Here we are in the country of the Singing Revolution. For years Tallinn had been the venue for singing festivals. In 1987 the people began spontaneously demonstrating by singing national songs and hymns in defiance of the Soviets. In 1988 at a number of music festivals people started to link hands while singing these national songs and a tradition began. In September 1988 a huge song festival was held at the Tallinn Song Festival Arena where 300,000 people (about a quarter of the population of Estonia) and this was the first time that polical activists seeking independence became involved. This continued until 1991 when the Soviets relented without bloodshed.

We were reminded that in 1989 there was also the Baltic Chain of Freedom demonstration when about 2m people formed a human chain spanning over 600 kms across the 3 Baltic States. Not only was it done as a pro independent protest but also to show the solidarity of the Baltic states.



All of our tour guides across the Baltic countries have been excellent and humorous with it. The one today had a very dry sense of humour when it came to talking about the Soviet occupation. Every time we drove past some ugly architecture she would refer to it as “another pearl of soviet architecture”! When we were later on our walking tour she showed us a building which had been allocated for a group of writers to live in. She said it had been built out of microconcrete and asked if we knew about this special construction medium. We had not, so she explained that it consisted of cement, water and microphones! If the Soviets did not like what the wriiters wrote about they found them a new home – in Siberia.

Tallinn was home to the 1980 Olympic sailing competition. We were taken to the venue and the high fence surrounding the competitors accommodation was still there. As our guide put it - “the capitalist fences were needed to protect the locals from Bibles and Playboy”

Estonia, like Lithuania and Latvia is flat, however Tallinn did have some small hills which the guide referred to as their mountains. The highest was 140m and it was manmade.

Some statistics: Population of Estonia - 1.5million; population of Tallinn – 400,000; 50% of the country is forest (pine, spruce and birch); main religion is Lutheran however only 16% of the population are religious and they have more churches than they now need.

Estonia is the most affluent of the Baltic Countries as at the start of WW2 they moved all their gold reserves to the Bank of England.

There has been a bit of controversy between our tour guide and the local guide over the invention of Skype. The local guide mentioned that Skype was invented in Estonia but our tour guide insists it was in Sweden. The truth of the matter is that it was developed in Estonia but the patent is held by 2 Swedish entrepreneurs. The Swedish have always been having their battles with the Baltic countries and this is just one more. Perhaps they will make a movie of it similar to the Face Book movie – Social Network.

We have one more activity today and that is dinner in the old town. We are going to post this blog before we go as we have to get up at 530am tomorrow morning to get on the road to Russia by 7. Apparently it is not unusual to spend 3 hours at the border crossing and we are going to try and get away before some of the local tour companies thus hopefully avoiding any long queues. We suspect everyone is doing the same thing and the road to Russia might be like a formula one race for buses. We are backing our driver – watch this space.