Having heard so much about Tallinn, Estonia, I was surprised to find myself not really enjoying it too much at all, says Mike Carter.
I guess that as travellers, we're often guilty of fantasising about being the only foreigner in a destination, pitching up expecting some timeless scene more akin to a museum diorama than a real-life, evolving city.
Well Estonia is evolving all right, so quickly after emerging from 50 years of Soviet austerity and after a couple of years of EU membership that you can almost see it: like watching one of those time-lapse sequences of a flower unfolding.
It is an orgy of conspicuous consumption, which I suppose is a natural reaction when you've just been let into the party after having your nose up against the window for so long.
In Raekoja Plats, Tallinn's Unesco-listed main square, you have Irish bars, pizza shops, the huge Maharaja Indian restaurant and Ye Olde Estonia, where the waiting staff are all dressed in traditional costume. It's primarily done to attract tourists, of course - the heady mix of medieval architecture, modern life, lap-dancing clubs and cheap beer (those British stag parties are finding themselves increasingly banned from many of the bars) - but somehow it just creates a tacky homogeny that diminishes a place. A city, a theme park; sometimes the line seems very blurred.
I cut short my visit and headed west to the island of Saaremaa. It has a very special place in Estonian hearts as it's synonymous with space and peace. I suspect that the locally brewed beer that's as strong as wine is also part of the attraction. The Soviets made the entire island off-limits to Estonians, as they used it as a rocket base, and so it has largely escaped industrial development. But the eerie apparatus of occupation lies dotted around: the watchtowers and barracks covered in Russian graffiti and the immense now-derelict collective farm buildings.
It has a magical feel, covered with juniper groves, deserted beaches and rustic villages. In the capital, Kuressaare, overlooked by the incredible Bishop's Castle that's straight out of Sleeping Beauty, they seem to be dealing with the pace of change more sedately. Although I noticed that a strip club has recently opened on the outskirts of town.
I had dinner with locals Anne-Liis and her boyfriend, both in their early twenties. They tell me a little about rocketing property prices and Estonians' new-found obsession with materialism and status. These must be amazing times to be young in Estonia, I say. They agree, but are still sometimes fearful for the future.
I rode my bike out of town, looking for Kaarma. Not so much a spiritual quest, but a tiny hamlet of that name buried deep somewhere in the pine forests. After getting hopelessly lost, and via a kind farmer who drove ahead of me in his ancient Lada along dusty, labyrinthine lanes, I came to a small thatched-roofed cottage.
Here is the home of Steve and Ea Greenwood, a young English/Estonian couple who moved back to Ea's homeland two years ago after spells working in different jobs in Britain and the US. From scratch, they have built up a cottage industry making and selling organic soap. The name of the company?
GoodKaarma, of course , which should guarantee success, but Steve tells me how hard the first two years have sometimes been. Steve showed me around: where they heat the fats and essential oils, where the blocks are left to cool, and where they are eventually cut and boxed up. On the shelves, soap with marbled swirls of organic chocolate called Dance of the Dakini, and another called Kaarma Sutra, which may or may not spice up your sex life.
This is change also, of course, and there may well be people on Saaremaa who view what the Greenwoods are doing with as much disdain as I had for the revolution going on in Tallinn. But I somehow doubt it.
HG Wells once said that when he sees people riding bicycles, it gives him hope for the future of mankind. Well, for me, it is people like Steve and Ea. You find them everywhere you go: people who heed the restless voice and take a chance.
