Monday, September 25
We made our way through Warsaw’s very busy morning traffic to the airport, arriving unscathed, despite intersections with multiple lanes of traffic coming, going, and left-turning from all directions, with trams criss-crossing through, too – AND NO TRAFFIC LIGHTS!!! That made turning in our enormous rental van even sweeter than we’d anticipated.
Our flight to Tallinn was less than an hour and a half, though we lost another hour to a time zone change. Our new rental car is smaller and much better suited to the parking and maneuvering in tiny spaces we’re likely to be doing. We were amazed when we entered our center-city apartment’s location into the GPS and found our arrival time to be just five minutes – this is a SMALL capital city!!
We have a great apartment in a modern building; our
floor-to-ceiling windows have views of the towers of churches and the town wall. The old town hall is a 15-minute walk away
and we headed there after checking into our apartment.
We were aware that the Pope had arrived in Tallinn
this morning and would be flying back to Rome after several events in the city,
including a gathering in a church in the old town and an outdoor Mass in the
city’s Freedom Square. We began to see a
large police presence, then lines of people clutching their tickets for the
Mass at an altar set up in the small square.
As we continued walking, we saw a motorcade en route to the square – the
flashing lights of police vehicles and a line of SUVs with tinted windows, one
small car with a Papal flag. With no entry
tickets, we continued to the TI and the Town Hall Square, a few blocks away in
the center or the old town. (Papal
encounter to be continued…)
In the center square, we stopped in the Town Council
Pharmacy. First mentioned in public
records in 1422, it combines a small museum with Europe’s oldest continually
operating pharmacy.
We continued down the narrow cobblestone lanes of
this town, past St. Catherine’s Monastery, founded in the 13th
century and Northern Europe’s largest church during the Middle Ages. St. Catherine’s Passage, the picturesque lane
that runs alongside the church, is now home to small artisans’ shops and craft
studios.
We walked along the high town wall, a section of which
is lined with Tallinn’s knit market. If the weather continues to be as chilly
as it was today, we may be back for some woolen mittens!
Tallinn escaped the bombing of World War II, so its
entire old town is the real deal – a life-sized museum! Restaurants, museums, and shops occupy medieval
buildings, many of which bear plaques or signs explaining their historic
origins.
As we passed Freedom Square en route back to our
apartment, the Pope’s Mass was nearing completion. Ticketless though we were and small town as
this is, we were able to stand outside the square and see Pope Francis on the
elevated altar. This is the third time
we’ve seen him; the other two occasions were in Rome’s St. Peter’s Square and
required much more planning on our part.
This was pure serendipity!
Before we reached our apartment, we speculated that,
as our building seemed to be on the main boulevard from the airport, Francis
might pass by on his way out of town.
Sure enough, we started to see police vehicles staged in apparent
readiness to stop the flow of cross traffic.
As we left a nearby grocery store, the blue lights were flashing and the
police vans had, indeed, pulled into position to halt traffic. We waited a few minutes and were among the
few gathered along the street to see the motorcade drive by. With all the vehicles’ tinted windows and lack
of markings, it wasn’t possible to see the Pope, but there he was again, no
doubt wondering why we were stalking him!
A few minutes later, we turned on the TV in our
apartment and saw the motorcade arrive at the airport – it is that small
a town!
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