Monday, July 02, 2012
First time for everything
I've never been what you'd call a "live blogger" before, but there's a first time for everything. I'm on a large ferry cruise ship going from Tallinn to Stockholm and we're an hour and a half from Tallinn. I'm sitting on the sun deck in what is called sun in this part if the world - that is, not darkness. Most information is in Swedish and English, with the English meant to accommodate the many Russians, the "internationals" like me and presumably the Estonians, if there were any, which it doesn't seem there are.
This is all after almost a week in Estonia, under the hospitality of the Crawford clan, which has included not only an impressive navigation of both city and countryside in the native language, but also many slobbery hugs from Benji and Ruthie (and consequentially some valiant attempts to keep from catching their sniffles.) It's a beautiful and funny little country. You sort of get the impression that it's rather untouched in many ways, not because anyone tried to keep it pristine but rather because it was too small to bother with infiltrating the culture. But untouched does not mean isolated. The explanation that this homeland of Skype considers Internet access a civil right comes more frequently than any other, and they live up to it too. In that context, we couldn't possibly be disappointed to see a giant satellite tower dwarfing the quaint lighthouse on the tiny island of Kinhu.
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