Bears

As a small child, I was apparently rather scared of the bear that was in the garden and ran inside screaming. It turned out to be a heron. Now when I see herons, I wonder if secretly they are bears.

Tallinn

In Tallinn, I wandered around the old town, visited the Seaplane Harbour, explored a submarine, danced in the captain's cabin on an ice-breaker ship, and peered at graffiti in a former Olympic venue. I admired the views from the TV Tower and walked on a beach backed by pine trees. I looked at old Soviet phone boxes, hand-driers from the 1960s, and televisions that you added water to magnify the screen! I ate parsnip ice-cream, tried Vana Tallinn liqueur and drank my own Personal Jesus in the Depeche Mode bar.

In Helsinki, there were concrete turtles, but in Tallinn, concrete birds, on street corners. Outside the opera house, the barriers to let cars in the car park instead had hands. I walked past the closed Patarei Prison, went inside the Kiek in de Kök, and visited the Occupations Museum, where I saw an exhibition about protests.

Photos on Flickr: Tallinn.