Two months ago, Kelly and I were on a trip to Estonia. Kelly had bought us flight tickets as a Christmas present and had a really hard time waiting for February to come.

When we finally got going, we had to take a connecting flight from Aalborg to Copenhagen and then on to Tallinn. The waiting in Copenhagen Airport turned out to be a bit of a challenge, as the bastards had chosen to completely remove the smoking areas.

We arrived in Tallinn airport around midnight, to an outdoor temperature of about minus 20 degrees centigrade. Kelly could barely wait for our luggage as she knew that some of her friends and her brother, were waiting for us right around the corner.

After a warm greeting, we went straight to the outskirts of Tallinn, to a part of the city called Jüri. We drove up to a big red-tiled house which belongs to Kellys family. This is where we stayed and this is where we celebrated – right from when we stepped through the door. Kelly’s friends had already planned that we should all meet here, to give her a proper welcome home.

Gunnar, one of Kelly’s close friends, stayed over for the night. After breakfast we drove to Tallinn, where Kelly and Gunnar showed me around town. They took me to Lauluväljak (The Singing Field), a huge scene that every sixth year hosts a national singing-festival.

Here’s a video from the festival: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34mYlYkzPVU

We also went by the local beach, which was totally overrun by all kinds of birds.

Gunnar went home to sober up and to take care of some postponed work that had to be done, while Kelly and I went on into the “Old Town”. The Old Town is the most central part of Tallinn. It’s surrounded by a moat and is built somewhere around the 13th century. All the buildings have a very medievil and romantic look, which gives it a very specific feel, when blended with MacDonalds stores and modern nightclubs and restaurants. The whole area is very unique compared to the rest of the city, which is build up over many centuries, with a lot of different countries that has had their presence in Estonia’s somewhat turbulent political history.

We stayed in the Old Town the rest of the day, and met up with Gunnar in the evening, to experience the nightlife and to find some more of Kelly’s friends. The evening ended at Mattias and Agnes’ place. Two of Kelly’s friends, from the night before. Agnes let us in and took us to the living room, where Mattias was sloughing on his chair, looking like he hadn’t been sleeping for days. We had a good cup of coffee and a long talk about Estonia’s economical situation and about how Mattias was struggling to keep his company running. The salaries are dropping while the prices are rising.

We slept over at Elvis’ apartment (Kelly’s brother) and went straight to sleep.

We spent the next day with Elvis and his girlfriend Lisete. Elvis is working for a tourist company, and he had some errands that he needed to run for them. We went with him, so we could go grocery-shopping afterwords, for the big party in the weekend. The drive turned out to be a little longer than expected, with a lot of snow and traffic jams blocking our way. When we got back home to Jüri, tired and exhausted, we lit up the fireplace and the sauna. The sauna proved to be a bit more than a poor danish person like myself could handle. After a few jumps in the snow and back into the sauna, while drinking dark beer, I had to go lie down in the living room, with a rumbling stomach and a blurry vision.

We woke up next morning with another round of hangovers and sat in front of the fireplace, practically the whole day. We had to sober up for Kelly and Elvis’ birthday celebration in the evening. 15-20 people showed up to a party with LP’s spinning, dancing and a small live-concert with Gunnar on guitar, Kelly on vocal chords and myself on one of Elvis’ percussion drums.

The next day, was our last one in Estonia. We spent it in company with Elvis and Lisete, who drove us to the airport in the afternoon. With a sunset in the horizon we said our goodbyes, and Kelly and I sat down inside the terminal, trying to figure out how to spend our 3 hours of waiting in Copenhagen Airport… Sigh.