ow! Visiting eight countries in eleven days can blur the ethos of the cities, but there is one city that will stand out as my favourite from this tour: Tallinn. Tallinn has an old-world look with cutting-edge freshness and the art and culture scene is taking off! It's obviously Europe's hidden treasure; I'm just happy to uncover it for myself...
Situated in the northeast corner of the Baltic Sea, Estonia is just a couple hours by ferry from Helsinki. We took the bright and early, ride-in-style, across the Gulf of Finland... arrived at 9:00 and hit the town right away! This is the first shoppe I saw... seems awfully convenient...
On the ferry ride over, I scanned the net for contemporary art spots in Tallinn (as I do for every city I visit)... I've found that digging up the arts scene and meeting the locals are the best ways for me to get the most out of a city. For the rest of the trip, I made it a point to head out on my own each day to hit these marks. Kent and Emily make great travel partners; especially because they understand my wandering spirit and know there is no way to repress it... so, they take off doing their thing and leave me to do mine. They dig the historical peripheral and I want to learn from the random meetings of interesting people in interesting places. Anyhow, it's great how we can appreciate each other's interests / learning styles and it makes for pretty interesting exchanges each night when we meet up for supper.
So, in my quest to seek contemporary art in Tallinn, I stumbled upon the Sally Stuudio: a non-profit organization with a mission in perfect parallel to my perspective on art education! Their purpose: "to educate young people to become future competent creators and consumers of art and to promote a better understanding of art amongst adults." It's utopian, but it's simple. I asked around and finally found someone to lead me to this little schoolhouse studio off the main drag in old-town.
I walked in and introduced myself, expressing my appreciation for their vision. It's so important to help young people understand the presence of contemporary art in our modern world and to open doors for them to see the possibilities to express themselves in it! And, the people at the Sally Art School get it. It's great. They showed me around and gave me some information on some really rad programmes they're organizing in conjunction with Tallinn 2011: The European Capital of Culture! The newest initiative is called Eksperimenta!: "application of art to education of young people and to their development into creative, critically thinking and responsible persons and citizens." This is a page from a book that one of the kids made. I think it's brilliant.
In my one day in Tallinn, I discovered several creative outlets for young artists... totally refreshing! This is an after-school school for pottery and sculpture. I just love that people understand the importance of art education in Tallinn, and furthermore the importance of encouraging creative minds to grow... So, it makes sense... European Culture Capital 2010 is Pécs (Hungary), 2011 is Tallinn (Estonia).
So, Estonia... Eastern Europe? No way. Estonia, the most northern of the Baltic States, may geographically sit in the eastern region of the continent... but it's a world apart socially. Far beyond obvious differences that suggest cultural maturity (like the fact that everyone speaks English), I learned that Estonia is a European leader in Information Technology... people pay for tram tickets and parking validation with text messages, the city is covered with free WiFi, and is the birthplace of Skype!
It didn't matter that I was waking up at 4:40 the next morning to catch a flight to Riga... I had to go out and check out Tallinn's evening style... Kent and Emily headed back to the hotel and I found a joint on the edge of the old town called the Music Bar to hang for a while. I had a drink, talked with some Tuesday-night locals, kicked it in the big red velvet chairs, and watched a Moby video (from Glastonbury)... pretty chill way to close a good day in great city... See you soon Tallinn...
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