Beautiful Tallinn in the rain

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Fundraising Goal: $9,000, or $9 per kilometer!!!

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Still very jet lagged, I woke up very late this morning. After a quick breakfast at the hotel, I had to bring my bike over to the bike shop where they had agreed by email before to put my bike together out of the box. The store is about 1.5 km from the hotel -- too far to walk with a light but unwieldy bike box, but too short for a taxi. So I bought a tramway ticket, went two stops and then brought it over on my shoulder.

The folks at the bike shop were very nice, but a little distracted. It seems that 150 people on the Marie Curie ride for cancer were arriving in Tallinn and needed their bikes tuned up today. Also, many of their normal mechanics are on the ride, so they weren't there to help. One of their younger mechanics, Martin, agreed to do it before they closed at 5, but when I got there just before 5, he hadn't started it yet. Martin promised me that he'd finish it tonight, after they close, but we shall see if it actually happens. He has my number, I have his. If this doesn't happen tonight, I will lose at least a day and a half of cycling, which would really make it difficult for me to get 1000 km in by September 24, so I have my fingers crossed.

This did give me the opportunity to explore Tallinn and it is as spectacular as I was told. The medieval town center is stunning, if overrun with tourists. Not surprisingly, most folks tend to be Swedish, Finnish or Russian (where all the ferries go). I've gone camera mad, and even was able to convince the guardienne at the St. Nikolai Orthodox church to allow me one photo of the stunning iconostasis there.

Outside the walls of the old city, I was a little surprised to see how Russian/Soviet the city is. I should not have been so surprised, perhaps, but I had heard so much about how quickly Estonia has developed in its 17 post-Soviet years. And as if to demonstrate the point, I found a massive, fully western shopping mall just on the outskirts of town where I was able to get a SIM card for my French cell phone. My number while in Estonia will be: +37255932437 (for those in the US, the + means you dial "011" first). It is 7 hours ahead of US EST here.

We'll see at the time of the next entry whether the bike is ready...