May 16

This is Ericka, and this may be my only post. I've been holed up in our Tallinn hostel most of the day nursing Meredith who is on the mend after being terribly sick most of the night and into the morning. Around 4pm, she requested some oatmeal (which we enjoyed for several Moscow breakfasts), but when I got back to the room, she was sound asleep again. Good for her. She needs her rest. I just hope she can sleep tonight because we have an early day tomorrow.

We had planned to travel to Riga, Latvia, today. Fortunately, it was not that hard to switch around our bus tickets, and we were able to stay in our room for another night. The lady at the bus company even assured me that my oversized luggage shouldn't be a problem and that I shouldn't have to pay a fine. Excellent.

The staff here at the Old House Guesthouse in Tallinn have been outstanding. I have nothing but praise for them. The accommodations are modest with small rooms and a shared WC/shower combo room. There were a few reasons I wanted to try a hostel: 1) I can be cheap (just ask my family), 2) I thought it would be a great experience for Meredith, and 3) not sure--maybe it's just that the staff were so friendly as I worked to arrange the trip. Meredith is not a fan of the WC/shower room, and I'll agree that as a medieval town, Tallinn seems to have some ongoing and potentially unresolvable sewer gas issues.

Let me back up to Moscow. We had a great time. I ran Meredith all over Moscow to meet with several former International Writing Program authors. She was able to miss a couple of the meetings, and she spent that time doing some math and reading homework. (We're a bit behind on that front.) I had planned to meet with 8 authors in Moscow, but some more contacts turned up in conversation, and I was able to squeeze in a few more meetings. A few of the authors wanted to speak English, but most preferred Russian, so Meredith was a bit out of the loop during our meetings. She politely and patiently sat through the meetings, often with something sweet to occupy her time. We met with Olga Mukhina on top of the new Fomenko Theater building along the Moscow River, and Meredith had fun exploring the rooftop.

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting with the IWP authors, and I am so glad that I had the opportunity. I won't post the pictures here, but I tried to tag them in the Flickr feed. Unfortunately, I know that we dropped the photography ball a couple of times, and at least two authors escaped without a snapshot. Boo.

Meredith quickly developed some strong subway navigation skills; she could find a station on the map and get us there. She was especially good at getting us back to our Belorusskaya station.

We were able to take two days off in Moscow, although I spent the morning of one of the days preparing a shipment to send back to the Libraries. And on the other day, we visited a book store. I shipped about 50 books from Moscow (and then another 35 from Tallinn). Many of the books were given to me by the authors themselves. I also purchased many from Dmitrii Kuzmin, who runs his own publishing house. I found a handful of other books at bookstores. Unfortunately, I was not able to do some of the extra leg work to locate maps and Dada materials. I tried, but on the day I finally got to the shop that might have something, the store was closed.

Meredith blogged about our side trips and the May 9 parade, Kolomenskoye, the Kremlin and St. Basil's. We were so tired by the end of our day trip around the Kremlin that we simply stayed in that night.

I loved being in Moscow again. So much has changed for the better. In many ways, it is a friendlier place for tourists than it was when I was a student. My Russian served me well. I had some challenges with things that didn't exist earlier; when the host of a restaurant asked me if I wanted smoking or non-smoking, I found myself unable to process that question until she repeated it slowly. Ah, there are no-smoking sections. How nice. And yet, when I sat in a designated no-smoking area in our hotel restaurant, one of the servers came by and simply removed all of the no-smoking table signs, including the one of my table, and put out ashtrays.

The train to Tallinn was fine, if you consider hot, cramped, and almost sleepless fine. The countryside scenery was beautiful! We made it to the hostel without incident. Meredith asked suspiciously of the man asking to help with our bags at the train station, "How do you know he's a taxi driver?" I answered, "I just have to take him at his word, and hope for the best." He seemed like a nice enough guy.

In Tallinn, I was able to meet with 3 authors, hit a couple of book stores, and add about 12 books to the collection. Not bad, I think.

And now I'm back to where I began: spending a gorgeous day in Tallinn in the hostel common space, occasionally tripping back to our room to coax some fluids into Meredith. She's a tired girl. This has been an exhausting trip for her.