Photo - Kjell Persson

At Home

- in Tallinn, Estonia.

Tallinn.

An amazing place.

I was in Estonia about half the time during the 1990s, to be with Dagmar in Tallinn, and to work as guest professor at Tartu university.

This is the nice bit. Kjell climbed up the town hall tower when he was here last mid-summer. Living Hansa. It's like Father Christmas's castle, Walt Disney couldn't do it better. Delightful.

As long as you don't mind the 5,000 Finns a day who come on the boat for the cheap shopping and push the prices up so pensioners can hardly afford to eat.

Just down the road there's a new concrete estate which houses 200,000 people, mostly Russians. The architect said in public that she couldn't live there. But people say it's convenient: you've got running hot water and an indoor toilet. And anything up to a dozen flights of stairs without a lift. And maybe 20 flights if the lift isn't working that day.