Tallinn, part VIII - More Raekoda, Kalev Candy Shop/Café Maiasmokk and Toompea (ii)

I'm exhausted. This is no way to start off the week.

Things that I want and need. you know what I want and need. It can be bought by money, ish.

I hate my office seat because I'm seated in the front row and people keep walking by in front of me and even though they don't see what's on my screen I still find it a violation of my personal space.

In 1, I hated the surroundings there too, and was not happy until I'd moved to the eleventh floor. After I moved to the eleventh the days just slid by, like butter on a heated saucepan.

That's how much difference it made.

I can barely even remember what I did on the eleventh.

Easing into the day, as always.

I took more photos of Tallinn from Toompea. Heli told us stories of Estonia under Soviet rule: of how they'd been issued a blanket ban from reading or saying anything English, particularly American, and how her mother and her mother's sisters would crouch together in the attic, reading contraband Rolling Stones magazines, not understand a word but thinking that if they read out the forbidden words, this would act like a cursebreaker. And it worked, didn't it - laughed Heli; in 1991 they gained their independence from the USSR.

Look, she said, that tall building on the horizon line - that's the KGB building in which enemies of the State were held and interrogated.

And that cathedral spire - it's the tallest in the town.

Then Kalev Rotermanni šokolaadipood ja meistrikoda. Also known as Café Maiasmokk (Sweet Tooth).

The birth of the Estonian confectionery industry dates back to 1806 when a pastry cook, Lorenz Caviezel, opened a confectionery business in Tallinn at Pikk Street, where the Café Maiasmokk (Sweet Tooth) is located.
In 1864, the business, which had changed hands many times, came into the possession of Georg Johann Stude. After ten years of operation, Stude decided to expand the business: he bought a neighbouring house and in place of these two houses constructed a new and more solid building, which is still there.
Out of Stude’s production, marzipan figures and hand-made chocolate candies were in especially high demand. Stude’s sweets were known outside Estonia. Thus, for example, the court of the Russian tsar was a regular customer at the turn of the 20th century.
Recipes and working methods originating from Stude’s confectionery are still held in great esteem in today’s Kalev – to this day the marzipan figures are hand-made candies. (source)

I actually did try some Estonian marzipan, though not here because it was expensive as. I went to one of the normal supermarket express shops to get a slab, and I ended up having to give away about half of it because it was too sweet for me to finish, and speaking as someone who is usually a sucker for sweets, that's saying a lot.

Café Maiasmokk

Toompea

View from Toompea