tygerland.net

I am in a smoky bar with Wi-Fi so I’m fully connected and updated, all emails have been gratefully received and scornfully unanswered, and thankfully my podcast subscriptions have been replenished.

My break in Tallinn has been excellent and my wonderful partner has granted me a day to myself to meander around town aimlessly, hence my presence in said smoky bar (called Pif Paf – just inside Tallinn’s Old Town, good beer, excellent coffee and super fast free wireless connection). 

I ate earlier in the rather splendidly entitled CityPub in the banking district; the menu followed an interesting corporate theme (e.g. Directors Steak, Bankers Salad etc etc) although in the absence of a dish prescribed to accountants, I had to flounder and opted for the Executive Seafood Wok – a stir-fried mishmash of salmon, mussels, fresh vegetables, and prawns.  The golden rule of the stir-fry is not to fry too long as the vegetables become limp and the flavour suffers; needless to say the CityPub’s effort – while palatable – fell foul of this sacred rule.

The CityPub had that most obnoxious of US imports, the pub TV, why people continue to suffer this flagrant insult to good conversation is beyond me, but I suffered on indignantly and read my tattered copy of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons (I know, I know, but it’s better to be one of the in-crowd pointing outwards than on the outside cold, wet, and looking in).

Going back to the horrendous trend of in-pub TV’s, I remember being in a pub in Sunderland back in my dark destitute student days, when I was aggressively hushed because the locals were engrossed in the afternoon rerun of Coronation Street, I mean has the sanctity of the pub ever been more forcefully compromised?  It’s only bloody Corrie for god’s sake!

Anyway as tyger’s beer has run ruefully dry it’s goodbye from Tallinn, until next time!