Friday, 07-June-2024
Ohh many I got up to a lot of adventures on Friday.
I was excited to be in Estonia – Like I mentioned back in the beginning post, the Baltic was a whole new world for me to be adventuring through; a culture I really hadn’t had any exposure to in my past, an open slate of discovery.
I absolutely planned on making the most of my time here.
On the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn, I’d met two folks – a lady named Magdelinna from Austria, and a guy named Steven from Canada. No, not my Stepdad (who’s also a guy named Stephen from Canada), though the symmetry of the name was definitely interesting. We met organically as we were all lounging on the roof deck of the liner, and I got quite a few good tips from both for various places around Europe. Most applicably to the conversation right now, Steve recommended that I stop into the Estonian Meremuseum while I was in Tallinn.
I hadn’t heard of it before, but a recommendation is as good a reason as any to explore. After the Kumu art museum, I made my way through the city, along some beautiful boulivards and through amazing gardens, to what looked like the villain’s lair from a James Bond movie.
(Quick note – I originally thought this building was an old submarine pen, but I was a bit mistaken. It was actually a sea-plane hangar! Both more unique and less exciting at the same time, somehow. Still staggeringly beautiful, though!)
After I got over my initial awe at the sheer expanse that I found myself in, I started into the joy of reading placards and looking at cool things. There were so many of both – and let me just take a moment to appreciate how awesome all these countries are about multi-language placards. Everything was in both Estonian and English, and I am so thankful for that fact. I saw quite a few German tourists having to use google translate on all the placards, and that just seemed so exhausting… being able to just read (even with the infrequent “unique” English grammar) has been such a blessing for me.
I wandered, learned about ice skiffs and buoys, and saw histories of ships trading hands and transferring between countries. I learned about seaplanes, torpedoes, and mines, and even about rescues on the high seas.
My biggest takeaway, as interesting as this is, was just how staggeringly overwhelming the United States is. You never hear about the United States selling the flagship of its Navy to another country after it’s finished service… and I can’t conceive of the United States Navy buying a ship from another country to serve as the lynchpin of it’s defense fleet. Even the idea of a frigate being used as the flagship is… strange, to say the least.
It was a good reminder of the sheer magnitude of the US manufacturing base, and the amount of material we dedicate to our military. I know all those details, logically, but having them brought front-and-center like this helped make the sterile facts and figures a bit more real and organic.
After finishing out the inside of the Seaplane Hanger, I headed outside to the docks – where there were quite a few retired patrol boats and cutters set up as small museum ships!
Most of them were simply available to be viewed – boarded, but there weren’t really any stories to be told by placards, and no open hatches allowed for exploration of the below decks.
One, though, the Suur Tõll, was a full floating museum ship. A steam-powered icebreaker, refurbished repeatedly over its lifespan, I was able to clamber aboard and drop down into the bowels of the ship through tiny hatchways and into dank engine compartments. It reminded me of all the times I’ve worked in machine shops – oil and metal in the air, and this really interesting scent that I can’t really describe. Maybe oil and diesel, mixed with sweat and metal chips?
Either way, it was really interesting! The placards were spinning triangles, allowing for Estonian / Russian / English information, telling the story of the ships life… starting as a coal-fired steamer, to its retrofit into oil-power, to its final rest as a museum ship.
Definitely worth the visit – and I didn’t even get seasick of claustrophobic, even while below the waterline in a cramped engine room! Yay Ben!
