As you can see from the title, it's now got to the point where I'm having to make up words (not to mention repeat them) to make the alliteration work. I suppose it's not exactly surprising though, given that I've made my way through 14 weeks' worth of titles, that the inspiration is wearing a little thin. But, while the inspiration may be lacking, the adventures certainly aren't, starting with last weekend's trip to Tallinn, Estonia.
It started with a bus journey, a six hour bus journey to be precise, which along with the six hour journey back meant that we spent 12 hours on a bus for 24 hours in Tallinn. Still, Tom and I were determined to make the most of it - actually, I'd originally planned to catch up on some sleep, but Tom had different ideas, and seeing as he was sitting next to me, I was powerless to resist!! It started when he discovered the 'in-coach' magazine, and, as I'd been telling him about Vera's annoying habit of pointing at all the cats on the TV and shouting 'koshka!', decided to thrust an advert for some kind of pet insurance into my face repeating "Do you want to kiss the koshka?" over and over. The TV at the front of the bus kept us entertained for at least another hour, first by informing us that not only did our seats recline, but the aisle seat could also be slid out into the aisle, leaving a small gap between the two seats. Of course I had to test this immediately, it was just unfortunate that it happened to coincide with us turning a rather sharp corner, leaving me fearing my imminent death. We were also amused by the music videos, featuring an array of people in successively stranger costumes - culminating in Cher's 'Turn Back Time' video, in which she seemed to have neglected to put on any clothes whatsoever! Tom then took it upon himself to make up as many inane games as possible, including 'I went to the Harry Potter market and I bought...' (which generated such amusing quotes as "What are you going to do with a Quick-Quotes Quill? Quote people to death?" and "Oh shit! Uncle Vernon isn't the only important character whose name begins with a 'V'!" and an awful lot of controversy over whether or not you could buy people) and 'How many fish can you draw?'. But the favourite had to be the 'drawing things with your eyes closed' game, if I ever get round to scanning them in, I may post some of the results of this game as they were utterly hilarious. All of this madness was fuelled by the combination of sleep-deprivation and unlimited free espresso with sugar from the in-bus coffee machine. Has anyone seen the episode of Outnumbered where Ben drinks a double espresso with five sugars and says he feels 'zingy-zangy-zongy'? I know how he felt...
Even if the bus journey hadn't been quite so hilarious, the 24 hours in Tallinn were well worth travelling for! Tallinn is, despite being a capital city, as small as Durham (at least in the Old Town, from which we didn't bother to stray), with beautiful architecture and a really Christmassy feel. The heavy snow (literally so heavy that we could barely see through it, and it looked like polystyrene balls falling from the sky) and the Christmas market were probably mostly responsible for this - I was feeling nostalgic for the Durham Christmas Market, but not any more! This was more modelled on the German markets, with little cabins in the snow surrounding a giant Christmas tree, hot mulled wine and carols blaring from the loudspeakers. Tom and I used the pretence of warming up our feet (and in our defence they were freezing) to do a crazy little dance down the street. We then spent an hour ice-skating, on an open-air ice rink near the town hall (I was appalling, but tom and Rachel helped me, and by the end I could manage a wobbly circuit without holding onto the side) before more shopping and dinner. Dinner was our first taste of spicy food since arriving in Russia, which was amazing, in an underground restaurant decorated with hundreds of Santa Helena wine bottles, and was followed by a cider in the Hell Hunt pub. The seats were a little strangely-situated, next to a spiral staircase which people kept disappearing down, perhaps never to be seen again, but the cider was good!
The next morning we had another walk around the town, some lovely food in Matilda's Cafe, and an encounter with a crazy woman in a shop. As we were staring at the swing which she had erected in the middle of her shop, she explained to us that it was there because she has a dearth of customers for most of the winter, so "from Mondays to Fridays I swing". Then, when Tom attempted to collect his change (which happened to be in 100 crown notes) she decided to tell him an interesting story about the woman on the notes, who is, apparently, a 'poetrest'. Good for her.... We also had a couple more encounters with the locals, thanks to us two incredibly friendly Estonian ladies now think that we call Denmark 'Norway' (in our defence, both countries are located next to Sweden), and Tom has broken my heart irreparably by informing a shopkeeper that we will never be together. If you are reading this, Tom, my heart is broken!! Broken!!
The journey back to St. Petersburg was somewhat less exciting that Saturday's bus trip, although it did allow me to sample the bus's excellent mochachinos. It also allowed Tom to test-drive some new games, notably 'How many fish can you draw on your visa?' and 'What would happen if you ripped the corner off your visa?'. Unsurprisingly, they didn't catch on. And so (despite a mild trauma at the border when my visa was feared to be lost forever and Tom delighted in telling me that I would have to take up residence in one of the 'border houses') we returned to St. Petersburg...
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