Morning began with the hiss of a kettle and the faint rustle of instant-noodle packaging.
The hostel’s common room felt like a library at dawn—two people still sleeping, a pair of backpackers gliding in and out, whispering through half-lit corridors.
No curtains on the dorm beds; that’s Northern Europe for you.
In Asia, hostels drape each bunk in fabric and fairy lights, turning cheap rooms into small theaters.
Here, austerity is an aesthetic.
I try to bend with the situation.
While my noodles softened, I closed my eyes for a quick meditation—nothing elaborate, just a few long breaths to greet the day.
Steam rose, mingling with the quiet, and I thanked the silence for existing.
Tallinn is practically stitched together by churches—every few steps, a new steeple.
My feet carried me to another one that looked Protestant from the outside—plain, Lutheran lines, I thought.
Inside, it revealed itself as Orthodox again, flickering with icon lamps and gold leaf.
I smiled at my own certainty being humbled.
Near a side altar, people were writing names on slips of paper—intercessions for health, peace, safe journeys.
Buddhists do the same, I remembered: lists of the living, lists of the dead.
I took a scrap, steadied my pen, and wrote a roll-call of my life: family, old friends who vanished, even those who hurt me.
Ink as forgiveness.
It felt odd and beautiful—an atheist Buddhist writing petitions in an Orthodox nave.
Maybe compassion is a language without denomination.
I walked again: cracked cobblestones, castle walls, the 1254 Monks’ Museum, Danish King’s Garden, the quiet Swedish church tucked behind ivy.
History pressed in from all angles, yet none of it demanded my attention.
I let the city flow past like pages in a book I wasn’t obligated to finish.
Near lunch, a tide of Finnish elementary students flooded the café I’d chosen.
Teachers herded them with miracle calm; I retreated, circling the block until the wave receded.
Watching them, I wondered how anyone keeps thirty children moving in roughly the same direction—another kind of pilgrimage.
Tourist season is in full bloom, and every frame I raise my camera to capture grows cluttered with strangers.
Someday, when I retire, I tell myself I’ll come back in November light, when rain scatters the crowds and the streets belong to fog and footsteps.
For now, I lower the lens and let the moment exist without proof.
