I have become far less adept at writing out complete, cogent narratives of my feelings and thought processes, but in a way I think that's a good thing, as my writing style reflects the fragmentation of the experiences and short attention span that plagues our current generation.
I went to a free walking tour recommended by the hostel, because it was free, and it's nice to let someone walk me around for a change and play follow my leader. But only on occasion. Our tour guide was a very funky girl probably a few years older than me, called Heli - "Heli, like in helicopter," was the way she introduced herself. She had ridiculously good English. Actually, of all the EU countries I've been to, Estonians have far and away the best English skills out of all of them, it's uncanny. Heli's English was fantastic, and it wasn't "gamer English" as Jake likes to call them - it was articulate and coherent and you could tell that these people were well read and well spoken, and that they were the real deal. Same for Sanne, one of the girls working at the hostel.
Vabaduse väljak - Freedom Square, but according to Heli this was an unnecessary expenditure. So is everything.
I need to write some more about Dunkirk for closure, and catharsis. So, one of the things I liked about the movie was the underlying theme of claustrophobia, or in proletariat terms (this remark I make completely tongue-in-cheek), a fear of being stuck in confined spaces. The marooned soldiers were repeatedly trapped in torpedoed destroyers and medical ships and forced to endure agonizing, stymied deaths by water and fire. One of the main storylines featured the rescue of a shellshocked solider, who refused to go below decks for fear of being trapped there to die, with no way out. My favourite Jack Lowden's jet was gunned down, and he was unable to escape his watery prison on his own, with salvation only coming when one of the civilian rescue ships saw him floundering and got there just in the nick of time to break him out. Then there was another scene where Harry, Fionn and Aneurin, three survivors from one of the sunken ships, had gotten on to another ship, and Harry and Fionn hurried into the watertight mess hall at once and watched one of the officers secure the hatchet, before realizing that Aneurin hadn't followed them in. 'What happened to your friend?' Harry asks Fionn, languidly but with just enough interest. 'He didn't want to be caught in here,' Fionn answers. As it turns out, Aneurin's judgment was correct, and their ship is bombed almost immediately, trapping the men inside the ship with nowhere to go, and Aneurin stays behind, amid all the chaos, and frees the hatchet door, saving Fionn and Harry. The latter, in later scenes, is not grateful.
More to come.
