This is one of the main reasons you do a Baltic tour. To see the capital of Estonia.

When is anyone not from this part of the world going to be in Estonia?

Exactly.

Sadly, we did not catch Tallinn at its best.

We did the “hop-on-hop-off” bus in its one-hour circuit around the Old Town and its outskirts.

But because it was about 43 degrees, with occasional rain, we never budged from our place in the front row of the (covered) upper deck of the tour bus. Where we could see quite well — until raindrops turned the second-deck windshield into an opaque viewing surface, limiting our vision to the side window. It might have been great to walk through Old Town, and look inside the churches and have lunch, but the weather. Yeah. No.

Tallinn certainly is an interesting place, geopolitically.

–It is the capital of Estonia, the northernmost of the three Baltic Republics, created after World War I only to disappear (into the Soviet Union) ahead of the Soviets’ involvement in World War II … then were taken by Germany and held for most of three years … which ended with the Balts back inside the Soviet Union until the “singing revolution” helped Estonia break away from the tottering Soviet Union in 1991.

Estonia has been an independent state since and, like the other Baltic republics, Latvia and (especially) Lithuania, they have no discernible enthusiasm for disappearing back into a newly acquisitive Russia. (See: Ukraine.) Estonia would like nothing better than to have a few NATO facilities on its territory. And perhaps it does.

–Tallinn’s architecture and culture reflect its varied history, from a Danish outpost in the 1300s, to its rule under the Teutonic Knights and subsequent inclusion in the Hanseatic (trading) League from the 1500s forward, during which it prospered, to the “stuff with Russia” mentioned above … and the city of 400,000 is left with one of the more bizarre collections of architecture anywhere.

Perhaps the most authentic bits of buildings are the structures made entirely of wood. Trees being thick on the ground, this far north. But Tallinn also includes a huge Russian Orthodox church from the Peter the Great era as well as a big Lutheran church from the Reformation era and, more recently, some of the depressing ugliness of the Soviet era-style building, gray and oppressively utilitarian, and gray again; and then the post-independence building boom, which looks like anything that came off the drawing board of Scandinavian architects — glassy, irregularly shaped, often vertical.

Thus, it has an inchoate feel. A neither/nor kind of place.

The commentary by the tape-recorded tour guide made clear Estonia did not appreciate its 45 years as the western edge of the Soviet empire, when the port was a naval facility on the front line of Soviet defenses.

Estonians, all 1.5 million of them, apparently are known for singing, and a semi-annual singing festival in 1989 led to protests against Soviet rule and to the 1991 split with the post-Gorbachev USSR. At which time, the narrator announces, Estonia was able to bring its blue, black and white flags out of hiding, and go back to church after “nearly five decades of communist-atheist rule”.

The Estonians also seem to have dumped the Cyrillic alphabet as soon as possible (good call; Cyrillic has no future); all the road signs we saw were in the Latin script, even if they had all the diacritical marks (and perhaps more) than we might find in Finnish — one of the main members of the Finno-Ugric language family (which also includes Hungarian).

The people we saw out and about were covered up like it were still February. From what we could see, they seemed tall, very blond and very pale. They also seem prosperous, and the merchants, at least, speak far more English than we expected. We saw many new cars on the streets, and much of that may have to do with Tallinn’s status as a leading cruise-boat destination. (We saw five big boats docked in the port, which means thousands of tourists buying geegaws and meals and riding local transportation.)

Unfortunately, as mentioned above, the “spring” weather here was frightful. Fog turning to light rain, and a high of 43. We wanted it to be cooler than Abu Dhabi, but not 60 degrees cooler. I was driven to the purchase of a ridiculous woolen-knit hat that covers the ears and can be dragged down further over the face by means of two braided tassels extending from the ear pieces. Completely undignified, but warm. It also has “Tallinn” written on it in tall letters.

We were docked in the city from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and I’m going to guess that far more than half of our shipmates who went into the city were back on the ship before 2, and as they came into view they looked like Napoleon’s geriatric army in retreat from Moscow, straggling aboard wet and chilled to the marrow and nearly all remarking how warm it was on the ship.

Next up? St. Petersburg, at the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland, 150 miles to the east. Where  it will be a blessing, and a surprise, if we see some sun.