“I’m just lighting a fire as it seems a very indoors sort of day, to be honest,” said Host.
It snowed during the night, not an enormous amount, but sufficient that I decided to stay in and heed Host’s warnings until such time as I decided it was probably alright to go out and brave the elements as I have seen snow before.
The winter wonderland I’d been hoping for was not to be, sadly, as it’s a country used to snow and therefore quick to react when there is any. The roads and pavements had been gritted and any romanticised images of children frolicking in crisp, freshly-fallen snow I’d managed to conjur quickly evaporated when it became evident that the best I was going to get was a cold, slushy, urban hell.
But at least I tried.
I ventured to somewhere new today, looking for an exciting door, but was thankfully distracted by a church with heating. Karli Kirik is suitably majestic, and despite the security cameras (because in a digital nation, e-god is all-seeing) I enjoyed someone practising for an organ concert in the afternoon. The neo-Roman (according to the tourist map) Lutherian church, with its two steeples, is home to the largest pipe organ in Estonia, installed in 1924.
Then I remembered that I’d failed to get into the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral while walking around when I first got here, so set off in another new direction and came up the side of Toompea Castle into the square in front of the cathedral. The inside of the cathedral is utterly stunning and at the same time just a little bit gaudy — lots of shiny — but you can’t walk around and look at things, which seems to defeat the object of the place actually being open.
From there, I carefully navigated my way down the Short Leg into the Town Hall Square for a swift hõõgvein — and an unexpected conversation with a Belgian man about winter tyres — then decided my host had been right after all and that it would be much safer to sit indoors next to something radiating heat.
While a conversation about tyres might not sound the most exciting experience I’ve recounted here, it did make me realise why nearly all the cars sound as if they’re driving over gravel even if the grit on the road isn’t excessive; studded tyres.
Host and I then decided that the best way to ward off the cold would be to drink excessive quantities of red wine. Hurray!
