2001-11-19 - 3:49 p.m.

I need to start doing something to keep up with my entries. I'm a week behind again.

Friday of last week I was in Estonia. We toured around Tallin with delight, eating delicious foods, viewing many splendid and old buildings and things, climbing lots of stairs up to the Toompea Palace (it's on a kind of bluff over the rest of the city, along with the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, which is a complete riot! Icons everywhere!) Much tromping about in the cold and sometimes damp and very windy. Eventually after coffee & pastries, we went back to the hotel to collapse for a while. Discovered that our dinner companions were going to be late, so we napped then went to the site and ate excellent borscht.

Pretty much no one we knew was awake at the site, then a whole crew arrived as we were leaving (Terafan, Rixende, etc.)

In the morning there was a taxi shortage for the first time - very annoying. But we got there in time to finish helping label classrooms (I'm having deja vu!) and go to class. I took several classes with Terafan on period hose & undies, a class on documentation, a tablet-weaving class and one on deriving patterns from period portraits. All pretty good. Then we had some down time during which I had much discussions & schmoozing, then Court (very short), and more schmoozing before heading off in a torchlit procession to Olde Hansa medieval restaurant for the feast.

Now those of you who are thinking Medieval Times, just forget about it. This was excellent! The servers, etc. are all costumed (including period shoes!) and they sang and stuff in between serving. The recipes are largely medieval. I was the King's escort for the evening, so we had our hands washed by a server, spiced wine in Czech glass goblets, and some of the yummiest food and best entertainment in eons. It was brilliant. All this for 6 pounds a person. (Okay, we got a deal, but....) It was nice that there were only about 60 of us, so we all sat in one room of the restaurant, at two big tables plus high table. The serving girls were comely and I spent much of the feast cracking up Elffin & Terafan (on my other side) with PartyBabe sorts of comments. It was a blast. Terafan even sang for us, and we did some group singing, until they closed us down around 1.

And afterwards we went to a nightclub.

On Sunday, I had a hangover and was slow to get moving but we got breakfast, ran some last minute shopping errands, ran through the cool Estonian grocery and headed out to the port. We took the slow ferry back as the weather had kicked up (again? still?) and they weren't running the cats. So, three and a half hours later, we arrive (having eaten snacks, napped, shopped, talked to friends, etc.) and head off to Jaelle's (passing another group of drunk Finns having an argument in the passport queue!) We puttered then those of us staying there headed to a nice Finnish restaurant for some excellent supper. I can now say I've had reindeer & moose. Yummy, actually.

Needless to say, there was much book-viewing at Jaelle's, and she and I schmoozed a lot (solving the problems of the SCA). We slept late-ish on Monday, chatted more, ran through a big market then got to the airport just as they announced the news about the latest disaster in New York. Sigh.

But we shopped in duty free and made it to our flight with no problems, got back to London, got back to my place on the tube and went out for beer with Rob & Wendy! Whoohoo!

Tuesday I mostly recovered, did email & work stuff, ran a load of laundry, etc. Whew. Had dinner with Rob & Wendy after adventures in Hired Car Land.

Wednesday & Thursday will no doubt be covered in great and glorious detail by Wendy (who is much funnier than I am) but suffice it to say we solved the problems of the SCA whilst stuck in traffic on the M4. I whined a lot one evening (that might have been Tuesday, now that I think of it!) We went to Avebury and Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral (for three contrasting stoneworks!) and met James & Mitake for dinner. Thursday we went to Pooh Corner (after adventures driving around the block in rush hour traffic) and there was much damage done to credit cards. Then we traipsed to the Pooh Bridge and played much Poohsticks! Hurrah! Ate a fine pub lunch and went to Hever Castle, then home for a briefly chaotic shire meeting and a lovely supper with largely convivial company (including Helena from South Africa who is here for a month! Whoohoo!)

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