The 99th Tour de France

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Kathryn

I love the Tour de France like puppies love dirty socks. All year long, I look forward to those three weeks in July when 198 scrawny cyclists race around France in a giant circle. It’s a tradition in my family to watch the final stage in Paris when the surviving cyclists ride several loops around the Champs Élysées.

 

As usual, I took no chances and had parked myself in the ideal location by 9am in order to be ready for the teams to arrive around 4 or 4:30pm. It may sound hard to believe but the hours flew by, even though I was too excited to read my book or do sudoku and spent most of the time standing and staring up and down the road.

 

When the remaining 153 cyclists finally arrived for their eight laps on the Champs Élysées, thousands of fans lined the street two or three deep. There were more British flags than usual this year in support of Bradley Wiggins, who comfortably won the 99th running of the Tour de France.

 

Jens Voigt led a breakaway of about six riders which was ultimately caught before the finish.

 

Mark Cavendish, center, in the world champion’s white and rainbow jersey.

 

The peloton flew by at incredible speeds.

 

Yellow jersey winner Bradley Wiggins was surrounded by his teammates Bernhard Eisel and Marc Cavendish.

 

On another lap, Sky teammate and Norwegian road race champion Edvald Boasson Hagen and Eisel led out Wiggins.

 

Team Sky was untouchably strong with riders like Wiggins, Boasson Hagen, and Cavendish.

 

Cavendish, who went on to win a record fourth time on the Champs Élysées, ahead of Peter Sagan, winner of the coveted green sprinter’s jersey.

 

The small yellow blob on top of the black podium is Tour winner Bradley Wiggins.

 

After the race ended and the awards were presented, each team rode together to greet the fans and celebrate the fact that they had just concluded 3,497 kilometers of some of the world’s toughest bike racing. The cyclists will wave and, if you’re lucky, sign autographs.

 

Team Sky.

 

King of the Mountians Thomas Voeckler in the polka dot jersey.

 

This year I got third place cyclist and 2010 Vuelta a España winner, Vincenzo Nibali, to sign my Canadian flag!

 

Peter Sagan got a flat tire on his victory lap.

 

Later that night, I came across Kris Boeckmans of Team Vacansoliel who had finished in fifth place on the final stage and got his autograph, too.

 

Just eleven months to go until next year’s Tour!

 

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Paris

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Kathryn

My first stop in Paris is always the same place: Le Marais. The Jewish quarter is home to some of the best falafel around.

 

Once I had eaten, I wandered around the city, checking out some of the city’s iconic sites.

 

The Louvre museum with its famous glass pyramids and the fountain at the Tuileries garden.

 

Legend has it that you’ll return to Paris if you stand on Point Zero. I’m not superstitious, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. It’s also the spot from where all distances to other cities are measured.

 

The weather threatened to rain, but it held off long enough to visit Paris Plage, the city’s manmade beach along the River Seine.

 

The cemetery of Père Lachaise, named for the Jesuit priest who was the confessor of Louis XIV, is the final resting place for hundreds of thousands of people, including Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, and Edith Piaf.

 

The Eiffel Tower at sunset is always gorgeous.

 

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Helsinki’s Suomenlinna fort

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Kathryn

My last day in Finland was spent visiting Suomenlinna, Helsinki's sea fortress. Housed on a collection of islands, the buildings represent three distinct eras in the country's history. When Sweden included what is now Finland, the first buildings on Suomenlinna were built in the mid eighteenth century. Sixty years later, Russia won the Finnish War and added to the fort they now occupied. A century later, Finland took back the fort when they declared independence during the Russian Revolution. The fort acted first as a prison and then as a base during WWII before it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list for its storied military history.

 

The lone surviving submarine of the Finnish navy is now a museum. In WWII, it torpedoed a Russian transport ship but under the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty, Finland was forced to decommission its entire submarine fleet. The others were eventually used for scrap metal.

 

The bastions were great to explore.

 

The island's main square features the tomb of Augustin Ehrensvärd, the first commander of Suomenlinna.

 

The dry docks, among the oldest in the world, are still in use today.

 

Defensive cannons face the Baltic Sea.

 

Suomenlinna has a panoramic view of the sea and of Helsinki.

 

Overall, I have mixed feelings about Finland. The Arctic Circle was cool and I'm willing to reconsider my initial opinion of Helsinki, but it's definitely an expensive country for traveling and the self-contained culture means this isn't a flashy country to visit. Still, I would consider coming back to check out Finland's world famous wife carrying championships!

 

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Rovaniemi, Finland

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Kathryn

We caught an overnight train from Helsinki to Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland which sits just a few kilometers from the Arctic Circle. The train ride was beautiful, which is just as well because traveling north to the Arctic Circle in July means you enter the land of twenty four hours of daylight so at least I had some nice scenery to watch as insomnia kicked in. Finland bears a strong resemblance to Cottage Country in Muskoka, Ontario: lakes filled with canoes and swimming rafts; quiet rivers nudged by gentle breezes and relaxed currents; perfect reflections of healthy trees on dead calm waters.

 

Once the train pulled in to Rovaniemi and we dropped off our backpacks, the Arctic Museum was our first destination. One section focused on the Arctic itself with plenty of interactive exhibits, lots of interesting artifacts from Arctic people worldwide, information about how the Arctic has been changing over the years due to climate change and human involvement, and a beautiful aurora borealis light show.

 

Another section of the museum was dedicated to Finland and, more specifically, the history, people, and traditions of Rovaniemi. The Soviets attacked the town during WWII and Rovaniemi was consequently almost completely razed.

 

In the afternoon, we went to the main attraction: the Arctic Circle! A shopping and entertainment plaza named Santa Village & Park is conveniently located on the Arctic Circle, so you can try on all the furry hats and buy all the tacky, Christmas souvenirs your heart desires. As a kid, I was a huge fan of lingonberries so I was glad to see them available here.

 

I skipped the souvenirs but I did pay fifty cents for an Arctic Circle stamp in my passport. In fact, this is the first stamp in my British passport!

 

From my trip to Ecuador, I learned that the equator isn't just the narrow red line painted on the ground, but an entire zone about twenty-odd kilometers wide and I know that other geographic points can shift, like the magnetic North Pole, so I played it safe and walked a fair distance in each direction of the marked Arctic Circle in case the it wasn't precisely where indicated. It's a good thing I did because I found out the next day that the real Arctic Circle is actually about one hundred meters off from the painted line.

 

It's a twenty minute walk to the hub of Santa Park. As we walked, we spotted a baby animal in the woods that I believe was a young moose.

 

I was really excited to go to Santa Park since it looked like there were lots of cool activities. We forked over the hefty €16 entrance fee…and promptly regretted it! It was more like a gift shop than the amusement park it was described to be. The place was absolutely dead except for a few kids and their parents. There was a oddly psychedelic ride through what I can best describe as a trippy forest and Santa's workshop, an ice bar with ice sculptures, and a deserted restaurant with a stage where so-called elves (which looked more like evil, dirty trolls in my book) jumped around the stage in what I can only assume was supposed to be dancing. It was weird. It was so weird that it was hilarious, but we chose not to stay for the 4 PM session of elf secrets. The one highlight of Santa Park was the life sized snow globe where I got to frolic and play in the fake, chemically snow. Apart from that, it was absolutely the worst place I've ever paid to go to. If you should ever find yourself in the Arctic Circle, I implore you to save your money and skip Santa Park.

 

In the evening, we went for a nice hike through the woods where we weren't technically lost but definitely disoriented. Since we had seen a young moose earlier in the day, we kept hoping to find a wild reindeer but had no luck.

 

Just before midnight, we walked to a beach to check out the Lumberjack Bridg and wandered around, snapping photos of the midnight sun and swatting the mosquitoes away. I don't know how people live here year round where they experience twenty four hours of sunlight and darkness. It was tough getting to sleep and I woke up constantly.

 

The next day I went bobsledding for the first time! In the summertime, there's no snow so I went down the course on a little wheely chair. It didn't look like I'd be able to pick up too much speed so I completely eased off the brake and, of course, on the next turn I went flying up in the air! Despite a couple of impressive skid burns on my knees and elbows, I was in good shape and got back on my wheely chair and laughed all the way down to the bottom.

 

The town's main plaza was Lordi Square, named after the heavy metal band Lordi which won the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest. Mr. Lordi, as the frontman is known, originally hails from Rovaniemi.

 

Apparently Lapland still appreciates the mid 1990s with this humble homage to MC Hammer.

 

Traditional Finnish foods include salty licorice ice cream and reindeer.

 

Not to be missed is the world's northern most McDonald's.

 

That night we boarded the train back to Helsinki. The scenery was once again peaceful and gorgeous as I looked through the 1980s dull pink curtains which were useless against the nighttime sun.

 

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Helsinki

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Kathryn

Many of my fellow passengers on the first ferry of the morning from Tallinn to Helsinki had clearly been up all night indulging in Tallinn's nightlife so the ride was pretty quiet. The ferry was a pea green and orange ship that must have held around two thousand passengers on its nine decks. Even though neighboring Sweden is the birthplace of Ikea, much of the decor and furniture was from there, though there was also an Italian theme for no apparent reason. The trip only took two hours and the water was dead calm. We had a great parting view of Tallinn, which was a nice farewell.

 

The introduction to Helsinki wasn't quite as positive unfortunately. It was cold, windy, and threatening to downpour. I'd been told in advance that Finnish culture is a bit closed off and that the people aren't terribly warm and friendly. This held true for the city as well. Helsinki didn't seem to be very good at promoting itself so my friend and I wandered around, not really sure which museums and attractions were actually worth their hefty admission fees. (Perhaps I can illustrate my point about Helsinki failing at self promotion with a slogan I saw for a huge electronics store: probably always cheaper.)

 

We ended up walking to Senate Square, passing some dreary architecture along the way.

 

I'll admit, I was pretty excited to find an accordion though.

 

Senate Square itself was lovely. A big, open plaza, it is dominated by Helsinki Cathedral. The interior was sparse yet tasteful, with arches and gold chandeliers.

 

Uspenski Orthodox Cathedral, a clear sign of Russia's former presence in Finland, was a serious looking building perched on a hill.

 

Since a popular movie in 2004 showed an Italian couple add aching a padlock to a bridge and throwing the key into the water, it has become a tradition for couples to put a small lock on the Bridge of Love, usually with their names or their wedding date on it.

 

By now, the rain was starting to bucket down on us. It had only been a day but Helsinki wasn't off to a great start so we ducked in to a cafe to find another town to visit in Finland. By the time we left the cafe, the rain had let up and we had our next destination: the Arctic Circle!

 

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Beware the statues

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Kathryn

Courtesy of Mini Bear Films, I bring you the trailer from my time with statues in Tartu.

 

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Tartu, Estonia

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Kathryn

Estonia is small enough that the bus ride from the western island town of Kuressaare to the southeastern university city of Tartu is probably the longest direct bus ride in the country, and it's just six hours.

 

I picked up a map of town, not realizing at the time it was a self guided walking tour, so I happily followed the trail as it took me all over the city. The walking tour brought me to ruins, bridges, and historical places and figures, but it primarily introduced me to dozens of statues across town dedicated to poets, patriots, scientists, and musicians.

 

Town Hall Square is home to the city's third Town Hall as the first two, built in the same spot, were destroyed by fire. The ground floor of the existing Town Hall dates back to the 1780s. In 1998, a fountain featuring two students kissing under an umbrella was added to the square. The fountain is meant to capture the city's eternally young spirit due to the university.

 

The Kivisilla Art Gallery is more commonly known as the leaning building owing to the fact that one side of the building rests on the old town wall and the other side is simply on piles.

 

Authors Oscar Wilde and Estonia's Eduard Vilde probably never met in real life but their lives overlapped and they share the same last name so someone decided to make a statue of the pair on conversation. Why not?

 

From most perspectives, this sculpture/fountain looks like a jumble of pipes.

 

However, when viewed from the right angle, it turns into a portrait of Yuri Lotman, a deceased scientist and University of Tartu professor. (If you're stuck, look for his nose and glasses!)

 

Jaan Poska, responsible for negotiating the terms of the 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty which granted Estonia full independence from Russia, is remembered with a statue.

 

Angel's Bridge probably gets its name from a corruption of the Estonian for “English bridge,” a nod to the style in which it was built.

 

Nearby is Devil's Bridge, built in 1903 to the memory of Emperor Alexander I.

 

The Cathedral ruins are incredible. Construction was completed in the fourteenth century but it was nearly destroyed during the Livonian War and then the remaining ruins were further damaged in a seventeenth century fire. The Cathedral is today connected to a university museum. As restoration is ongoing, I can't be sure how much of the ruins are original and what has been restored, but it is clear this will once again be a grand building when it is done.

 

This is a sacrificial stone that ancient Estonians apparently thought to have special healing powers, though I'm not sure what exactly was sacrificed here, when this happened, when it stopped, and if this is actually an original stone.

 

Jaan Tõnisson was an important politican and journalist when he was imprisoned by the occupying Soviets in late 1940. He was never heard from again.

 

Over one thousand terra cotta figures decorate the gothic exterior of St. John's Church which was built in the fourteenth century. As the church was significantly damaged during wars and fires, the terra cotta figures today are all replicas.

 

A gift to Tartu from Catherine II in 1776, construction finished in 1784 on the first stone bridge in the Baltic countries. First the Soviets attempted to blow up the bridge in 1941 and the Germans finished the job in 1944. The bridge of today, which in no way resembles the original design but is built in the same location, was completed in 1959.

 

To commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the market building, Tartu erected a statue of a pig with the different cuts of meat neatly marked. If you're hungry, you can find all of these cuts inside the market.

 

In 1977, the population of Estonia's second largest city reached 100,000.

 

Not on the walking tour was a group of trees that had been knit bombed. For the unaware, knit bombing is when people reclaim public space like lamp posts by covering them on knitwear. It's sort of like the woolen version of graffiti. Who ever said knitting wasn't bad ass?

 

I'm not one to get excited about gardens and I've killed more than a few flowers in my time. That said, the University of Tartu Botanical Garden took my breath away. It's just a few hectares in size, but the way it's been landscaped, it feels so much larger. The plants are labeled with small handwritten signs humbly stuck in the ground, making the garden seem like it's a friend's backyard instead of a two hundred year old university run garden. There are numerous quiet, secluded spots, which let you enjoy peace and beauty in solitude. It is far and away the nicest garden I've ever seen.

 

I couldn't stay away so following day I returned to the garden. Even though it was drizzling throughout the morning, there was a wedding in one of the larger central gardens and I saw at least two additional couples having their wedding photos taken on the grounds.

 

This has nothing to do with anything, but I had what was probably the best hot chocolate of life in Tartu. It was basically a melted chocolate bar poured into a cup and it was fantastic.

 

In the evening, I caught the bus back to Tallinn. It was a short stay in Tartu but the city won me over. Tallinn is charming and wonderful to visit, but if I ever moved to Estonia, I would be happy to live in Tartu.

 

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Kuressaare, Estonia

Posted on July 21, 2012 by Kathryn

It was a quick four hour bus-ferry-bus ride from Tallinn to the island of Saaremaa in western Estonia. Along the way, the land was pancake flat and I passed more rolled hay stacks than Monet could paint in a lifetime. Saaremaa is just under 3,000 square kilometers and has a population of 35,000. The biggest town of Kuressaare is home to 14,000 people.

 

The main attraction in Kuressaare is the Bishop's Castle. The castle was built for the local bishop in the fourteenth century and is surrounded by a moat.

 

The castle's exterior was beautiful but the exhibits inside were a bit confusing. There was very little information on the castle's history or explanations of what the different rooms were used for. Instead, there was a taxidermy exhibit of a mishmash of animals, a look at the development of Estonian education, a history of life on Saaremaa, and the island's experience during WWII and under the USSR. The English language information sheets in each room were well translates but left glaring gaps and were out of order with the artifacts, so I eventually abandoned reading them and tried to get a sense of life just from the artifacts.

 

According to legend, a court tried prisoners in the castle. Anyone found guilty was immediately taken to the adjoining chamber where there was a pit thirty feet deep. At the bottom of this pit paced an agitated and hungry lion waiting to devour its next meal. Bishop Heinrich III died in the shaft in 1381, the first recorded mention of the town in any text.

 

The most interesting feature was a ten minute video detailing the seven kilometer ferry crossing from the mainland to the island during the winter of the 1950s. As I rode that same ferry on a mild July morning, I did wonder what the same crossing was like in the dead of winter. In the video, cars drove cautiously at night over a thick sheet of ice between the island and mainland. One car actually sank through the ice and the driver was able to escape in time. The next day, the ferry slowly pushed through a narrow, relatively ice-less passage. A scuba diver was sent under the ice to attach a hook to the sunken car's fender and the ferry pulled the car onto its deck! Because this was the 1950s, the scuba diver's gear included a huge, globe-like helmet and lead filled boots which meant the diver had to be dragged along the ice so as to not crash right through. The trip that took no more than maybe twenty five minutes this summer morning was easily ten to twelve hours in winter sixty years ago. In fact, the video shows people walking along the frozen ice and passing the ferry.

 

From what I've seen so far, typical Estonian food seems to be a combination of Scandinavian dishes (lots of herring) and Russian cuisine (borscht, anyone?), neither of which do a lot for me as a vegetarian. There's more than enough veg-friendly food around, so that's not a problem. In all my travels, I've come across some pretty unappetizing foods, all of which were meat based, but this is the first place I've ever seen a vegetarian dish that absolutely turned my stomach. Pickles with honey and sour cream. Needless to say, I didn't order it.

 

Perhaps what I like most about cafes and restaurants in Estonia is that most of them have outdoor patios and, since the weather can get cold quickly even in the summer, they all supply cozy fleece blankets to wrap yourself up in as you enjoy your pot of tea, beer, or pickles with honey and sour cream.

 

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Tallinn miscellaneous

Posted on July 21, 2012 by Kathryn

Odds and ends from Tallinn.

 

Common souvenirs include fake fur, leather, hand knitted goods, and amber.

 

This pharmacy was originally built in 1422 and is the oldest still functioning pharmacy in the world.

 

Just because I'd kick myself if this was ever an answer in Jeopardy, Ferdinand Vieke founded the Estonian State Puppet Theater in 1952.

 

A display of 14th and 15th century tombstones from St. Catherine's Church lines an outdoor market and walkway.

 

The Opera and its quirky parking gates.

 

Just a few of the ornate doorways in Old Town. This first one dates back to 1651.

 

Town Hall was built from 1402-1404 and acted as the town hall until 1970. Today it is the only surviving gothic town hall in northern Europe and is used for ceremonial and tourist purposes.

 

I'll conclude this post with some of the great panoramic views of Tallinn taken from viewing platforms around the city.

 

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Tallinn’s Soviet prison

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Kathryn

Are you looking for the perfect place to host your event? An intimate wedding? An all night rave? Or maybe a work conference? If so, perhaps you should consider holding it at Tallinn's former Soviet prison. That's right, this building which has been used as a defensive fort, a military barracks, and a Soviet prison now pays its bills by renting out large portions of the grounds to different events.

 

The main building dates back to the nineteenth century when it was designed to defend Tallinn thanks to its location right on the water but it quickly grew outdated and was transformed into a dismal military barracks. When the Soviets occupied Estonia, the building met their need for a prison to hold the political and criminal prisoners.

 

The KGB headquarters were located in the Old Town, near St. Olaf's Church. In fact, the Soviets placed antennae on the church's tower to intercept communications from nearby Helsinki. Most days, any number of prisoners were shuffled between the KGB downtown office and the prison.

 

As with most prisons, life was tough for the prisoners. Daily rations were limited to just 250 grams of bread and half a liter of water. Cells were typically overcrowded, with sixty people in a room with sixteen beds. In many cells, half of the prisoners had to stand and kill bugs while the other half slept on the concrete floor, switching off in shifts.

 

A light stayed on 24 hours inside each cell. Guards watched the prisoners by looking through a tiny window covered with metal mesh so the prisoners could not throw things at the guard's eye.

 

There was a three tier hierarchy among the prisoners with career criminals at the top, followed by petty thieves and first time offenders, and at the bottom were sex offenders. New inmates were routinely and harshly hazed. One appropriately named game was called Guess Who Hit You. Another popular hazing ceremony involved convincing the new prisoner to jump off the top bunk while wearing a pillowcase on his head. On the floor was a single chess piece and the prisoner's goal was to land on the chess piece in the exact center of his forehead.

 

Once a day for one hour, prisoners were allowed outside. Here they usually walked in a circle, aiming to reach 10,000 steps daily regardless of the weather.

 

For a prisoner on death row, he never knew more than five minutes in advance when it was time to be executed. He would have been told that his request for life imprisonment had been denied (every single request was denied over the years) before being escorted to a small waiting room. Here he would smoke, pace, pray, or plead for a couple of minutes. Then he was taken into the adjoining room, knelt forward to place his head on a wooden block, and was shot in the back of the head. The walls and floor of the execution room were painted a dark reddish-brown color so as to mask any spilled blood and minimize the guards' clean up effort. Standing in the room, it was disturbing to see such ruthless efficiency. The prisoner's body would then be secretly sent to a mass anonymous grave. A few hundred prisoners were executed under the Soviets.

 

(Please note this photo is of one of the prison's many hallways. Taking a photo of the execution room was far too dark for me.)

 

The last execution took place just after Estonia gained independence. The prisoner was already on death row and so the execution was carried out as originally planned in September 1991. Since then, Estonia has not enacted the death penalty.

After independence, the new government tried to shut down the prison as quickly as possible but it still took fourteen years to find available beds for everyone. When the last prisoner left in 2005, the prison was officially shut down. Most of the prison has been stripped of metals, cables, and anything with resale value. Part of the prison is permanently open to the public. Here none of the locks work so no one is in danger of accidentally locking themselves in a cell. Another part can only be viewed when with a tour guide who will take you to spots that are otherwise off limits.

 

I really wasn't sure what to expect when following a sign that said “prison coast.”

 

Turns out, there was a nice sandy beach with beach chairs and a cafe! When I visited, the grounds were being prepared for an upcoming three day music festival. Absolutely bizarre…

 

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