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.