TALLINN, ESTONIA

Left Helsinki on the 12:30 ferry, Rosella, on the Viking Line. Three hours later, we arrived. I got up only once and couldn't find my sea legs. I felt silly, going around as if I were drunk or never been on a ship. But the waves were kind of big and the bobbing and weaving of the vessel quite notable. Not the gentle motion of my train ride to St. Petersburg.

I am in the Academic Hostel at Akadeemia tee 11 in room 209b. It's Academic because it is on the university campus. I met an Indian working on his Ph.D and I guessed correctly: software. Just read in today's The Guardian that India and China are doing business like gangbusters, as if they won't be needing to do business with anybody else. Incredible.

I didn't receive the warmest welcome from Tourist Information. I told her I was looking for information in English, and she responded as cold as ice, what did I want. No different from what she would have wanted had she ever left the country. A visitor needs a map, for starters, then we can go from there to more specifics.

She told me I could get the No. 3 trolley-bus at some spot that she marked on the map. She told me I could walk there, and I told her I would ask somebody else for directions.

Finally, found the trolley car, with the help of a young man who engaged me in conversation while I was crossing the street. His friend and himself were going to take the same bus, so he told me what to do. I handed the driver a 100 krone and he waved that away. While fishing into my pockets for change, the young man came from the back, where I had left my luggage, to offer to pay. For 25 krone I got about 6 tickets.

The guy is from Denver and his friend is from Los Angeles. They are both Mormons, I guess looking for recruits so I mentioned the fact that the Mormons were now accepting black people. They made as if they didn't know. One mentioned that growing up in LA, he caught hell from his friends for having black friends. They got off shortly after.

I asked a miss if she knew the stop I needed but she said she would get off before getting there. I ask a guy with whom she had been chatting and his friend told me I should get off four more stops. They got off.

I asked a young miss and she said she was going the same place. We got off one short stop earlier because the driver had run out of electricity. She crossed the street immediately, while I continued going straight and, finally, crossed at the university. Then I saw her. She seemed to have been waiting to point me exactly to where I should go. I thanked her big time. How thoughtful!

What else?

I'm staying about four miles from where things seem to be interesting, in the Old Town. Buses stop running at midnight and I hear taxis are a ripoff. What to do?

I came four stops to use the internet and eat something. I will buy some bananas and biscuits and water, just in case hunger takes ahold of me during the night. That has always been one of my greatest fears during most of my life: to be woefully hungry during the night with nothing to eat.

Later.

Patrick Barry Barr