Auburn Paradise
Dirk Crimson
JENI Travel
"Eesti is a lovely, lush world on the fringes of known space just waiting to be explored by travelers," reads the high gloss holo-pamphlet released last week by the Eestian Ministry of Tourism, Propaganda, and Metallic Draperies. "There is no crime and everyone is friendly!"
Upon arriving in Tallinn, Eesti's capital and sole space port, visitors should be pleasantly surprised to find everything more-or-less as the brochure had advertised. The city is a sepia menagerie, painted in a stunning pallet of brown and beige. The Social Establishment, Tallinn's 7/362 star resort hotel, is framed by two impressive antique personal shuttles, rusted out beyond recognition and propped up on concrete blocks in the front courtyard. Its rooms come with complementary venereal disease tests (for that special someone), blacked out windows, and an hourly rate for your convenience.
The views around the planet are definitely for the hardy explorer with a fine and highly tuned love of color variety. The fantastic rolling hills (brown) are dotted with pockets of lush gerba-trees (brown), separated by sparkling lakes (bole), babbling brooks (burgundy) and raging rivers (chestnut), and absolutely teeming with both wildlife (fulvous) and domestic fauna (also brown). Some of the views will take your breath away. Quite literally in many cases as the atmosphere is rather thin and the stratosphere very low. Satellites placed into orbit actually have to adjust their courses just so they don't run into trailer parks found on the planet's highest peaks.
However, when you do as much traveling as your typical resort hopping legitimate travel journalist, you come to expect regions thirsty for tourist credits to over-hype themselves a little bit, and Eesti is no exception.
Take, for example, the fabulous Eestian cuisine. The promotional leaflet describes the local fare as "rich in exotic flavors" and "savory to the last bite" and I must admit that both statements are absolutely true in their own way, as the food tastes like it has fallen out of the wrong end of a bovine, and your first bite will definitely be your last.
{slimbox lt images/stories/articles/Farm.png, images/stories/articles/Farm_th.png, Typical Eestian Farm;}
For those with adventure in their hearts and alcohol in their veins, there are plenty of activities that will keep you going for days. Take a hike along the magnificent trail system from Tallinn to Tartu, Narva to Tapa, Valga to Elva, Tapa to Tallinn, Narva to Elva, Valga to Tartu, or even from Tallinn to Elva via Narva; go for a stroll through Tallinn or Valga, jaunt along the path from Tapa to Tartu, and once you've done all that, take a leisurely walk through the Eestian countryside.
Antique affectionados and the bourgeois bohemians have their own playground in Eesti. This tiny planetary backwater with a global population of about 35,000 people is historically pure and ripe for eco-cultural exploitation. Very little has changed since the planet was colonized. In fact, the most significant event in living memory was the landing of the original colony ship some 300 years ago.
But it's the people of Eesti that truly make it a rare gem. The residents are a hardy, primarily desert dwelling, people who wrap themselves around the meager deposits of water as though they were an even more precious resource than the chief export - Sand.
"I really do like it when children come and visit the farms with their parents," says Petri Urilenka who heads the Farmer's Union of Hearty Rural Eestian Riffraff. "So I can tell them to bugger off."
{slimbox lt images/stories/articles/Tallinn.png, images/stories/articles/Tallinn_th.png, Tallinn - Capital City of Eesti;}
"Get your ass off my property, or I'll blow a hole in your head so fucking big people... uh... people will say 'Wow, that's a fucking big hole'!" says average Eestian landowner Hendrik Rundi, wielding a leaky 300 year old plasma rifle. "Hey, you heard me!"
You'll definitely want to bring along a guide to the Eestian countryside. Their knowledge of the sites and people are invaluable to your experience and to your safety. Unfortunately, we lost ours, a young woman named Kaisa, to a freak antique plasma rifle accident and had to cut our trip short
As always, you may want to invest in light some armor, and travelers insurance, before taking in the exquisite sienna sights of our galaxy.
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