Back from Tallinn. Which means that I must, with regret, finally retire my passport; I cannot now avoid the need to renew it. It’s done pretty well for itself, having now only one blank page, 13 visas (1 Chinese, 1 Saudi, 1 Tanzania, 2 Kenyan and 8 Russian) and 34 pairs of entry/exit stamps. Including proof here, for example, that I did indeed enter New Zealand on 17/2/13. There’s a lot of memories in this now-tatty little book.
I picked my Tallinn hotel, the Hotel Viru, basically at random, so it was interesting to discover its history today. It was the first ‘Western’-style hotel built in the city in the early 1970s when the Soviet Union decided that it would try to attract tourist hard currency. The hotel has 23 floors, but the elevators only go up to 22: the top floor officially did not exist, because it was in a room up there that the KGB installed a surveillance station that, it is believed, relayed information from spies in Finland direct to the 1st Directorate of the KGB back in Moscow. One night in May 1991, just before Estonia achieved independence, they cleared out literally overnight, and now the hotel conducts guided tours of the top floor which, they say, they have left exactly as it was found after their departure. You can see more pictures on my Facebook page if interested.
As well as this room there was a surveillance network throughout the whole hotel, which was also used by Communist party luminaries and celebrities as well as tourists. The two pieces of equipment shown here reflect this. The black apparatus is a camera attached to a tube which could be poked through holes in ceilings to photograph guests in the room below. The pink object on the left, which I found particularly sinister, is a purse that would be left lying around as if it had been dropped by a guest. Hotel employees were supposed to return these straight to lost property; if they opened it, checking for money, it would explode dye into their face. They would then be called into see the local KGB and told that if they did not co-operate with them they would be sent to a labour camp for theft. Nice people.
Of course, these days no government ever spies on its people like this or engages in any underhand surveillance tactics at all.
The ECIL (European Conference on Information Literacy) taking place in Tallinn at the moment is the same gig that got me to Croatia this time last year, and yes, some things just stay the same, like the folk dancing we endured last night; and tea breaks remain the same wherever one is.
The rules I set myself on this blog (which are available on the ‘About’ page) state that I do not pose or stage photos, nor do I light them beyond what illumination is available naturally. These are true, but tonight, while stopping off for a pint on the way home from work, this woman was working on setting up some jewellery-making class in the White Lion, and complaining that she didn’t have good enough light. I noticed that the spotlights above were adjustable so made the necessary changes to help her out — then asked if I could take her picture because the light had suddenly come so good. So I suppose this one is half-lit. But one can bend the rules occasionally to help others.
A classic symposium/conference scene. The speaker emotes to present his point to a bunch of guys looking at their laptops. Ah well, probably the rest of the audience were paying attention; although your humble diarist can’t criticise seeing as he’s just taking a photo at this point.
Although I have been doing plenty of work trips recently they have all been in the UK, and it’s been six months since I was actually at Manchester airport heading off somewhere for work. Today I changed planes in Schiphol, one of those hub airports that almost everyone who flies probably ends up at some point or another, and what a joyful place it is…. I was sitting behind this fence watching the arriving passengers get off the plane we were about to get on, and I kind of like this shot just for the effect, how the fence and the light make the woman look sort of ghostly.
Rydal cave, on the slopes of Loughrigg Fell, is the biggest cave in the Lake District. As A. Wainwright says in his Pictorial Guide, “there is room in here for the entire population of Ambleside (though admittedly many of them would be standing in water)”. It’s not a natural cave however; instead, it is the product of quarrying. I guess you need a certain confidence in the local geology to dig out such a big hole…
Anyone who has documented every day of their lives online for more than four years cannot but be at least part-geek, so things like festivals of board games appeal to me, and I wasn’t even the member of the family who initiated this trip to “MeepFest” in Leeds today. (No, it wasn’t Joe either.) Great setting, a church in Leeds now converted to an arts centre. Good fun gaming, too.
Passed on a walk through the countryside, on a muggy day. I dislike this kind of agricultural mess (why should someone feel free to litter the place just because they farm it?) while at the same time liking it as a subject for a picture.
Being 42 