Mika Tuupola

Web application movement is growing in Baltic states. Biggest event in near future will be Barcamp Baltics 2008. It is held 8-10 February in Riga. Barcamp describes itself the following way:

Barcamp is a unique international unconference on new media, blogs, podcasts, social networking, citizen journalism, web 2.0, open source and everything else that is connected with it. Unconference includes open presentations, workshops and workgroups; everything is held by the participants themselves.

Other than Barcamp Jüri Kaljundi has been organizing OpenCoffee Club in Tallinn for a while. I have always had some lame excuse not to attend. Next event will be 6. March. That one I will attend. Now when it is said public I cannot have any excuses…

Shocking news! Expired residence permit can cause problems. Even inside European Union.

In previous part I had problems with Tallinn city officials. I tried to register my living address. Landlords signature was not valid because he had taken a home loan from bank. City database says apartment owner was bank.

Bank sent letter of attorney to landlord. This letter gave him permission to sign a paper. This paper gave me permission to fill a form. With this form I was able to register my address in Estonia. After registering living address I could renew my residence permit.

Problem was all this took three weeks. During this time my residence permit ended. Not a biggie.

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Helsinki – Tallinn line gets new ship. No more looking at weather forecasts. This ship can go out with bad weather. It can go go out even when there is ice!

For people traveling often between Tallinn and Helsinki this is good news. Problem with fast ferries is you never know will they go. If there is storm ferries will be canceled. This happened to me three times last year. Fast ferries also do not go during winters. In winters you can travel only cruise ships. Problem with cruise ships is the time. Travel with cruise ships takes over 3 hours.

This is exactly what M/S Star fixes. It is a big ship which can drive even in storms. Still it has speed of fast ferries. Travel time to Helsinki is only two hours. This combined with onboard wifi makes it perfect for business travelers. How well wifi actually work we will see tomorrow morning.

It is not advertised but M/S Galaxy also has onboard wifi. It only works in some parts of ship. Just check where all the people with laptops are. Internet connection works all the way to Finland. Maybe not the fastest. Still enough to read your mails and hang in IRC or MSN.

Until now everything in Estonia has been bureaucracy free. Recently small mistake I made last year together with bureaucracy by Tallinn city officials caused snowball effect of problems.

Last year I received my residence permit to live in Estonia. After receiving the ID card and residence permit my address was known to immigration office, tax office, bank and social security service. I did not understand then that this was not enough. I should have registered my address to Tallinn city databases too.

This I found out when extending my residence permit. New EU rules state that I will receive new permit automatically if I have registered address in Estonia. Meaning, registered to city database. Of course immigration office did not recognize my address because they are checking city databases only. Well… I only need to register my address with city officials and I will automatically get new residence permit. Easy! Or that is what I thought.

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One of my neighbours is pissed off and late from work today. Photo is taken on my way to work.

I wonder how many minutes did it take to lift the car over bricks and take out the wheels. Probably under ten. After all our front yard has good visibility and light sensor triggered lights. Maybe the bad guys were in a hurry though. They forgot their mechanical jack under the car. How can they now continue their profession!!

EDIT: There is nothing unique about this. I have seen the same thing happen in Helsinki. A colleague of mine noted that he once saw car without wheels standing over four one liter pepsi bottles…

Note to self: always park into garage.

This week consisted of culinary experiences with sourcrout and accidentaly entering Ülemiste shopping center while on my way to airport.

• Poissmehe jõuluroog ie. bachelors christmas meal is a warm dish which contains sourcrout, potatoes and occassional pieces of meat. You can buy it from Selver. Price per kilogram is only 29.90 EEK (1.91 EUR). Mmmmm, good! I ate two 250 g cartons in a row.
• Last year there was a snowboard park near Lauluväljak. The guys at Alleaa are planning even bigger park this winter. SWB has Lauluka Park photos from last winter.
• Ülemiste Keskus is a huge shopping center few minutes away from central Tallinn. After 30 minutes of wandering around I got an impression that most of the people there were russian.
• There are car hand wash companies everywhere in Tallinn.
• The toilets in Coca Cola Plaza cost one kroon.

The most amusing taxi ride yet ends in being slighty ripped off in Tallinn…

Taxi rides in Tallinn can vary a lot. Sometimes they are hazardous. Maybe because the driver can be ambulance driver having two jobs. Sometimes the driver can get lost. With Tulika Takso I have always had good service and fast non-hazardous rides in clean cars. Tulika drivers I always tip by paying to the closest 20 kroons.

My first encounter with another taxi company was a bit different. Took a cab in front of D-terminal. Inside of the cab everything was red. I mean everything. Dashboard was covered with tens of different bouncing toys – all in colour red. It vaquely reminded me of the decorated taxicabs in india. The experience was spiced up with loud russian KAAALINKA KALINKA style music and the driver constantly honking to slower cars. This all got me in a good mood…

... until we were there. Taxi ride from central Tallinn to my place usually costs around 75 to 85 kroons. When the taxi stopped the driver just said 100 kroons and I could not see the taximeter anywhere. 15 kroons is not a big deal. I was going to pay the driver 100 kroons as I usually do anyway. There is no need to try to rip me off. The only difference to me was to become pissed off and not using the same company again.

From now on I’ll just use Tulika Takso.

A quick note to regular readers. Today I finally moved to beautifull city of Tallinn. You can still reach me from my old cellular number and email address. This is one thing I have been enthusiast for a long time. I wish I will learn a lot from the baltic markets during the following year.

Restaurant Stefanie’s in central Tallinn (Maakri 19/21) serves excellent mediterranean food. If you have trouble choosing the main course, try the duck breast filled with orange teriyaki which has been a bestseller for awhile. They also serve fresh tuna which is not usually easy to get.

Interior itself is simple and elegant. There are both smoking and non-smoking areas. It is probably a good idea to reserve a table in advance. When we first reserved a table there was no room in non-smoking area. However upon arriving to the restaurant we were pleased to notice that a non-smokin table had become available and our reservation was transfered there. Atmosphere was nice and quiet. It was not plaqued with noisy tourists. Although one could argue whether the BeeGees are good background music or not ;)

What especially got my attention was courteous and fast service which did not try to be superficially friendly. If you are like me and don’t talk any good estonian yet, the waitresses speak perfect english. You can get served in finnish too but english is better choice of language.

Stefanie’s table booklets and probably some other designwork is made by Designsolutions.

Update 2005-12-05: While other food is good do not try the pasta. Atleast for me it was overboiled and was soaking with sauce.