On the Prospect of More International Flights.

Pam and Simon, say those with French accents. Even as there is no reason to have to say it, Pam would mandate stating that I forced the picture after we had been up watching films starring Matt Damon or German in them all night and there was no preparation for taking pictures. No point. Second take is some of the Christmas dinner.
I'm tossing around making my credit account feel more seaworthy this spring. I could use a good match at Sicilian cards.

And such.

Shit, today was really difficult! The occasion of me just waking up as evening is covering the city is not the difficult part, sleeping all day was really great actually and I am taking full advantage at least once in every 24 hour period of the non-Soviet bed in which I am stretching for nightly, or today, daily unconsciousness. It is a great step to slowly ease me back to my IKEA bed and comforter winking at me from my closet over there in Minneapolis. The difficulty today laid in departures, the absence of some good people from a good place. There are still great good people around, and more sure to be flowing in and otu of the hostel, though this one flash in and out of faces is strangely melancholy. Pam, the French-Italian, Simon, French-Swedish, and Rogan the Australian, which are actually all of their superhero names as well, all dispersed for varied travels. Pam and Simon are off to the dark land to the east for several weeks, taking them slowly to China and then circling back around through India and NAfrica and such, on this research project they just set up for kicks. Rogan is working down south, somehow to Bucharest and chilling around the Balkans for a bit before back to Aussie, he just finished working around 10 months or so around pubs in the UK. All of this influence around, the brief breath of seeing such possibility lived and living, well, I'll say that I'm starting to save tips straight off after I start working at the 'Buck again. The next time, with a backpack and not these fucking suitcases. Airport handles and wheels over cobblestones, not so much. Even having all of such that I overpacked, the task of actually opening up my suitcases and rifling through the items seems not worth the effort to cycle out the clothes which I have been sporting around for a while. The excuse that I was planning earlier for over 6 months out of the States, settled into a far off frozen city covered in Soviet and buried in East Asia, was shit. So crazy, Pam and Simon are out of Europe though sometime in June, making contacts for this research with NGOs in a semi-professional atmosphere at times, and they still took just a pack each for the travels. Really, I'm just kicking myself now and this rant on it is a bit useless and just going on to counter other things, but that is a recent fresh, more intense minimalist sort of view on things.
Last night was cards, drinks, conversation, and movies to the morning light. Tried going out after the sale of liquor and beer had ceased at 11, though our venture into the spired streets only took off around 3am already after cards, Indiana Jones with that kickass Chinese kid from the Goonies, and finishing the supplies we already had around. It was me Pam and Simon, Rogan was trying to come off on a break from his last, well, close to 10 months of working in pubs in the UK, you fill in the backstory on something like that. The first place we took down into, following a massive group of non-Italian Italian-speakers, was this really dark cavernish underground place, bit overfilled on smoke but promising, until the order from us for a few White Russians was met with blank stares, then offers of either the complicated and sophisticated mixture of gin and tonic, or beer. Tried going into Hellhunt next, which was open, then after an extended conversation between myself and the bartendress where I tried in various approaches to carry across my main point that no, I don't speak Estonian, we found out that regardless of the open doors, sign saying it was open for a while, and people at tables, it was closed. Some more night wandering around found us later with bread, cookies and juice, then a return to the hostel for movies off my laptop, sadly both McGyver and Walker Texas Ranger had already played their time out on the Estonian channels.
So after a day filled with sleep, that catches up to me sitting here now with some coffee and toasted sandwiches, with Dutch and Aussie accents in the air. The atmosphere around ranges from different levels of inability for verbal or communicated description, with both ends of surreal experiences to the warm flowing indescribable conversation and tango track of accent lined interaction.

On nothing, and everything really.

I walked to the end of the world yesterday. Following the line of the coast west, weaving through shipyards and spurts of visible economic growth, I made it. Started off the journey a bit lateish in the day, so my time was limited from the dispersing of the sun around 5, though it was already a bit scarce from the thick sea clouds. There is a part in the bay which Tallinn sits on, the left side stretches up and portrudes out into the gulf, constantly shrinking until it winds into the waves in a single point. I was followed by a swan for a bit, walking down the shore. It was sort of surreal until I realized it was probably just waiting for food from the likewise dispersed crowds of varied European tourists. Further up the point as the land shrunk in width and the sands moved into rocky outcrops for the crashing waves, one dirt trail interwoven with imagined paths over the tundra. A few abandon buildings rose and crumbled farther in, one rising hill covering half-submerged stone arches. The end of the point submerges into stone and sea and wind. Waves come in from all sides save that which you emerge from. It feels like the end of the world, waves in front and to all visible sides washing over your perception.
Unmitigated tiredness has been carrying me today, my nights extend to early morning conversations from over the world, hopeless flirting, followed by sleep and reemerging in coffee.

Between glögi and fruitcake.

From Spires and Sidelight.

Brisk morning, clear glowing skies over Eesti and myself making love to a cup of real coffee. Spent a while talking with a middle-aged Australian guy here working in some sort of stock exchange deal out of London, ranged from the ridiculousness of Russian visas to the crazed wave riding of Finnish ferries to stag parties and their participants. Christmas Eve could not have been expected to resemble such, and the realizing of such hasn't begun to surface as yet. Travelling really takes away from awareness of holidays, if the travelling is not holiday based. To start off, Russia doesn't really celebrate Christmas at all, so even as ёлки, yolki, the Russian New Years trees, were arising suddenly with their decorative strobe lights, fucking strobe lights, nothing else had the coming holiday feel. There was one chain of cafe I used for wireless that randomly would start running a collection of some Western Christmas tunes, though this was interspersed with angry shouting between people in Russian and with techno-remixes by Russian girls, paid for production from their fathers working in one of the state-controlled energy fields. Digressing though, it is sort of a sudden hit for me to feel that it is the day before Christmas now.
Estonians have a bit quieter, more subtle approach to decorating for the holiday than in the States. Given, I haven't been around much as yet, though my expedition to the market for food yesterday was layered in such Christmas tunes playing overhead. In the main square of Old Town, which is the medieval part of most Baltic, Scando, or European cities, ringed by the same walls and filled with the same winding cobblestoned streets, right now is a massive Christmas tree surrounded by wooden booths with people selling Estonian scarves and woolen such, I'll try to prop some pictures up of that later. Walking through that on my refreshing evening stroll yesterday from the bussijaam where the bus came in, dragging along everything I brought for an expected 6 month stay abroad, over cobblestones, in complete and totally planned disregard for the shortest path to the hostel as I 'remembered' the shortcut, the one thing that really caused me to stop for something other than my map was that view. With torches burning on the buildings around and the sharp air encasing the view, I felt like I was in some crappy holiday greeting card bought in cases of 30, and it was fucking grand. Some sort of tradition is placing a candelabra in windows with I think 7 candles on it, in the inverted non-Hannaukah way. That's the official name for that, remember it. While it is all really sudden, it is sinking in smoothly and probably in just the right way. After my Return Stateside I'll be over at Sam's for a few days, drinking wassail and playing Euchere in the Wisc, so the extension of holidays should play out to a decent length. I am finding a lack of solid piano- or just traditional Christmas music as I look through my iTunes, so some Brad Mehldau is carrying what it can of the holiday atmosphere. Not even Vince Guiraldi Trio appears, and me butchering the name suprisingly does nothing to make it appear, I'll deal though. This is what my worries revert to, which is fucking great to realize. There are mounted showerheads with hot water, drinkable water from a tap, connection to the outside world, transparency and democracy, and I'm shagging on about Christmas tunes. As my full comprehension of all this incredibiliciousness comes around I'll be dropping some recollections from the dark land to the East, the coffee in my hand and the view from the window lined with empty wine bottles calls first.
Shower, sauna?, BBC!, a bit of time facing the rushing waves from the Baltic. Tere, onward.

Living on a Lai.

The air flows smoothly into my perceptions, the lights glowing and soothing my waves of conscioousness. Water is from a tap, I drink Saku between. My visa is done, this is a Return to Westish. More sharpish.

This really is, nothing in the faraway.

Far, far to great a length between these posts, though I comfort that with the thoughts that in a bit over the span of a week I'll be overloading whoever still finds their way around this dusted blog listing to the side off of some shoal with plotless, pointless, prepositionless, and obscure posts on the subcultures of various comprehensions regarding Russian national identity and affirmation, not even touching on the glowing views of Tallinn which I will be carrying across. Shit.
I've started on the insomniac phase of realizing the small amount of time I'll endure in these parts. That sort of thing has happened before the day before a journey for possibly an hour or something like that, or if I finished draining 12 shots of espresso over some jumbled paper regarding the theory of time in post-modernist impressions. This is a bit strange, I really am tossing around for a few hours on the Soviet relic of a sack strung between two bits of wire. Thoughs half in another language and usually horribly conjugated, ending up repeating some irrelavant phrasing which I will forget in a cloud of fog given any actual direct conversational contact with someone speaking the language fluently. There is a striving to lock down all of these words and constructions, and I can comprehend close to most of anything, save really horribly done dubbing, which is about all dubbing and the integral concept of dubbing itself, though when it comes around to replying or stating positions my grammatical intricacies and expressive phrases turn into shit. Really aggrivating, that is. A few minutes after walking away from the situation I find around 4 or 5 other possible ways I could have put things, or brought up other debatable concepts, though for that span of a few minutes silence is the best revertation, letting the other person air out their xenophobia or reasons why their culture trumps any other conceivable because that is what they have been worked into thinking and fully hold true to themselves.
Really stoked to return, to step away from such for a very extended time to return to everything that makes sense in civilizational aspects because it is not based on the principle of contradiction, stoked to sort it all out and be surrounded with good people, the skyline and the clear air and sound waves surrounding it, decent beer, a sight of the horizon in the day. Cкоро.
The holidays approach, along with views of a deserted glacier strangled land of blue and gray below as a transatlantic flights rushes me to there.