Tallinn - Estonia. Our first stop in the Baltics

We reached the Baltics after midnight - in pitch darkness and heavy rain. Without having made a plan beforehand, Anne found a free parking space for us to stay overnight through a useful app, which immediately navigated us to the same parking space. As we were driving and encountering numerous potholes and puddles splashing water everywhere, a police car came towards us, splashing us with water like numerous other vehicles before and continued driving. Not enough of a story, because I thought derisively to myself: 'I hope they won't come after us now'. Not half a minute later, we had two familiar headlights in the rearview mirror, which accompanied us to our destination parking space. Great - they want something. So I rolled down the window and tried to look as friendly as possible while fighting off tiredness. Indeed, the police car parked diagonally behind our parking spot and both officers approached the driver's and passenger's doors and asked for the familiar documents. While they were being examined in the flashlight, my question came out: 'Is there something wrong Officer?' As it turned out, they were both surprised how a foreign car could drive so purposefully to this remote beach parking lot. After explaining our app strategy and asking if this spot was unsafe, the officer dryly replied that it was not, he was only afraid that our appearance could be another German invasion and pointed to the camper van next to us with a license plate from Baden. An extremely bad joke, as we luckily realized minutes later. Having received back our documents and wishing us a nice evening, we felt welcomed to Estonia in a very peculiar way...

Tallinn greeted us the next day with very changeable weather - heavy rain showers followed by sunshine, which could change twice within 10 minutes thanks to the wind. Defying the weather, we headed to the Old Town, parked Winniefred in a parking lot without apparent parking fees, and followed the tourist stream to the center, which quickly brought us to the marketplace. The weather drove us into the Old Town Hall, where we took the opportunity for a tower climb and had a meal in a medieval-style tavern. Afterwards, we went to the upper part of the Old Town, where among other things we witnessed an Orthodox Sunday service in the state church of Estonia. After being able to enjoy several viewpoints of the city with dry feet, we ate Estonian cuisine at the marketplace - a relief after weeks of cooking on a camping stove in Scandinavia. Back at the car, there was a doubly incomprehensible note stuck to the windshield. In Estonian, we were asked (as far as we could translate with Google) to transfer 31 euros in fines to multiple accounts. As we researched, there is an online parking system in Tallinn, where you can register for various parking zones in the city and pay for parking tickets there. Too bad there was no sign in the city. Well, now we know better!...

We spent the next day with a short walk on the beach and further exploring the city, which was also divided into 10-minute intervals, as the weather still wasn't kind to us. Besides the city wall and the new shopping district (really nicely done!!), we discovered other beautiful places in the city and decided that this would definitely not be our last time in Tallinn! See you soon!