Travel Associations, Assumptions, and Some Healthy Suspicion

Before kids, a trip to Tallinn use to mean an overnight stay at a spa hotel. One particular spa hotel which hubby liked. You could take the elevator down from your room in a bathrobe and slippers. One year, I forgot my hair brush home and it was Christmas, so I was unable to buy another one. I had entirely tangled hair all through Christmas dinner, like a bird had nested in my hair without my noticing.

The first times we did this spa trip, the hotel and spa were new. The rooms had a space theme and it was alright. But year after year, both hotel and spa started showing signs of active use without active upkeep. I guess it must be quite expensive to maintain a spa, since many Finnish spas have the same problem. They look worn and crummy. Rusty, even.

After a bit of a pause, hubby and I managed a day trip to Tallinn last autumn. We took the ferry, but actually had to hurry a bit to make it back in time. No spa this time, just lunch and these few photos that I managed to snap while walking. We passed the cafe that I used to like having chocolate cake in. Once quirky and cosy, it had turned into an imperium, and was no longer as attractive to us.

Since I was our travel secretary, I’d gone and booked us “comfort lounge” tickets on the way back. Finnish-Estonian ferries are notoriously full of drunk people acting obnoxiously, and I find it quite depressing. The lounge was nice and peaceful, and not crowded at all. And no drunks around. One party was having a quiet, civilised glass of wine and they met my approval.

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I’ve always wondered about the need to get plastered as soon as you travel or are on holiday. When I worked at the airport, I had an office job that sometimes required me to start work at 6 AM. I’d pass security control and enter the terminal area. Tax free, cafe, pub… Tax free always had flight attendants buzzing around it. There was a saying that you had to choose between wrinkles and love handles as you aged, and since flight attendants weren’t allowed to gain much weight (must be fit to operate in an emergency), they were all worried about wrinkles. Tax free cosmetics were on every flight attendant’s shopping list.

But the pub… The pub was always completely full at six in the morning and lively as a nightclub. At six in the morning! Or seven, or eight. I’d barely had breakfast, I don’t know how they had the stomach for drinks that early in the day. It was like they’d found a loophole where time didn’t exist.

No doubt, some of them would later be writing a complaint letter to the mean airline that didn’t let them board due to their condition.

Back in my flight attendant days, I was once rostered on a flight from Oslo to somewhere warm (Thailand? The Dominican Republic? I can’t remember) and I was asked to stand in the terminal during boarding, along with the gate staff and the Captain. My job was to monitor passengers and see if anyone looked drunk – if so, tell the Captain, who would then decide if they were fit to fly. Heavily intoxicated people are a safety risk on board due to their probability for rowdy behaviour and the risk of needing sudden medical attention. And apparently, long hauls departing from Norway were the bane of this Nordic airline’s existence.

We all have our associations and assumptions, it seems. (Where’s the line between suspicion, assumption, and prejudice, I wonder?)

So, while Oslo might mean rowdy passengers for an experienced flight crew, Tallinn for me means a spa and rich chocolate cake, along with an unpleasant ferry ride amongst drunk grown-ups behaving badly. I once saw a man throw a cigarette into the Baltic Sea from one of these ferries and it made me sad. His appearance was too scary for me to say anything: he looked like a gangster. Also, he was standing directly in front of a No Smoking -sign and chose to ignore it, so I doubt my nagging would have changed anything.

This incident, and others, make me want to continue booking the comfort lounge, just so I can stay in my own bubble for a bit longer.

Staying in a bubble when you travel is a funny concept, isn’t it? I’ve done it before and will probably do it again. I once worked in an all-inclusive French hotel in Crete and I learned a lot of French that summer. Some Greek words, too, but everything was very French.

They had their own “animation” team, which I later understood meant that it was an entertaining team. (It had nothing to do with animated films!) They’d put on evening shows at the hotel and the shows were very popular amongst guests.

Speaking of travel associations, Lexi from One Foot Out the Door wrote an interesting post on the topic a while ago. How you might connect a seemingly random detail or event to a particular travel destination, and it makes complete sense to you.

Her post stirred up an instant memory for me: I’ll forever associate the FIFA World Cup with my summer in Crete. That summer, the French football team did very well in the World Cup (silver, perhaps?). But above all, I remember working at the poolside bar in the evenings, and all the guests drinking in a very civilised, French way. Just one drink. A small cognac (complaints if there was too much) or a local drink, Metaxa or raki. They wanted ice with their cognac, and I was so accustomed to serving it this way that I later got in trouble when I asked a Finnish passenger on an airplane if they wanted ice in their cognac.

My Finnish flight attendant colleague was younger than me, but she had been flying for much longer and so she had seniority over me on that flight. Luckily, we rarely met again, since you flew with a different crew each day (bliss!). But that time, she shouted at me in front of all the passengers, “You idiot! Cognac is NEVER served on ice!!!!”

A year before I became a flight attendant, in Crete, 2006, I served cognac on ice to approving French nods every single evening for 5 months, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just a dream. Mind you, it was 40ºC at night time, so ice was a nice addition to pretty much anything (yes, even wine!). Coffee was often cooled off with cognac or brandy. Another popular drink was a cocktail in the colours of the French flag. And what about the one where they wanted grenadine in their beer, I can’t remember the name? Google says Monaco, but I think it had another name. The atmosphere was unforgettable!

The French guests would be sitting at the bar, idly chatting amongst themselves and with us staff, while following the football games. Goal!!! Everyone would cheer and then go on chatting, and I’ll always love football for those summer evenings at work behind a bar, next to a pool that I wasn’t allowed to swim in. The World Cup has never been quite the same for me after that. Watching it on TV at home, I would be missing my French hotel guests. Some moments just can’t be reconstructed.

Here’s to safe travels in 2023! Cin cin!

(The photos are from Tallinn, 2022.)