Vampire Weekend

I’m back from a wacky weekend that included a trip to Estonia, a visit to Stockholm’s lovely Skansen open-air museum, and my 31st birthday. Sounds like a barrel of monkeys, right? Well, actually it was more like a cage full of lemurs with a $30 admission fee.

Rebecca and I boarded the Tallink Romantika Thursday evening, ready for a low-class adventure. We were picturing 36 hilarious hours of drunk, Borat-like men, skanky teen girls, tumbledown village streets replete with bargains and old ladies in headscarves, possibly a Dracula sighting… but really we only got the first two. The Romantika was a nicer boat than I was expecting, but the Swedes and Estonians onboard didn’t really cut all that loose. There were roaming packs of teenage boys, faded women looking for action, middleclass Estonian honeymooners, a couple stag parties, and they were drunk, sure, but the vibe was sort of… lame. We did the best we could, shutting down the bar in the company of a random crew of people from northern Sweden celebrating somebody’s 50th birthday. We were entertained by a Bulgarian singer crooning “West Virginia Mountain Mama” (he had no idea what he was saying) and a troupe of surprisingly talented showgirls and showboys (blurry pictured above) called “Estonian Dance Factory.” Rebecca cut a rug with a retired firefighter, who bought us mojitos. I lent her my wedding band so we each had a ring for fending off creepy advances. And the next day, we awoke hung over in Tallinn.

We set off to wander through the old town, maybe go to a spa, and eat some interesting Estonian food. For some reason, though, we ended up just walking and walking, searching for some sort of fun that wasn’t really there. Downtown Tallinn combined streamlined modern architecture with bombed-out stone houses and concrete nuke shelters. Versace and Dolce & Gabbana stores rubbed elbows with sweat shops, peep shows, and erotic massage parlors (which cast a smudged sort of light over the birthday party revelers from the night before. Ooooh, that’s why you’re going to Estonia.)

Old Tallinn was pretty cute in that typical Eastern European way: winding cobblestone streets and stuccoed pastel buildings with flower boxes… but the prices weren’t cute at all. About ten years ago, my family went on a trip to Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and Mom brought home armfuls of lovely and cheap Baltic amber, most of which subsequently disappeared when our house was robbed. I figured I’d buy her some presents to replace the stolen jewelry, but nothing—not even the junkiest-looking string of amber beads—could be had in Tallinn for less than $100. Other local specialties included linen, lace and wool products, which were also highly pricey. Rebecca and I bought bottles of water and shared a piece of marzipan, wondering what in the world happened to the “almighty dollar.” Rebecca noticed that locals walking the streets in Tallinn tended to trudge around pale and scowling, like the undead. This rule seemed to apply even to children, but especially to working women, who followed us closely around their shops and snatched whatever goods we weren’t buying briskly back to their shelves.

After living in Polish Greenpoint (a neighborhood in Brooklyn) for a couple years, I developed some not-so-flattering observations about the Poles, and sort of decided I’d seen enough local culture that I didn’t really need to go to Poland. It’s hard to describe, but there’s a certain Eastern European feeling that permeated both my old ‘hood and (at least my first impression of) Tallinn. It’s a feeling of grim wariness, like whatever you have might be suddenly taken from you, so it’s best not to trust anyone. (And as a corollary, since the world is untrustworthy and others might screw you over, it’s acceptable to preemptively screw others over as well.) Eastern European women are particularly wary of other women, presumably viewing them as competitors in the race to marry a gainfully employed man while their looks are still good. All these impressions I had about the Poles resonated in Estonia as well. As I walked around Tallinn, I felt somewhat guilty for being a bit of an ungracious visitor, empathy for a people with a long history of hardship that’s just now lifting, and a clear sense that I’d be just fine if I never saw the place again.

Meanwhile, Rebecca was growing crankier and crankier. She hated Tallinn, and at a certain point she realized she sort of hated Sweden, too. After the trip to Estonia, we were both a bit sick of seeing high prices for items of low value, and sick of being around people who generally exuded no warmth toward strangers. When we got back to Sweden, Rebecca started noticing that people failed to make way for us on the sidewalk, walking four abreast so we had to swing way off our walking course for them (a big New York no-no). They butted in front of us in checkout lines and squeezed us out of the way in shops when they saw interesting goods on the shelves in front of us. I hadn’t really noticed these behaviors before, or, if I had, I just wrote them off as cultural differences, which is exactly what they are. Rebecca pointed out that “if people acted like this in New York, they’d probably get punched,” which I found both tragically true and a bit funny, considering that New Yorkers are considered some of America’s least polite people.

I discussed the “manners” issue with both my Swedish teacher and with Niklas, and I found their answers enlightening. I told my Swedish teacher that I worry I’m saying things incorrectly or rudely, because requests for things in this language often sound like demands. In Sweden, one simply says “I want a coffee.” Or “Two hotdogs.” Or “Can you help me?” There’s no “please,” no “I was wondering if maybe…” no “Would you mind…” no “Excuse me, may I” etc. etc. It’s a stripped-down language, and the wordy pleasantries are left out. Or maybe they just haven’t been developed yet. Niklas’s theory is that it’s only been about 50 years since Sweden was primarily a rural country where people lived in isolated homesteads. In the best estimation of the people, they are shy and reserved. In the worst estimation, they can be a little bit coarse. It’s not that they’re rude, they just don’t do the little social dances that foreign visitors might expect.