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What else could I do in a relatively cold Tallinn on a Sunday evening in early February? After much thought, an Asian meal of some description seemed to be the most tempting and the reviews of Asian Wok were positive. They seem to cut across quite a chunk of southern Asian food, including plenty of Chinese and Indian dishes. I checked the menu on-line around fifteen seconds before going in, an advisable thing to do as the menu outside the front door has one of the smallest font sizes that I’ve ever seen. I’ve just had my eyes tested and told that I can see things up close perfectly, but my elderly friends (they know who they are) would have had one hell of a job.

I was the only customer in the restaurant when I entered, although a couple came in a little later on, but there were plenty of delivery orders going on. The service was friendly and personable, with the beer being served promptly, although the food took nearly forty minutes which seemed a little longer than I had expected. But, I was hardly in a rush.

They usually have Asian beers, but they’d run out tonight and so there was the lager from A. Le Coq, the oldest brewery in Estonia. As lagers go, it was fine, crisp and clean.

I went for the chicken madras and the curry really wasn’t particularly madras like and there was no evidence of chillies or anything with spice. I know that many Indian restaurants across mainland Europe tend to change their spice levels for the local market, but I was struggling to get any heat out of this. The restaurant uses chicken thigh meat which I accept can give more flavour and is likely more authentic, although personally I do prefer chicken breast for the texture. The menu made reference to this being at their highest spice level and mentioned that the madras came with coconut in the sauce. I’m not sure that’s always the case, but I think it would help balance the spice levels out somewhat, but it just made it even more creamy here. Having noted that, the taste wasn’t unpleasant, the rice was well cooked and the naan bread had a depth of flavour. I asked for plain naan, although I noted that half of the naan were garlic.

I did enjoy the meal, the entire bill for the curry, rice, naan and half a litre of beer came to around £15, so it was all reasonably priced and the portion sizes were generous. It’s the first time incidentally that I’ve been given a curry in a bucket like that, although it helped keep it warm given that the plate itself was cold. I think if I came again I might request that the curry be made with more spice, although it feels quite British to do that in some macho way. I think I stayed here for around two hours as I rather got distracted with my book (well, book on a phone) and the service was always personable and helpful, so I’d recommend it if asked (the restaurant, not my phone which to be honest is on its last legs).

This painting is located at the House of Peter the Great and it was painted by Karl Burman (1882-1965) in June 1945. It makes him look like a hands-on ruler with his aides ready to offer help.

This is the location in the room where the artist thought that Peter the Great might have been sitting. It would have been an interesting time for Burman to paint something like this, Estonia was under effective Soviet control with the puppet leadership of Johannes Vares and they would have liked the thought of Peter the Great having a relevance here.

Incidentally, Vares killed himself at the Residence of the President of Estonia, located opposite from the museum.

This was an exciting little treat. OK, it might look like a bungalow in a park, but this is one of the oldest surviving properties in Tallinn and it’s also the former residential property of Peter the Great. There’s something quite decadent about spending an hour in a property where one of the most important figures in history once lived.

The staff here were friendly, engaging and helpful, so there was a welcoming feel to what is a relatively small museum. I was taken downstairs, and I wasn’t given much choice in the matter, to watch a video about the history of the building. However, I was pleased to see this as it was a useful introduction to the site and there are some information boards in the cellar as well.

The property was originally owned by the local merchant Hermann von Drenteln in the late seventeenth century and in 1714 it was sold to Peter the Great by his widow. She did well out of the arrangement, getting 1,400 roubles which apparently was a generous payment for the property. Peter the Great and his wife Catherine (later Catherine I) used the property when they stayed in Tallinn whilst the Kadroig Palace was being constructed. One of the reasons that the Tsar liked it was because it had views over the city and the Gulf of Tallinn (probably soon known in the US as the Gulf of America) which was handy as there were some battles going on in that area. The rooms H and I were wooden additions by Peter and they were later taken down, with A being the entrance hall, F the kitchen, C the living room and D the bedroom.

The living room with its large oval table.

The bedroom is located at the end of the building and it’s necessary to go through the living room to get there.

I understand that the bed is original, but the original silk canopy and bed cover fell apart during the eighteenth century and so these are more modern replacements. The video I watched at the beginning of the visit mentioned that visitors kept taking souvenirs such as feathers from the pillow and fabric from the coverings, so it’s not entirely that much of those remained. Bloody tourists.

The information about this room states that the armchair was owned by Peter the Great and was built by a local craftsman, although it looks in rather good condition to me for its age.

The dining room. In Peter the Great’s time, the dining room was located in the now demolished extension and a small mezzanine level was added in the 1804 to 1806 reconstruction and that’s when this room was added. That means that Peter and Catherine never visited the room in this state, but the table and chairs are original to the property and were used by the couple. I assume that quite a lot of repair and restoration has taken place here, particularly on the chairs, as they all look relatively new to me.

The kitchen which was basic, but functional.

The chimney type arrangement that’s above where the fire pit was located.

Peter the Great died in 1725 and the house began to fall into disrepair, although the interiors were mostly kept in place. Tsar Alexander I visited Tallinn in the early nineteenth century and was told about the property, which he went to visit. He ordered it to be restored and it was, opening as a museum in 1806, the oldest in Tallinn (or Reval as it was then). The rooms that had been located at the end of the property were demolished, but they were located in the foreground of the above photo. Catherine built herself quite a decent garden, but I think it’s fair to say (and I’m not a gardening expert) has been lost.

There’s normally an admission charge of €5 to visit, but I got in free with the Tallinn Card. The reviews are nearly all very positive about this museum and it’s surprised me with just how much has survived here from the eighteenth century. All really rather lovely.

This is a birch bark notebook which “Viktor” crossed out days whilst in exile. The 20 September 1942 was the last time that he crossed a day out, as he sadly died of TB three days later. That’s all the museum says, a hopeless lack of information and half a story.

However, a bit of research shows that there’s far more information known that the museum tells visitors. This belonged to Viktor Köster, born on 13 April 1921, who was deported in June 1941 with his mother Hildegard Köster to Ust-Churulka, Novosibirsk Oblast. This is located around half-way between Tallinn and St. Petersburg, relatively near to the Estonian border with Russia. Viktor died of tuberculosis on 23 September 1942 and his mother died of the same disease one year later, on 26 September 1943. Viktor’s father was arrested in 1941 and sentenced to death on 28 February 1942, with the killing taking place on 1 April 1942.

I did wonder for a while about the purpose of putting a stamp album on display, but this one is really rather cunning, indeed “a plan so cunning, you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.”

Unfortunately, due to the clumsy way that this museum seems to tell its stories, it just refers to the owner being “Karl” even though I think the museum knows the surname. Anyway, the text of the exhibit notes that he was arrested in the summer of 1950 as he wanted to flee to Finland, so he was sentenced to 30 years of hard labour. He then promptly attempted to escape on three occasions, he certainly sounds like a strong and courageous individual. The museum then states that this was a way to get information and documents back from Siberia, but I don’t know if this was the case with Karl and without a surname, I can’t find out anything more about him. But, I still like the stamp album as a way to transport hidden documents and I think it’s original.

This museum doesn’t make it easy to find out more about their treasures, the numbering system by items requires finding them on the phone they give you which promptly bounces around thinking a visitor has moved room. I’m all for the radical system of putting details about an object next to it, but there we go. Anyway, after persisting, there is much more to some of the exhibits at this museum than might be apparent. The Association of Estonians in the UK was founded in November 1947 and it still exists, publishing Eesti Hääl (Estonian Voice) for members and acting as a way of meeting other Estonians. This membership card is from Bourton, although this particular branch closed in 1948 when the Estonian agricultural workers left.

Unfortunately, trade unions in the UK were not all welcoming to the European Voluntary Workers who came to the country, in this case from Project Balt Cygnet, and they were described as “hostile” to the refugees. Manny Shinwell had an answer to that, he forced the workers to join trade unions even if they didn’t want to, which I suppose appeased the unions somewhat. Despite the trade unions seeking to harm the project, it was an exceptional piece of work from Attlee’s Government to tackle the post-war refugee problem and to help Estonians, and those from other Baltic countries. It also helped filled vacancies in the healthcare, textile and agricultural communities.

I rather like seeing bits of the Berlin Wall and I was certainly supplied with enough bits of it when I visited Berlin a few weeks ago, although I doubt anyone would be surprised to read that’s the best place to see them. There are also bits I’ve seen in a Las Vegas toilet, the Imperial War Museum, Montreal, the JFK Presidential Library and Schengen, although perhaps the highlight of them all is in a Lewisham shopping centre. There’s a Wikipedia page about these and this segment in Tallinn is from Potsdamer Platz and was a gift from the Senate of Berlin. I partly wonder whether these bits of wall should be protected by moving them inside, but since it is a wall that was designed to be outside, I can see the logic here.

There will be more to follow on some of the individual exhibits that interested me in this museum, apparently the first structure built in the country for the purpose of being a museum. This is one of the museums I didn’t get to last time using the Tallinn Card and I thought it would be one that I engaged with as I’m more than a little interested in the period under communism. This is a theme explored by numerous museums in Poland and it’s an intriguing story.

Reading through the reviews, there are a few people who had a similar experience to me, but we’re in a considerable minority as most reviewers seem to really like the museum. I couldn’t engage with it at all though and I got fed up with how the museum had been curated and gave up after thirty minutes.

This is the reason I struggled to engage, most things are audio based in the museum and the technology wasn’t very robust in terms of how it jumped thinking I had moved room. I like walls of text with the option of audio rather than what felt like walls of audio with minimal text. Even though the museum was relatively quiet, there was a logistical issue that visitors were clumping together in the same spot, so it was hard to see the exhibits. Unlike with text, where it’s possible to go to another room and read the information there before returning, the technology wasn’t set up to work like that here. A few people have said they would have preferred if the audio speed could be made faster, which would have been useful as I routinely listen to podcasts at either *1.5 or *2 speed in order to get through them quicker. Maybe TikTok has reduced my concentration span somewhat.

There weren’t that many exhibits on display, so the museum was very much dependent on its audio guide to tell the story of the Soviet occupation from the perspective of eight individuals. I did want to listen to a couple of these audio stories outside of the museum, but they’re not on the web-site even in an abbreviated form. I suspect that the stories were really very interesting, but the presentation of them didn’t work for me, but it evidently does for the majority of visitors. Perhaps on a more important point (or to me), the museum did seem to try and tell visitors what they should be thinking and although I agreed with the sentiment of the whole institution, I’d rather be told what the facts are rather than what told what I should be thinking.

Anyway, a few photos of some of the exhibits to come now in this riveting blog. As an aside, this reminds me that I must revisit the Museum of Occupation in Riga, Latvia as they had a similar set-up (although it was text rather than audio, so I got on better there) as they’ve now opened up their new site and permanent exhibition.

This is the Tallinn Fotografiska, a combination of art gallery, shop, restaurant, cafe and events space. I got in free of charge with the Tallinn Card but otherwise it’s quite a punchy £15 or so to get in, which feels a bit too much to me for Tallinn. Having noted that, the target audience they’re aiming for is probably not entirely price sensitive although most of the negative reviews are about the cost and not the contents. There are two floors of exhibitions and these are rotational, with the three exhibitions in early February 2025 being:

Peegel Pildis
Feng Li
Shepard Fairey

The whole atmosphere is laid back and welcoming, with the signage being clear and well laid out. I can see the interest in coming back regularly as the exhibitions are ever changing, but I can’t see many people spending more than about an hour here. I was glad that I popped along, it’s located near the city’s main railway station and the Shepard Fairey exhibition was the one that I enjoyed the most. And, visitors are allowed to take photographs, although it be an awkward situation for the gallery to try and stop them.

The third exhibition at Fotografiska was about sport, marking that this year Tallinn is the European Capital of Sport. It’s based around the work of Lembit Peegel and Pildis is Estonian for “in the picture”.

This reminds me of my friend Dave Morgan on one of his walking exploits, not least one of the Spine Races that he’s just completed. He’s that bit braver than I am, although I know that I set the bar really high.

Perhaps inevitably, I’m not really going to have a close interest in Estonian sports from the 1970s to the 1990s, but the imagery is human and shows the personality of the sportspeople. There was a freedom for Estonian photographers specialising in areas such as sport and culture, as they didn’t have to get too caught up in journalistic limitations that the Soviet influenced regime might have placed on them. There is quite a lot of raw emotion visible in a number of the photos and the exhibition explains the important role that he had in the newly independent Estonia in the 1990s and forging that new national identity. I was more intrigued by this exhibition than I expected to be, it’s an interesting way of seeing the evolution of sport in Estonia and it gave the collection a real purpose. And good luck to Tallinn in their year as the Capital of European Sport, I hope that they concentrate on the toughest and most challenging of all sporting endeavours, namely long distance walking.