February 02, 2005

Baltic Vacation Part Four: Back in Estonia

So after a (relatively) shenanigan-free reunion in Helsinki, Grant, Jake and myself took the ferry over to Estonia. We arrived a little after 7pm and...

Wednesday, February 2nd

...hit the streets so that we could locate a hotel that was in a good spot but also met our (broke-ass travelers') budget that we'd set. (We agreed that we didn't want to spend more than €30 per person per night - giving a budget of around €90 a night.)

The first place we checked out was this really old but redone fancy hotel that was right off the main square of the Old Town part of Tallinn. We asked about a double room and were told that it cost €140 per night (waaay out of our budget!). We backed away from the counter for a quick powwow, and after a ten minute huddle, went back to the counter, explained that we were pretty broke, told them about our "budget" and asked if there was any way they could come down on the price.

The nice lady behind the counter got on the horn with her manager and after a few minutes of back and forth, told us that they couldn't do €90 a night, but they could do €110 a night. Hmmm, very close. We decided to pretend to leave and see if they'd chase us out and offer to meet our stated €90 goal. They didn't. So we stood outside for a few minutes and then we decided that someone should go back in and try to haggle again. Grant and I both voted for Jake explaining that "They can tell that you're Jewish so they probably expect it from you."

Jake went back in, worked a little Tribe magic (it's in the blood, you know) and managed to get them to knock off another €15, down to their FINAL OFFER of €95 a night. We gratefully accepted, apologized for making them go through what had turned into a 35 minute process and...

...crammed into the teeny tiny elevator to drop off our bags in our room! Score! But when we got up to our room we discovered that it was only slightly larger than the elevator we'd just ridden in and we knew there was absolutely no way that the three of us (plus all of the Estonian and Russian sluts we planned on bringing over) would be able to live and sleep there comfortably for four days. We spent 20 minutes sitting in the room in our coats trying to figure out how, after hassling the shit out of the management into giving us a €45 a night discount on the room, that we'd be able to gracefully back out and tell them "Thanks, but no thanks!" This time Jake and I nominated Grant ("Your accent makes you sound more polite!") to be the bearer of bad news.

We took the elevator back down to the lobby and Jake and I stood by the door, while Grant, too embarrassed to get too close to the counter, yelled across the lobby "Thanks, but the room's too small so we're going to go look elsewhere." He started for the door and while we all scurried out trying not to disappear up our own assholes from embarrassment, he turned and yelled over his shoulder, almost as an afterthought, "Please don't charge my friend's credit card or we'll have to go home early! Thanks!" Hahah. (They didn't charge me either. Thanks for understanding, nice people at the fancy hotel that we couldn't afford.)

We ended up walking about .5 km outside of "Old Town" and checking into the brand new, super-nice Hotel Tallink (owned by Best Western) and scored a way bigger double room for €92 a night! Yaaaatzee! They even threw in a cot so that no one had to sleep on the floor.

As we rode the hissi up to our room, each person took a turn explaining to the other two their reasons that they "shouldn't have to sleep on the cot." (Grant: "It was my idea to come to Estonia." Jake: "I hooked you up with that free trip that Finlandia paid for!" Me: "The hotel is on my credit card!") In the end, none of us could manage to convince the other that they should have to sleep on the cot - and none of us wanted to take turns and rotate "cot-nights" (anyone who's smelled Jake's sheets is with me here), so we decided to solve it like grownups.

And play a two-round rock, paper, scissors tournament! Jake shows his fierce scissors!

Grant practices paper. So here's how we (arbitrarily) decided the rules should work. Three of us would all shoot together and for each time you beat someone, you got a point. The first person out of the three of us to score eleven points, would be able to claim a bed, leaving the remaining two suckas to shoot it out, mano y mano, for the remaining bed.

Scissors, or Rock? I refused to even hint at what my favorite jam was. Ok, got the rules? No? Well, don't worry - we took photos of every round so I can give the play by play until you get the idea. (By the way, the real reason I took play by play pics is because I've known Grant for a long time and knew that if he lost and there wasn't photographic evidence that could be used to reconstruct the entire event, he'd insist there'd been a math error and the whole thing would need to be "done again." His insistence on do-overs will keep on happening until something changes - namely, Grant wins. Hahaha).

Rock, Scissors, Rock! So that's:
1 point for Brian
0 points for Jake
1 point for Grant

Scissor, Scissor, Paper!
Brian: 2
Jake: 1
Grant: 1

Rock, Scissor, Rock!
Brian: 2
Jake: 1
Grant: 2

Scissor, Scissor, Rock!
Brian: 2
Jake: 1
Grant: 4

Paper, Rock, Scissor! (This shit's exciting, huh?) So I'm guessing you get the idea of how the 3-way scoring works now. The score's went back and forth, and after several more rounds...

Jake was the first person to reach thirteen points! (We'd originally said eleven, but everyone knows that you have to play until someone "wins by two.")

Here he is doing his backwards victory dive onto Bed #1.

That left Grant and I to duke it out one on one. This time we were going to play to seven points (must win by two). Loser sleeps on the cot for ALL FOUR NIGHTS! Ready?

Grant pulled ahead quickly and secured a 3-0 lead. (I got nervous and my lower-back began to to ache in cot-anticipating agony)

"My mighty rock CRUSHES your puny scissors!" I decided it was time to pull out my Jedi mind tricks (despite having heard they only work on the "feeble minded") to see if I could turn my luck around.

Three throws later, I'd managed to tie it up 3-3!

Then 4-3, my favor.

Fast-forward to 6-4 in my favor. Will this be the final throw, or will Grant manage to rally? Check out his face! (By the way, this was pretty much the most fun way I've ever had deciding something because it gets so drawn out that there's really time to let the tension mount). And the verdict is....

...BOOOOYAH! Scissor SHREDS Paper! (We were both screaming when this photo was taken. Hahahah).

Check out Grant falling to the floor against the cot! Hahahah. Who's sleeping on the cot?

THIS GUY! And who gets to sleep in the big-boy bed?

THIS GUY! Hahaha.

Grant was laughing a lot and seemed to be taking his loss fairly well.

I decided to the least I could do would be help him set his cot up.

grant — Once Grant got settled onto the cot to check out how comfortable it was, his laughter stopped. Jake and my laughter, however, did not stop.

Which quickly started making Grant grumpy.

Awwwww! Gwumpy Gwant! After the excitement of the big tournament had worn off (and we'd stopped teasing Grant for fear him fucking with us later that night while we were soundly asleep in our super-comfy, GROWN UP-SIZED beds) we decided to take a little nap before...

...heading out later that night to meet up with Anna! Anna, who? Don't tell me you've already forgotten that towards the end of Baltic Vacation: Part Two, Christina, my Russian hostel desk clerk, had given me her friend Anna's number and I made plans to go out with her when I was back in town! Well-rested, I got on the horn and coordinated with Anna a place we could all meet up.

Anna showed up to meet us at some bar in Old Town wearing an electric blue, full length fur coat (you can sort of see it behind her head in the background). On the phone, I had told her that we all should meet up (meaning me, her and my two friends), have a drink and then all head out together and she could show us some fun clubs where my friends could meet cute girls. So we show up to meet her and the first thing she says is, "Oh," looks to me, then to Grant, then to Jake, then back to me and squints, "I see you've brought (p a u s e) your friends." Making Grant and Jake feel awkward before they'd even been properly introduced.

Horrible start aside, we still went into the bar and had a few drinks together. Anna told us about how she was originally from Kurdistan, but had also lived in Paris for years while working for the Swiss Embassy (wait, huh?). Her visa over in Paris had run out and now she was living in Estonia with her four year old son waiting to go to back to France or some other country. The bar was getting tiresome, so I suggested we all head out to a club together. She pointed at Grant and Jake: "They should go to a club called Hollywood. I am not going. I do not like clubs. I came out because I thought we (points to me) were going to go out." Uncomfortable silence. Me: "Well, how about we all go to the club together for a bit and then you and I can split off later?" Anna: "No, we go to bar. They go to club. I'm not interested in club. Too loud." Me: "Ok, how about we walk them over to the club, then?" She agreed.

As we got outside and started walking, Jake came up and started asking Anna all sorts of random questions and gesturing to me subtlety with his head that Grant, who was hanging back a few feet from us, wanted to have a word with me. I drifted back to Grant. "What's up?" "Dude, Jake's running interference. We've got to ditch this girl!" "Why?" "I'm not sure. But something's not right here. I think she's a hooker." "Uhhh, I don't think she's a hooker. Wouldn't a hooker be more direct? I mean, prostitution's legal here, right?" "Well, she might not be a hooker, but she wants something. Something I tell you! Either to marry you or maybe, ummm, to steal your kidneys, but you CANNOT GO OFF WITH HER!" Grant was being so vehement that something was not right that as he continued to insist we MUST LOSE HER, I sorta started getting spooked and finally agreed to it.

Instead of trying to talk my way out of it, I simply let Jake carry the conversation with Anna for another five minutes until we got to the club. As soon as we got to the parking lot, I told her "Well, I think I'm going to stick with my friends! Goodnight!" I gave her a peck and ran to catch up with my friends who were already on their way into the club.

On one hand I was relieved because it was an awkward situation, but on the other hand, you're not having an adventure until you're wishing you were home safe in your bed and I was bummed that I'd passed on the opportunity to get involved in some crazy-ass racket. (Or at least I was until I recently saw the movie "Hostel" and I'm now 50% convinced that Grant's spider-sense may have just saved me from involuntarily donating my kidneys to the Russian black market organ trade.)

Any way, on the walk over we'd discovered that Club Hollywood was closed for construction and so we headed over to a relatively new club called Parliament which was in full-effect when we got there. Walking around the crowd with Grant, I bumped into...

...the skinniest, hot-in-a-weird-way girl we'd seen so far in Estonia. I started talking to her and taking her picture and telling her I liked her stomach (or lack there-of)...

...so she's laughing and throwing her head back and showing off her (creepy-hot) stomach and the entire time this is going on...

...this is the expression on Grant's face. Hahahah.

"How about you, touch your friend's stomach a bit? Yeah, there you go! Like that!"

"Perfect! How about we sit down and take some more photos?" Actually, taking pictures was already getting boring, but it was much easier than to trying to yell/converse with them over the loud music in a language that they'd already made clear they only had a cursory grasp of.

So we sat down and took more photos. Lots of smiling and laughing and joking...and whole lots of them not understanding 90% of what I was saying. "Nice! Now how about you take off your hat, Annalisa? No? You don't understand me? You don't understand me when I ask you to take off your totally gay hat? No? Ah, I didn't think so!"

"There we go! More smiles! Like that! Fine! No, that's fine! Keep your gay hat on! I love it! Sure!"

"Now one of us all together! Aaaaand, we're done!" I walked back over to Grant to grab my drink that he'd been kind enough to hold during all of this (I was still thinking about Russian organ thieves and was too paranoid to risk putting my drink down and winding up waking up in the dreaded "bathtub of ice") The best part is, as I walked back over to Grant, I noticed...

...he still had the same expression on his face! Hahaha.

We hung out for a while having a few drinks and watching...

...Jake (very unsuccessfully) attempt to dance with several different local girls. He'd see a girl dancing alone and he'd start dancing near her and slowly closing in - but they'd see him coming a mile away and would take two steps back for every step he took towards them. (Check out the girl in the pink shirt retreating as Jake tries to boogie towards her backward. Hahahah).

"What? What? You no like me?" Hahah. The other highlight of the night was when this HUGE bodybuilder-type Estonian dude took off his sweater so he could show off his gizzuns in his uber-tight tee-shirt and then he walks over to where we're sitting puts it down next to Jake and says (not asks) "Watch my shirt." Jake looks at him and goes "Uhhh, no. I'm, uhhhh, busy." Hahaha. Grant decided he'd seen enough and wanted to head back to the hotel. Jake and I were still willing to try to make out with slutty Estonian (or Russian! It's not that we're picky, it's mostly that we can't tell the difference!) girls. We hung out until closing time with neither one of us getting so much as a smooch!

We stopped at Avenue, a 24 hour bar/restaurant on the way back to the hotel, and tried to figure out where we'd gone wrong over...

...plates of tasty, greasy food. Then back at the hotel we entered our room on tip-toe so...

...Hooooo! Talk about insult to injury! How about some weirdly misshapen nuts to go along with your crappy accommodations, Cot-Boy?

Thursday, February 3rd

Thursday morning, we got up, walked around Old Town and then headed over to a restaurant (right around the corner from the hotel that we almost stayed at) called Old Hansa for lunch - stopping to take turns doing comedy poses with the giant spoon outside.

This one's even better!

Olde Hansa is basically like the Estonian version of Medieval Times. But while they both serve food from the Middle Ages, the food at Olde Hansa was actually way better than Medieval Times. But on the downside, there was not a live jousting match (aw yeah, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!). U-S-A! U-S-A!

Grant had the "Wild boar plate favored by Earl von Uexkyll."

Jake had the "Himalayan lamb dish with warming spices, Mountain-people style."

And I had the "Elk fillet of the season, favorite vegetable dainties of the honorable mayor of Reval, Cooked spelt with saffron, delicious spelt cakes with herbs."

After eating ourselves into a near-coma, we walked around for a bit, marveling at things like the pharmacy that's been in constant operation since 1422, and then headed back to our hotel where after we all took Medieval-sized craps...

...I nearly sent Grant into a panic by taking a bottle of Coke from the mini bar. (On numerous family vacations, Grant's father had raved about the RIDICULOUS PRICES of the snacks and drinks in the mini-bar and made it clear that the Stoddard children should not, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, eat a snack or drink a drink from the mini-bar). He was pleading with me to just go downstairs and get a soda from the bar, because "Only God knows what they're going to charge you for that Coke up here! Seriously, put that back! What do you think you're doing? Hoooo! Well don't say I didn't warn you!"

I think a tear actually rolled down his eye as I opened it. Hahahaha. Mmmmmm, $4 dollar bottle of soda! Grant wanted to take a nap and try to sleep off his Medieval lunch, so Jake and I headed down the street to check out one of the many...

...CASINOS! Turns out, gambling is legal only if it's handled by one of those video gambling machines, like video-poker, etc. Booooooring. I lost $20, but Jake managed to leave up quite a bit. Score! Later, we went back to room, grabbed Grant and then walked all the way across town to head over to the offices of...

FHM Magazine in Estonia! Jake, at the time was the Editor-at-Large for FHM US, had gotten in touch with the Estonian office and told them that he'd be coming to town soon with friends. They told him to swing by the offices and they'd take us out and show us a good time!

We're in the office meeting everyone and suddenly Grant's like "Holy shit! Stop everything, LOOK!" He pointed over the wall and, sure enough...

...the Estonians had painted stripes on their new office walls that bore a striking resemblance to the stripe-themed custom paint job Grant had done to his own apartment a few years back.

After meeting everyone in the office, we headed down the street to some really old tavern with Robert and Chris.

We busted out our map and Chris came up with some suggestions for things we should check out. One of them being Kalma Saun, the oldest Russian-style sauna in Tallinn.

Did I mention that they also got us sha-sha-shitfaced?

Grant, Robert, Chris and Jake.

We got drunk and swapped all kinds of good stories. Chris, who was a few years older than all of us, blew our tiny minds and talked about how he had served in the Red Army and was almost forced to fight the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

Entering our fourth hour of drinking (oooof!) we decided to leave our little backroom and head into the "main room" so we could order food.

Like this plate of little dried fish.

Smoochy smoochy!

Grant and I both ordered these tasty little meat raviolis served in some kind of hot sour cream sauce. They were fucking awesome.

Jake one-upped us both and accepted Chris' dare to order the Ox testicles. Mmmmm. (No, seriously)

The mug-shelf for the locals. (Note each mug has a name plate with the owner's name on it).

This is what Grant had for lunch. (No, seriously)

After dinner we smoked more.

Talked more.

And drank more.

There were two posters of people serving drinks on the wall. This one...

...and this one.

And then look who was behind the bar! I guess he decided to take out that uncomfortable bow tie, though). We left the bar and...

...had a group pose with the GIANT penis woodcarving outside.

Grant and Jake kindly snapped a pic of me with the big woody. Before heading home, Chris and Robert called us a cab and directed him to take us to...

...Kalma Saun! The oldest Russian-style bathhouse in Tallinn! It was majestic and intimidating from the outside...

...but pretty mellow inside. (I mean, they serve Lays and all).

Included with the price of admission were these birch branches that you use to beat your (and other sauna goers) backs and extremities with. (It's supposed to help increase blood circulation...but mostly it just makes you feel tough and Russian).

By the time our hour was up, we were too exhausted to even hit ourselves anymore.

Funny story: So the three of us are in the main room, sitting around the edge of this big pool with like 20 other big, burly Estonian and Russian men. You're supposed to sit in the steam, and then when you get hot, you submerge yourself in the pool. The locals were asking us all sorts of questions and talking to us. Each time Jake would go under the water and couldn't hear us - Grant would start motioning to Jake under the water and start telling all the strangers "Ask him if he's a Jew! Ask him if he's a Jew!" Trying make Jake really believe that everyone in Estonia would be able to "tell that he was Jewish just by looking at him." Hahahah.

I think Jake's face pretty much sums up how you feel after 5 hours of drinking followed by 1 hour in a crazy-hot sauna.

Outside, the cold night air felt so good that we decided to walk across town back to our hotel. (Well, that and the fact that we couldn't find any cabs).

Back through empty Old Town.

Spooooooky!

Mid-way home, we stopped to take photos of the amazing sign for the widely famous Estonian attraction...

Kick in da Cock! Hahaha. (Actually, "Kiek in de Kok" is a bastardization of the German for "Peek into the kitchen" and refers when knights used to huge tower to "peer into peoples' homes" so they would know if anyone was plotting to threaten the city. (I think I hear another Iron Maiden song writing itself in the wind....). Afterwards, we were done laughing at Kick in the cock, Grant went home and Jake and I went to check out one of Tallinn's noodie bars. But it sucked and we left after only one drink. Bah.

Friday, February 4th

On Friday morning we gorged ourselves at the hotel's free breakfast spread...

...and then sort of wandered aimlessly around in the cold going all over town.

Jake's nose matches his hoodie.

After a few hours of walking, we got hungry again and found this neato restaurant on the edge of Old Town called Stereo.

It was all super-modern and looked like the set for some movie about a bar in the future.

Ben Gibbard was even there hunched over his laptop kicking out the emo jams for the next Postal Service record.

I wasn't about to be out-emo'ed in the coffee shop by some the Estonian Poor Man's version of Ben Gibbard - so here's my brooding over a cup of coffee emo-best (complete with camera as "tool of the artist" in the foreground).

The place was staffed by cute Estonian girls who all had to wear these "American Diner in the 50s" inspired little waitress outfits. The only thing better than that was the...

...deep fried ravioli. Awwwww, yeah. While we finished our food, we started talking about what we wanted to do next. Jake was planning on writing about his trip for FHM, so before he'd left NYC he'd researched all the countries we'd be traveling to and had written a list of things that might be fun to check out and yield experiences he could write about.

He produced his list from a pocket and laid it on the table for us to examine. Topping the "Things to do in Estonia" list, was the cryptic word "OPRA." My curiosity piqued I asked, "Hey Jake, what's 'opra?' Is that an Estonian word or something?" He was like "What are you, an idiot? It's an Italian word." Genuinely confused, I asked him to explain. "You know, opra! Where they sing? Viking horns? All that shit! Estonia's supposed to have one of the best ones in all of Eastern Europe."

"Oh, of course! The opra!" (Jake defended his spelling and explained that it was because he'd never been to collage.)

Grant was adamant about not wanting to go to the opera, but Jake and I forced him to come. This is because while Jake and I are both friends with Grant, we're not really friends with each other. And every time Grant would go home early, he'd leave the two of us in this awkward "Well, I don't really like you but I guess since we're traveling together we should at least try to have some fun together" place.

We went in and found our seats and discovered that we were the only opera fans in attendance that were wearing zip-ups and hoodies.

Oooooh....

...fancy!

Here's Grant pouting about having to see the opera. (Actually, this is a photo that Grant took of himself making his "sexy face," but since it's sort of pouty, I'm hijacking and recontextualizing it to augment my narrative. That's what you get for taking pouty-sexy self-portraits).

Jake was also starting to worry that the opera was going to be boring and hard to endure. Luckily, he fell into a deep sleep before the orchestra had finished the overture. Hahahahaha. Not to say that I did much better. OPRA's are already somewhat difficult to follow if you don't understand the language they're being performed in (Italian, in this case), so unless you know the plot of the opera already, you're heavily dependant on the subtitles they project above the stage to understand what's going on. The only problem for us was that the subtitles they were showing were in ESTONIAN! Doh! When Grant, who didn't even want to be there in the first place saw that Jake was fast asleep and that I kept nodding off, he woke us both up and we all made a break for it.

After our OPRA experience, we back to the hotel to nap and Grant and I ended up getting in a fight or something (I don't remember what it was about) and Jake snapped this hilarious pic of us looking like we're at a slumber party. (Ok, a gay slumber party).

Later that night, we met up with Monika and Jaanika (from FHM Estonia) and they took out to the opening of a new club called Venus. We arrived to find some amazingly cheesy Estonian band doing a live performance on stage. Everyone was laughing at me because the sax player (They had a sax player!) sort of looked like me. If you look carefully, you can see him in the red sleeveless shirt and the sunglasses up on stage.

Here's Jake and Grant throwing down like Jodeci with the bub' back in the VIP section.

Group shot: Monika, Jake, me, Jaanika and Grizz.

Afterwards, we trekked across old town to meet up with Robert (who'd taken us out the other night) his girlfriend Laura, and Robert's brother, Henry at the grand re-opening of Club Hollywood (the place we'd tried to go earlier in the week with the possible organ-thief). Club Hollywood had been closed for a long time and the re-opening was a big event that was hard to get into - luckily for us, Robert's brother Henry is a famous Estonian rapper (no shit!) and got us on the list.

The place was a madhouse. Absolutely jam-packed.

Henry got us all VIP bracelets so we could hang out upstairs where it was much less schweaty.

Robert and Jake.

Grant and Laura.

I think that guy in the middle might be Robert's brother Henry, but I could be totally wrong. I don't even remember.

Grant, Laura and Jake.

Hahahaha.

Me and red fedora girl. We left the club a little after 3am and Robert announced that he was taking us to a place for "food and a surprise."

He marched our troop towards a sort a-scary abandoned industrial area that wasn't too far from our hotel and led us to...

...a 24-hour Korean restaurant. I fucking love Korean food and was assuming that this was "the surprise."

But that wasn't the surprise. The surprise was that in addition to tasty Korean food, this particular Korean restaurant also had...

...KARAOKE! (Er, in Russian).

Robert kicked off the festivities with You Fill Up My Senses (Annie's Song) by Mr. John Denver (How often do you see a guy in an Obituary shirt singing John Denver? Hahaha).

In between the songs our group had signed up for, there were Russians who were singing karaoke in Russian (well, duh). But it was a strange moment when it dawned on us: We were Americans. In a Korean restaurant. In Estonia. Watching people sing karaoke in Russian. At five in the morning.

I'm happy to report that Laura Brannigan's Gloria is just as much of a crowd-pleaser in Estonia as it is in the good old US of A.

Afterwards, Grant made those Ruskies cry with his version of Frank's My Way.

Robert pulled out another karaoke gem and sang Madonna's La Isla Bonita. (Which I hadn't seen performed since this night!)

Jake rocking the mic! (Usually, I'm able to figure out what songs people were singing by looking at the lyrics on the monitor - but all I can see in this pic are the words "all She was." So I'm totally in the dark).

At the very end of the night, Robert pulled off a perfect karaoke trifecta when he selected Mr. Big's To Be With You as his third and final song of the night.

Unbelievable.

Voices hoarse, drunk, full and exhausted - we decided to call it quits a little before 6am and stumbled back to our hotel, burping bi bim bab the whole way there. (And here ends one of the longest diary entries ever!).