Interscandi Medium Trail...

The medium trail started near the Tallinn TV Tower, Northern Europe’s highest open viewing platform built for the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics.

I didn’t do a lot of running since it was 88°F (31°C) and after so many years in Holland, I melt in the heat. While the first bit was on hot asphalt, luckily we eventually entered the cooler woods. 

This was the swim stop that Opee missed and I opted to skip. Didn’t look like much swimming actually happened, except for a few ballbreakers who swam across to find true trail on the other bank. 

Saw this nice view of Pirita River further along trail.

Trail went around about 3/4 of the Pirita Velodrome...

…and eventually ended in a park for the circle and a sandwich.
 

Interscandi Ballbreaker Trail...

After a hearty buffet breakfast at the hotel, Opee caught the bus to the ballbreaker trail. 

It was a long and mostly off-road trail.

Despite the heat, he was still smiling...

…however, he was sad when he realized that he’d missed the chance for a dip in the river. 

The lead RA for their circle was Biggles, who Opee said was extremely entertaining. Their group was smaller than mine, but their circle lasted longer, which seems to be a ballbreaker tradition. 

 

Silent Protest in Tallinn...

After being occupied by the former Soviet Union from 1940-1941 and 1944-1991 and considering they share a border with Russia, it wasn’t surprising that there were protests against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

We couldn’t read all of the posters, but the meaning was pretty obvious. 

 

Pub Crawl in Tallinn...

Interscandi was our largest event of 2022 with around 225 hashers. We were split into more manageable sized groups for Friday night’s walking pub crawl in the historic city center.

Our illustrious leader was Laidbird (in the red shirt), a Stockholm hasher that we’ve known for years. 

Eventually all the groups gathered in the main square for a group photo. 

As in our previous visits, we went to the Depeche Mode Bar. 
 

Beautiful Tallinn...

Having been to Tallinn with the AWC in 2011 and during Eurohash in 2013, we never actually expected to go back again. However, when we found out that there were still spots for Interscandi (a hash weekend organized by Scandinavian kennels held every two years in cities once occupied by the Vikings), we decided it was time to attend for the first time. The Friday night pub crawl was a walk around the historic city center. As you can see, it is a beautiful city. 

 

A Rough Start to a Fun Trip...

On July 1, we got to see for ourselves why Schiphol had earned the new nickname of Shithole. We got there crazy early for our morning flight and then had to wait 1.5 hours for the baggage drop-off to open. Before we could scan our boarding passes, we got into a line which made us exit the airport and walk pretty far down the street. 

Eventually we were able to scan our boarding passes, but were then forced to the back of the waiting area so people behind us ended up ahead of us while we had to wait until small groups were allowed to climb the stairs to get in line at security. 

When we finally got to the top of the stairs, a sign showed the expected waiting time for security was 45 minutes and our flight was departing in 45 minutes from the opposite end of the terminal. Jimmy had a chat with a guard at the priority line and she said we could switch to that line once our flight was 30 minutes out. He told her we’d just wait to the side for the 15 minutes and a few minutes later she cleared us to join the shorter line. It turned out to be a good thing that several passengers then let us skip ahead of them because our flight was already boarding when we got to the far side of the terminal. 

It had been nine years since we were last in Tallinn and that time we arrived by ferry. The views from the plane were impressive.

We ran into a few hashers in the airport and we took the tram and then walked together to the host hotel: Tallink Spa and Conference Hotel. Rather than the usual hostel accommodations, it was nice to have another hotel room with a jacuzzi tub.

 

Ashlynn’s Marine Project...

During the nearly six weeks in Koh Pha Ngan, Ashlynn dove for five weeks. The first few dives were lessons on dive research by staff from the NGO CORESea (Center for Oceanic Research and Education).  

These photos show happy underwater moments, but don’t show that most of their one-hour long shallow dives were used to count the number of Drupella sea snails and record which type of coral they were found on and are presumed to eat.

Here’s a nice shot of a Drupella. Ashlynn used the data collected for her bachelor’s dissertation, which earned an A. You can read her team report by scrolling down on this post.

Ashlynn tried free diving and really enjoyed it. She also enjoyed the warm water.