From Helsinki to Raudsilla Puhekeskus

Day 12 – 05-05-2025

As a contrast to the super beautiful day yesterday, it rained today. At 10:30, we took a two-hour ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn. The crossing was calm, although it was very windy.

In Tallinn, we were lucky with the weather – although it was cloudy and windy, it was dry. Everything in the center of Tallinn is easily accessible on foot, and we leisurely walked around Tallinn for two hours. We visited the orthodox church – the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral from around 1904, a really beautiful church, both from the outside with its many domes and from the inside, where it is lavishly decorated with gold, typical for the time of the Russian Tsars. After that, we went to Catherine’s Passage, where we had lunch at Munga Kelder (Monk’s Cellar).

Then we continued to stroll through the old town and went up on the old city wall, which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage. You should be good on foot because there are very steep and narrow stairs. Tallinn generally has a really beautiful old town.

Our next destination was the camp for the night – a bivouac camp with the other teams, which means sleeping in a tent or in the car. We had to search for the camp first and got lost a few times, but eventually, we found it – a very adventurous path through the national park forest. A great place – supposedly the world’s largest wooden tipi, where we had dinner with the other teams and sat together comfortably in the evening. For the first time, we were supposed to sleep in the car. When we wanted to go to bed, it smelled a bit strange – we found out that the Surströmming we wanted to bring home had been squashed and was leaking – THAT STINKS! We tried to neutralize as good as possible, but it was almost impossible – we hope it will be better tomorrow.