the ferry reading "Hannibal rising" and looking at the people, that seemed to have an uncontrollable impulse for buying alcohol at the ferry.
When I reached Helsinki, my friend Eduardo was waiting for me, so thanks to its incredible knowledge of Helsinki we ended at his house not too much later. We spent the rest of the day talking, having dinner also with his girlfriend Sanna and finally, talking a little bit more while having a beer in a near bar.
Then we went bed to have some energy to visit the city the following day. But that's another story...