the city is redundant; it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind.
- IC, IC

tallinn, capital city of estonia: more cobblestones, cathedrals, castles; more shops selling knitted socks and nesting dolls and amber necklaces. and yet, in tallinn it is different, as it was different in tartu and cesis and riga and sigulda. different arrangements of the same elements and the feeling is changed completely.
i arrived here this morning, around 10:30, after boarding an 8am bus in tartu, full from another homemade breakfast prepared Tiu and her sister, my couchsurfing hosts in tartu. unfortunately, i slept through two and a half hours of spectacular scenery, but buses and cars are like a watch dangling on a chain in front of my face: you are getting very sleepy. after checking into my 7-bed dorm room in a hostel in tallinn old town, i've just been walking walking walking all day, my legs already sore from all the walking of the past two days. i love this place! i don't know how to describe it to make it seem any different from the other medieval old towns i have seen in the baltics, except to say that it is a little more alive, and yet time passes more slowly. i poked around in many little shops, which was nice as i have not done much poking around thus far. i climbed a hill through crooked thin alleys and then through shady park greenery and saw from above the city and beyond to its bay (from where tomorrow i will take the ferry back to helsinki). i went to the museum of occupations where i examined relics from the soviet era: uniforms, suitcases, cars, stereos, telephone booths, documents, medals, gas masks. i went into a large used bookstore which, while lacking in any visual atmosphere beyond rows of peeling earth-toned book spines, had the smell! that smell, old books, up there with horses and matches as the best smells on earth. the smell reminded me first (with more than a slight tinge of nostalgia) of long hours and days even spent in oberlin's library amidst the stacks, sleeping sprawled surrounded by scattered books and papers. second, the smell reminded me that this time last year i was workig at the strand - 18 miles of books! - certainly the best bookstore ever. but -despite of my love of everything it contained and its smell and the strange and seductive constant creaking of the floorboards - i can say thank god i am not where i was a year ago, spending all day, every day, day after day in the vast unairconditioned second floor art department between shelves bowed under the weight of decades of books and feeling bowed myself, under both the physical weight of incessant hoisting and reshelving and the abstract weight of knowing i wll never, ever, become intimate with even one tenth of those titles i have hoisted and shoved and alphabatized. i will never be as well-read or as well-traveled as i desire to be. i suppose that means there will always be something towards which to strive, and boredom will be kept at bay.
ANYWAY. that was my proustian madeleine of the day, now i must rush through the past few days. two days ago, on the advice of tatiana and felikss, i took a day trip from cesis to sigulda, another castle town halfway between cesis and riga. i must have walked at least 7 miles that day, from town to krimulda palace (which was oddly abandoned because, as i learned later, it is now a sanitorium and not open to the public) and then along country roads (hayley, we could have continued our field photo project!) and through wooded and steep hiking trails up to the turaida castle estate. there was rain, there was sun, there were not too many people, there is a lot more to tell but i will just say it was lovely. i spent a third night at birzes guesthouse because i just couldn't bring myself to leave, and yesterday morning was on an 8:22 train to valga. i had this vision of getting off on valka, which is the latvian side of town, and walking across to estonian valga, but instead i just got off in valga, no passport stamo or anything, and caught a bus to tartu, estonia's second biggest city, its university town, tartu. i wandered here all day in the rain, along streets and through a park that reminded me of the walter reed annex, and at 5:30 i met tiu. we went to her soviet block apartment with its leather-padded doors and we peeled potatos, made dinner, watched the olympics in estonian, and then wandered through the deserted town at night...a university town, not many people are there in the summer, and all those who were there were in the main square watching a screening for the film festival. i wish i could describe more, but my internet time is almost up! ahhhhh, internet cafes!