Thursday, August 9, 2012

Tallinn, Estonia

It's okay if you don't know where Estonia is. I wasn't able to situate it on a map before going there for the International Association for Philosophy and Literature (IAPL).


Estonia is a magnificent country to vacation in if you mainly want to roam around a lot and eat/drink for cheap. We went to the local "hypermarket" where we were stunned by how cheap a mozzarella and tomato sandwich was -- just €0.83! Quite the difference coming from Paris where a similar sandwich would have easily run us €4-5.

There was a local carnival being held near our and it was my first time going on a ferris wheel. I got absurd vertigo and Bart caught my minor freak out on tape.


We paid €3 to explore the innards of a blown up lizard. It was awesome.


Bart and I spent way too much time at those machines where you insert coins and hope some slip over the edge. We racked up enough points (after visiting the carnival a second night a few days later) to get two silly mugs and this:


Mornings were spent at the hotel's breakfast buffet: beets, beans, bread with cheese, ketchuped potatoes, olives, cubes of feta, tomatoes, some sort of sweet bread. We were gluttons.


Our days were spent at Tallinn University where the IAPL conference was being held and where Bart presented his paper on Plato's Symposium.



 Ranciere was the key note speaker of the conference:

We also spent quite a bit of our time at the Kumu, Tallinn's major modern art museum.


  
 

Our evenings were spent walking around Old Town--
 


Souvenirs were hilarious --

The Estonians LOVE drinking. The booze sections in certain supermarkets are larger than their food sections! And no booze really goes below 40% alcohol. Their liqueurs are 40%!

 

Estonians are just terrible in terms of being vegetarian friendly, but we knew that coming in. 
One of just a few vegetarian friendly restaurants in Old Town, Grandma's Kitchen--

Estonians provide fleece covers for outside diners in case they get cold. 


 
They have a bar dedicated to Depeche Mode, which only streams DM.

 

(Two of) our very late nights were spent eating delicious falafel burgers at Hessburger, which is Estonia's McDonald equivalent.

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