Bluebirds

Comedy Estonia is doing its regular monthly standup show in Tallinn on March 9th, and on that night, I'm flying back to Tartu. I've been taking the last coach of the night, leaving at 11pm and arriving at 01.30 - unpleasant, but beats staying at my dad's place and catching the 7am express to make it to my day job on time. I'm losing the same number of hours of sleep, but I get to be in my own bed, and get to the office within half an hour of taking a shower and putting on fresh clothes - as opposed to three hours with the early coach. I've spent enough time on that one in my college days, especially the first year, when I lived in a dilapidated dorm building just before it was completely gutted and renovated. Tartu University mostly doesn't schedule classes on Fridays, so I'd get the 7pm coach to Tallinn on Thursday night and the 7am one back on Monday morning - in time for the 10am class. (I think they briefly tried to schedule a class for 8am on Monday morning in later years, but the prof rapidly switched the slots, to the students' great relief and approval.)

The Tallinn-Tartu flights are designed to hook into Tallinn Airport's schedule, which in itself is built around the idea of delivering people to major European hubs in time for connecting intercontinental flights (or work, especially in the case of the Brussels Special). So the plane gets into Tallinn early in the morning, and leaves late at night - 23.45, in fact, getting into Tartu Airport at 00.30. With the time to get out of the plane and take the shuttle into the center of town, I won't be saving much time over the coach, and the ticket is about 18 euro more expensive; but it'll be a fun experience, anyway. And I get to hang out at Drink a bit more after the show.

Curiously, this will be the third regular flight out of Tallinn Airport to destinations within Estonia (after the island towns of Kuressaare and Kärdla), and I believe all three of those are actually longer than Tallinn's busiest air link - the one to Helsinki. It's 80km over water, but Vantaa Airport is further inland. Can't be bothered right now to figure out if Kärdla is closer.

The island routes are operated by a small independent company, but the Tartu link is Estonian Air, operated by one of their little Saab turboprops. I've actually flown on one of those, a couple of years ago, Tallinn to Stockholm. It was officially called an Estonian Air Regional flight, and there was some administrative difference - it was run separately from the strict guidelines of SAS, the Scandinavian conglomerate that used to own EA. This meant that, ironically, the little local-service Saabs would actually serve sandwiches to their passengers for free - while the Boeings of EA proper charged you for a glass of water.

Those Boeings are being gradually retired with the long-overdue and much-celebrated arrival of brand spanking new Bombardier CRJ900 aircraft from Canada. I've flown on an older-gen CRJ before, a Lufthansa plane from Frankfurt to Tallinn. Compared to the ubiquitous 737s, they've got a funny behavior. They fly just as high and just as fast, but they're a lot smaller and lighter; so while the big Boeings just sort of glide down out of the sky, the little CRJs and Embraers and the rest of them actually point their noses down for a steep descent. Disconcerting, when you don't expect it.

Estonian Air is running a contest right now to name the two new planes (a third one will be arriving later). The contest is here, on Facebook. At the time of writing, the most popular options is Tartu, which I voted for. Number two is Põhjatäht, which means Northern Star and would be a fine name, except that non-Estonians would have a hell of a time pronouncing all those funny vowels. Third place is Sinilind, Bluebird - this seems to be the overall nicknames of airplanes in the flag carrier's livery. Go and vote for your favorite! (A history major friend of mine suggested Sigtuna Gate - that would be popular on the Stockholm route!)

The Definition of "Conflict of Interest"

Astounding. Postimees reports on Keskerakond's latest endeavour: the bus attendants hired by the city are being told to attend the party's anti-government protest on May 1st. Not only are these people - given pointless jobs at minimum wage - being asked to sign a paper promising to be there, and give their phone numbers so it can be confirmed, but they are actually being paid a full day's wage and given an additional two days off with full pay for participating in a political rally.

Just to remind you: this money is coming out of the Tallinn municipal budget.

Savisaar seems to be getting really desperate. The elections are a year away, but it is increasingly likely that Estonia will join the Euro as of January - and that would be a Reform victory that the Centrists cannot counter.

Meanwhile, I'm sure you've seen Keskerakond's posters all over the cities. Am I the only one who thinks they are kinda poorly laid out? I saw one the other day in Tartu - the combination of Mart Laar's smiling mug and "Fifty thousand new jobs created" in a bold font. Unless people stop by and read the fine print, the message is kinda the opposite of what they were intending. Or is it just me?

A Bang and a Whimper

The game was epic. Not without a few glitches here and there, but considering that this was the team's first experience actually organizing it - with very light input from the regular game master, adjusting a few bits here and there - it was a roaring success. There were some unusual and well-received tasks, and the scenario I wrote for it even made the news.

The rest of the fun planned for April 26th? Nada. Tallinn was making a conscious effort to ignore it. People were lured out to shopping centers to bid in auctions for cheap package holidays, schoolkids were occupies and exhausted by the national essay exam, etc. The police were out in force, but didn't seem to actually go around harassing anyone. Night Watch did have a meeting downtown, but they had the good sense to not respond to provocation, for which I genuinely applaud them.

A beautiful spring Saturday spent far more productively than anyone feared.

Night Game

Just outside the official border of Tallinn, there is a sideroad leading up to a handful of old, wrecked houses. They look vaguely military, one-floor brick jobs, long - like troop quarters. There isn't anything inside now, just the shell; except for the one that has a low stone border in the middle of the floor. Look inside this border, and you will see steps, leading down to a hatch. Go inside, and you may be surprised that the cellar doesn't end quite where you'd expect it to. In fact, the corridor keeps going. And going. Before you know it, you're three or four staircases down into the ground. Take the right route, and you'll eventually see the walls change from concrete to brickwork - progressively older. Some of these tunnels may just have been here since the time of Peter the Great.

They say there's a right tunnel you can find, but it's easier to head back out and walk a little out into the fields, where large mounds appear somewhat uncharacteristic of the Estonian countryside. Here and there you will find entrances, low doors framed in massive concrete. Go inside one of these, and you will find yourself inside more passages. Go far enough, and you will find a massive hall, semi-cylindrical, with gigantic reinforced ribs maintaining the curvature. This hall is easily tens of meters tall - three floors at least, with plenty of headroom on each one. There is nothing there now but dirt and rubbish and the occasional faded stencil on the wall - but a few decades ago, this was the secondary command post for the air defense forces of the Soviet Union's northwest corner. As impressive as this bunker may be, it was designed as the light alternative - built to withstand only relatively simple airborne attacks. They say the real control bunker, built for far more serious ordnance, is elsewhere.

On at least one of the hatches leading down into the bunker, you will find an arrow, with the letters DR next to it. Inside, if you look hard enough, you will find six sequences of digits, all starting with the same number - I think it was 13 - and all with the letters D and R in them.

You'll find these sequences all over the forlorn industrial sites of Tallinn.

The Dozor Night Game came from Russia, and the its name has the same roots as the Nochnoi Dozor activist group - a fantasy book by a prominent contemporary Russian author. But it has nothing to do with the Night Watch.

The Dozor Night Game and other similar projects have grown out of games that have been played for centuries; and certainly after the fall of the Soviet Union every young boy (and a surprising share of girls) all over its former territory went crawling around crumbling industrial parks. But the advent of modern technology - mobile phones, GPS, and the ubiquity of information on the Internet - has taken a pastime and turned it into a sport.

Every other Saturday night, a dozen or so people gather in a cafe in downtown Tallinn. They are there to hand over a piece of paper and a wad of cash to the host; the man who is entrusted by Dozor's central powers to run the game in this city. A few hours later, each of these visitors will be at the head of a crew of between five and fifty, with multiple cars positioned strategically throughout the city. Somewhere in an apartment or an all-night coffee shop with good WiFi, a handful of people per team are assembled around their computers. Their job is to put their minds to work, figuring out the riddles that conceal the location of the codes. Once a location has been found and confirmed, the closest car speeds through the night, full of people with ridiculously good flashlights. They know from the riddle if they'll need to look for the code at ground level or if it's concealed, but most of them hoping for Danger Level 3+. That means they can get seriously hurt trying to get to the code. But it also means they are heading somewhere really cool.

I'd heard about Dozor-style games in Russia, but it was through a friend that I started playing. Did a stint in the field, and decided I was far more use at the HQ - solving the riddles and talking to the host via IM, trying to squeeze out any clue or confirmation I can. The good thing is that I can do it from Tartu; all I need is a computer, a phone, and an Internet connection. And a brain.

I first started playing in the late fall, and have barely missed a game since. Between Tallinn and then Tartu, I play most weekends. This is significant, because normally there would be no way anything would hold my attention for that long. My team in Tartu is ranked top, but the team I play with in Tallinn - where the competition is far more difficult - doesn't win often. I don't do this for achievement, and I don't do this for money - although the winner does get a significant chunk of the entry fees. I do it because this combination of scavenger hunt, orienteering, geocashing, and the occasional downtown LARP to entertain a random audience, is in many ways the ultimate game. We don't break into private property; in fact a core rule of all these games is that all tasks can be performed within the boundaries of both the criminal and the traffic laws. But otherwise, this is a combination of GTA, Stalker, and a good few Spiderman games (plus a bitchin' IQ test for the headquarters), played out in real life.

Next weekend, on the anniversary of the Bronze Soldier riots, I will be in Tallinn. My team is finally getting to put a game together, find the right locations, make up the riddles, and create the performances. The theme is Dumas-style France; so if you see some random people in feathered hats and Musketeer cloaks running around town, don't be alarmed.

It's only the best game in town.

Comparative Cityscape

So I went to Stockholm, right? I've been there a lot, I really like the city, and am starting to feel like I can navigate it - the center, at least, without a map.

One of those little places I've recommended to people with great success is the Science Fiction Bookshop on Västerlanggatan (the main shopping street going through the Old Town). Stopped by it on this trip to check out their English-language selection, and... well, let's just say - I had a moneyz, but I spended it. :(

Also have been spending inordinate amounts of weekend time in Tallinn. Odd how it doesn't really feel like home any more, even though I've spent three quarters of my life there. Mind you, in the six years since I've been a Tartu vaim it's changed considerably - and more rapidly in the last couple of years, when I've had very little cause to actually go there for any length of time. (Since I got a washing machine in my new apartment, I haven't been back to my dad's place as often, heh.)

There are a lot of things that differ between Tallinn and Tartu; I find it odd that the capital's roads are in remarkably worse shape than Tartu's, which in themselves are nothing to write home about. Sure, Tartu is far more walkable - to the point of its beleaguered public transport being written off by all but those layers of the population most challenged by mobility; I know people who regularly walk from across the river to Sepa, which by Tartu standards is the ass-end of nowhere. And yes, Tallinn has far nicer buses. But it's not like Tartu doesn't have a lot of cars; and the capital is supposed to have more cash for public works like road resurfacing. Have they spent their budget for years to come on the Tartu maantee renovation? Is it all going into the widening of Pirita tee so the rich Viimsians can get to work quicker in the morning? Who the hell knows.

Another Tallinn thing that I don't really see in Tartu is gentrification; new and capitally renovated buildings in the middle of Soviet prefab blocks. Some of these have a genuine point, like the building in Kopli that was built to house a phone switching station. The large equipment halls with their tall ceilings are bound to lend themselves nicely to original split-level open-plan apartments, and the fact that this really is an old Soviet industrial construction, sold off by a disinterested Elion to imaginative developers, lends it an air of curious authenticity.

But then there are the new monoliths at the edges of the old bedroom communities. These baffle me. I can almost comprehend the beauty of top-floor apartments at the summit of Lasnamäe - they get views of the sea - but that only applies to a small percentage of the new households. At the height of the real estate bubble, the cost of a newly-built apartment was not significantly higher than one in a Soviet tower block, but given the choice, who would willingly move to Lasnamäe? I was born and raised there - and I couldn't wait to get out.

Real estate is naturally all about location, but in Tartu there aren't that many unpleasant neighborhoods. I've lived at the far edge of Tammelinn, from where it took 40 minutes to get into the center of town by bus (and five minutes by car, of course), but it was still a very pleasant neighborhood - a few locally-designed late-Soviet apartment buildings in the middle of a sprawl of single-family homes on their own little plots of land. I've seen some remarkably odd placements while apartment-hunting two years ago, like the blocks at the far edge of Võru and Ringtee, behind the bus depot, but for the most part it's a few buildings dropped in the middle of a naturally developed small-town district. Tartu has two main Soviet-style enclaves - the massive Annelinn and the decrepid Hiinalinn/Shanghai (so named because its prefabs are of the most basic and ugly variety, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a shantytown) - but they're not being developed. Yes, people are renovating their own apartments in these buildings, but new ones are not inserted among them, as they are in Tallinn. The closest thing is the new building at the corner of Jaama and Raatuse - close to Shanghai - and it is being advertised as heavily discounted, with the biggest apartments losing a whole million kroons off their sticker price. Still, Raatuse street is slowly filling up with fancy shops and boutiques, thanks to the fact that you have to walk up this street to get to the Illusion nightclub. That house is actually one of the better efforts I've seen in modern construction - custom-designed to fit into the irregular, sloped landscape. But most of the new developments are either self-contained enclaves by major arteries, or dropped into neighborhoods that have been there for at least a century. It makes a difference. Tartu is all about atmosphere.

Tallinners seem more obsessed with image, though. I've accused Riga of this, but now I notice it more and more in Tallinn: people investing most of their resource into outwardly visible trappings of success. Taking the tram to the bus station, I was startled to see flash cars like BMW X5s parked next to the crumbling prefabs of Majaka. The owner of my old rented apartment drove an X5 - but he actually lived in a beautiful, large house outside the city; he'd obviously spent money on a home for his family first, and got a fancy car once that was done. (He's also remarkably un-flashy in person, despite running a very successful business.)

I have to wonder what will happen to Tallinn now that the real estate market has regained some semblance of sanity. Another friend just bought a beautiful apartment in Kadriorg; this time last year, the same money would have barely stretched to a hovel in the further reaches of Lasnamäe. The no man's land on the banks of the Laagna freeway will continue to be built up commercially, because the demand is there; but residentially, will this new phase of Soviet urban planning survive?