Clowns to the left of me, strippers to the right...
What a brilliant few days we've had in Kuressarre. We were only planning on being in the Estonain chap's back garden for one night but we've ended up being here three. Why? Well...
Kuressaare is a lovely town with a lovely big castle, a beach, a harbour, busy bars and really nice cafés. We were in town having lunch at one such café (wild boar burger, highly recommended), when our ever-so-friendly waitress told us that there was a new nightclub opening that night and there would be free champagne… that was enough for us, we were staying an extra night.
We went into town around 9pm that night and had drinks at a couple of bars before ending up back in the place we'd had lunch in. There we got talking to two Estonian guys from Tallinn, called Davi and Madis, who were basically on a jolly with Davi's company and were already quite drunk when we met them. They bought us drinks and were really good fun so we told them about the new club and the four of us (and Davi's expense account) ended up staggering there together. We did indeed get free champagne when we arrived and that was followed by generous pourings of gin and tonic. We danced the night away with Kuressaare's in crowd and marvelled at the Estonian fashion, which has to be seen to be believed – I can only imagine they watch a lot of Miami Vice in Kuressaare.
Davi got dragged off by a local girl (literally) and we didn't see him again, so that left me and Claire with Madis, who was the drunker of the two lads but good fun. It turned out that this long-haired, giggling drunk in surf shorts (for that was what Madis had chosen to wear that night) was a lawyer for some fairly dodgy people back in Tallinn. He was also on a mission to go to the strip club next door. So off the three of us went, to the oddest strip club I've ever been to. Firstly, there was hardly anyone there, by which I mean punters OR strippers. Then when a stripper did appear, she writhed around her pole for a while until her song finished… but she hadn't taken anything off! So the DJ just put the same song back on again (perhaps that was the only track she could dance to) for her to finish her strip. Having successfully stripped down to her pants at the second attempt, she made her way over to Madis, straddled his lap and wriggled about for bit. He was having a great time but wouldn't give her any money for ages. When he eventually did, she climbed off him and came over to me. Claire had thought Madis mean for withholding his money for so long (especially as he'd given us some €5 notes to give the girls!), so she instantly tucked a €5 note in the stripper's knickers – at which point the stripper got up and walked off! Madis was in hysterics – apparently in Estonia when you pay they stop, that's why he'd waited so long! I felt robbed.
At 4.30am, confused by the strip club and fuelled with gin and Saku (a very pleasant Estonian lager), we left Madis to it and cycled home to the Ebay van. Now, Claire isn't the best cyclist when she's sober and in daylight, so off her tits at 4.30am she stood no chance. When she inevitably fell off, she managed to get so entwined with her bike that she couldn't get up. It was the single funniest thing I have ever seen. Imagine an octopus wrestling a lawnmower… And as she flailed around on the floor trying to disentangle herself I couldn't really offer any assistance because I was so incapacitated by laughter.
Then, as if Kuressaare never wanted us to leave, on the Saturday they held "Saarefest". This was a one-day festival of music, dance and food, culminating in the even
ing with a rock concert at the castle and fireworks. All sounded too good to miss. In the morning we went along to the busy market and saw traditionally dressed women playing lutes, tried some of the local delicacies on offer and witnessed what I'm guessing was a sort of "Saaremaa's Strongest Man" competition – lots of beefy, pumped up Estonian men racing back and forth with weights or trying to lift boulders onto barrels. Very entertaining. We saw a brass band playing and a period-costumed reenactment of what looked like a tree-planting ceremony (capturing the excitement of the original tree-planting ceremony brilliantly) before deciding to check out the campsite-stealing circus.
The circus (or Tsirkuse) was a surreal, yet fantastic, collection of the bizarre. There were scary Eastern Euro
pean clowns who at one point got a little boy out of the audience and literally reduced him to tears, before sending him running back to his parents with a life-long phobia of clowns. There were acrobats in unintentionally revealing leotards. There was a man dressed as a pirate who actually juggled live parrots. There was a leopard tamer who seemed to be afraid of his own leopards and could only get them to move by chucking bits of meat where he wanted them to go. It was two hours of tent-based madness. The finale was a family of pvc-clad "bikers" who rode noisily into the ring. The effeminate "dad" then proceeded to lie down on his motorbike's saddle and juggle his mulleted 5-year-old son on his feet. I couldn't get over it – a 5-year-old with a mullet!
Then it was time for the evening concert and among the line-up, two of Estonia's biggest acts were playing. Firstly there was Lenna, who used to be in a girlband called Vanilla Ninja (I'm not making this up) who, bizarrely, represented Switzerland in the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest (because Estonia didn't want them) but was now a successful solo artist. She was quite talented as it turns out and could play piano, harmonica and violin as well as having a good voice. Then there was "legendary" Estonian rock band Ultima Thule
(pronounced Tool) who had been going strong for over 24 years. They were like an ageing pub band whose lead singer growled his words like a drunk in the park swearing at passers by. And in between these two leviathans of Estonian music, the compere handed out prizes for the raffle. The fireworks were good and the whole weekend has been brilliant, sunny, drunken fun.
Kuressaare is a lovely town with a lovely big castle, a beach, a harbour, busy bars and really nice cafés. We were in town having lunch at one such café (wild boar burger, highly recommended), when our ever-so-friendly waitress told us that there was a new nightclub opening that night and there would be free champagne… that was enough for us, we were staying an extra night.
We went into town around 9pm that night and had drinks at a couple of bars before ending up back in the place we'd had lunch in. There we got talking to two Estonian guys from Tallinn, called Davi and Madis, who were basically on a jolly with Davi's company and were already quite drunk when we met them. They bought us drinks and were really good fun so we told them about the new club and the four of us (and Davi's expense account) ended up staggering there together. We did indeed get free champagne when we arrived and that was followed by generous pourings of gin and tonic. We danced the night away with Kuressaare's in crowd and marvelled at the Estonian fashion, which has to be seen to be believed – I can only imagine they watch a lot of Miami Vice in Kuressaare.
Davi got dragged off by a local girl (literally) and we didn't see him again, so that left me and Claire with Madis, who was the drunker of the two lads but good fun. It turned out that this long-haired, giggling drunk in surf shorts (for that was what Madis had chosen to wear that night) was a lawyer for some fairly dodgy people back in Tallinn. He was also on a mission to go to the strip club next door. So off the three of us went, to the oddest strip club I've ever been to. Firstly, there was hardly anyone there, by which I mean punters OR strippers. Then when a stripper did appear, she writhed around her pole for a while until her song finished… but she hadn't taken anything off! So the DJ just put the same song back on again (perhaps that was the only track she could dance to) for her to finish her strip. Having successfully stripped down to her pants at the second attempt, she made her way over to Madis, straddled his lap and wriggled about for bit. He was having a great time but wouldn't give her any money for ages. When he eventually did, she climbed off him and came over to me. Claire had thought Madis mean for withholding his money for so long (especially as he'd given us some €5 notes to give the girls!), so she instantly tucked a €5 note in the stripper's knickers – at which point the stripper got up and walked off! Madis was in hysterics – apparently in Estonia when you pay they stop, that's why he'd waited so long! I felt robbed.
At 4.30am, confused by the strip club and fuelled with gin and Saku (a very pleasant Estonian lager), we left Madis to it and cycled home to the Ebay van. Now, Claire isn't the best cyclist when she's sober and in daylight, so off her tits at 4.30am she stood no chance. When she inevitably fell off, she managed to get so entwined with her bike that she couldn't get up. It was the single funniest thing I have ever seen. Imagine an octopus wrestling a lawnmower… And as she flailed around on the floor trying to disentangle herself I couldn't really offer any assistance because I was so incapacitated by laughter.
Then, as if Kuressaare never wanted us to leave, on the Saturday they held "Saarefest". This was a one-day festival of music, dance and food, culminating in the even
ing with a rock concert at the castle and fireworks. All sounded too good to miss. In the morning we went along to the busy market and saw traditionally dressed women playing lutes, tried some of the local delicacies on offer and witnessed what I'm guessing was a sort of "Saaremaa's Strongest Man" competition – lots of beefy, pumped up Estonian men racing back and forth with weights or trying to lift boulders onto barrels. Very entertaining. We saw a brass band playing and a period-costumed reenactment of what looked like a tree-planting ceremony (capturing the excitement of the original tree-planting ceremony brilliantly) before deciding to check out the campsite-stealing circus. The circus (or Tsirkuse) was a surreal, yet fantastic, collection of the bizarre. There were scary Eastern Euro
pean clowns who at one point got a little boy out of the audience and literally reduced him to tears, before sending him running back to his parents with a life-long phobia of clowns. There were acrobats in unintentionally revealing leotards. There was a man dressed as a pirate who actually juggled live parrots. There was a leopard tamer who seemed to be afraid of his own leopards and could only get them to move by chucking bits of meat where he wanted them to go. It was two hours of tent-based madness. The finale was a family of pvc-clad "bikers" who rode noisily into the ring. The effeminate "dad" then proceeded to lie down on his motorbike's saddle and juggle his mulleted 5-year-old son on his feet. I couldn't get over it – a 5-year-old with a mullet!Then it was time for the evening concert and among the line-up, two of Estonia's biggest acts were playing. Firstly there was Lenna, who used to be in a girlband called Vanilla Ninja (I'm not making this up) who, bizarrely, represented Switzerland in the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest (because Estonia didn't want them) but was now a successful solo artist. She was quite talented as it turns out and could play piano, harmonica and violin as well as having a good voice. Then there was "legendary" Estonian rock band Ultima Thule
(pronounced Tool) who had been going strong for over 24 years. They were like an ageing pub band whose lead singer growled his words like a drunk in the park swearing at passers by. And in between these two leviathans of Estonian music, the compere handed out prizes for the raffle. The fireworks were good and the whole weekend has been brilliant, sunny, drunken fun.
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