retiredmartin

May 2023.

A last mini-post from Tallinn, but probably not a last trip to Estonia.

In 2020 Duncan wrote a trilogy of posts about the capitals beer and football scene (the lack of Chinese takeaway tips is a weak spot in Pubmeister’s blog), and concluded it was “Pint for pint as good as anywhere I’ve been”.

If we’re talking craft bars and brewery bars it would certainly be up with Piccadilly, Ouseburn and what’s left of Bermondsey, but I hardly scraped the surface.

Leaving the “middle finger”,

we headed back from the coast to the station, whose arches house a good half dozen breweries.

Duncan had particularly liked Purtse,

primarily because of their “hot tomato gose”, but I missed that and played safe with a 7.9% Baltic Porter, which feels like a boys bitter these days.

The nice young guy at the (otherwise emoty) bar gave us a huge jar of peanuts, and we loved the mining art and artifacts on the walls,

but it was outside where the real art was.

More bewildering architectural styles, and a park full of old train carriages converted to bars with weird steam spouting out at the entrance.

That was our lot for the night, unless we found Draught Bass at the Depeche Mode bar;

We didn’t. The Baltic states are obsessed with the Mode; there was one of those in Riga. They only play “Violator” on repeat. At least in Purtse it was Hall & Oates.

The vinyl shop in the Old Town had more cutting-edge discs;

Since you asked politely, this is what Veronica Unlimited sounded like;

Night, night, Tallinn.