Helsinki & the Baltics

Happy Bastille Day! Not surprisingly, it is not celebrated here in Tallinn.
We started the day bussing west of the city to Rocca al Mare and the Estonian Open Air Museum, a cross between Sutter's Fort and Old Sturbridge Village.
The museum got its start in the 1950s during the Soviet era as various village structures around the country were threatened with demolition, they were disassembled and brought here; reassembled and curated, including live villagers in period costumes performing period tasks: carding wool, tatting lace, and the like. Very informative.
The visit was topped off with a mid-1850s folkloric dance performance (with audience participation) and a simple family-lunch in the tavern/inn.
Back in town, we briefly visited the Dome Church (the Lutheran Cathedral) and walked down to the Estonian History Museum, which resides in the Great Guild Hall.
At one time, the GGH was the largest building in Tallinn and was the HQ of the Hanseatic Merchants. The was another junior version of the merchant's guild, the Black Heads, so named as their members still had black (not gray) hair.
The Hanseatic League was a forerunner of the EEC and accelerated "free trade" in the Baltic (mostly) between the merchants in the member cities.
Their heyday was the 13th-15th C, and only lost preeminence when ships could sail around Good Hope and to the New World.
We wrapped up the day with a visit to the Museum of Occupation, which covered the period 1940 to 2000, and revealed just how gruesome life under the Nazis and Soviets really was.
At the last part of the museum, they discussed the difficulty a restarting a nation with democracy and a market economy -- something that had been unknown for fifty years.
Tomorrow: on to Riga.Читать далее