Baltic Tour Highlight #4: The Fab Four

The fab four: B, Estonian Buddy, Amazing Roommate and me in Tallinn's Raekoja Plats.

While there were many wonderful people on this tour, the four above were my standby, stalwart, Baltic pals. I’ve already blogged about my Estonian Buddy, and my Running Buddy, but rounding out the four was my Amazing Roommate.

She and I braved many things together, including, but not limited to: cold showers, sinus infections, early morning excursions in the cold, strange jet-lag, masses of black clothes, oddly-shaped key chains, sleep talking, and a conspicuous lack of clocks (apparently they don’t believe in having them in rooms in Estonia, Latvia, or Finland). To top it all off, we had some great late-night talks, and found we had more in common that we may have thought. Sharing a room with her made this trip just that much better.

All together, the four of us explored the Baltic cities, tried to make the bus rides less boring, did our best to stay warm at all times, endured each other’s humor and hand gestures, and somehow ended up in leadership roles none of us had particularly planned on.

The four of us in front of Tartu's Kissing Fountain.

The best parts, however, are the unplanned ones. After singing for the president of Latvia, all of us were tired and semi-cranky and we chose, instead of going on another group outing, to sit down to dinner together in a random Riga restaurant. We sat there for over three hours, gratefully next to a heater, talking about all kinds of things, but NOT about school. It has been some time since I have had a discussion like that, with people of that intelligence and caliber, where everyone left the table feeling enriched and happy. And full. Of really good food.

Thank you to the three of you. When people ask me what I loved the most about this trip, I say you.

Three of the four of us at a Latvian castle.

Baltic Tour Highlight #3: Running in Foreign Lands

B is ready to run. I am protesting having my picture taken. What's new.

Readers of this blog will know that I am a runner. If you are a new reader (I may have some as of late), you can read about it here or here. Or my personal favorite, here. But I have never run in a foreign country. Until this last trip.

I had no idea how much I would enjoy two things:

First, there seems to me no better way to enjoy a new city than by running through it. Mostly, when I have run in new cities before, I have run on routes suggested by those who know the area or on roads I have scouted out beforehand. Here, I was able to really explore totally new places with no preconcieved ideas of where I was going. We just decided how long we were going to run for and left, finding the route as we went. As a result, I got to see some of the following things:

Raekoja Plats (Town Hall Square) in Tallinn

The Russian Orthodox Church in the Tallinn old town. When we went back later on, there was a beautiful service taking place.

One of the towers of Tallinn's medieval wall. They all have names, and while I don't know the name of this one, my favorite tower-name is Paks Margareeta, or Fat Margaret.

Second, running with a partner (pictured above). I have only run with others a couple of times, and, generally, I don't love it. My pacing is off, I can't listen to my podcasts, and I don't get that time alone that I really crave when running. Even when I have run races, I have mostly done it alone. But my lovely friend B and I both wanted to run while away, and we decided to do it together. It was way more fun than I anticipated. We chatted together, we explored together, we got cold and wet together (from the snow), and we were able to keep some kind of a normal routine together.

My favorite run was in Helsinki, when we joined by another and ran in a large loop around the city. The three of us had a great talk, the sun was out, and we saw some really fun stuff. Unfortuately, I didn't take any pictures there, so you will just have to take my word for it.

The funniest moment occurred after our first run of the trip in Tallinn. Just as we returned to the hotel, we ran into our advisor, who also likes to run. He looked at me, looked at B, and then asked "So B, could you keep up with Laney?" B, who is very much in shape and works out as much as I run, was not a fan of this particular question, which was asked in complete seriousness. He made a point of mentioning to multiple people later that he was not out of breath, or looking tired in any way (which was true). When we went on our next run in Tartu, and B beat me to the top of the hill, he was elated.

I made sure to tell our advisor.