Molly Malone may be quite a distance away from the roots of her name, but she attracts a jolly crowd nonetheless. This Irish pub opposite the town hall in Tallinn’s old town square draws tourists and locals alike to its outdoor seating, especially on a sunny day. Tables are packed closely together and buxom waitresses bustle about cheerfully, slamming down a tankard here or clearing a table there.
Russian influence: The old town square (top) and the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral take their architectural inspiration from the East. Photograph: Rishad Saam Mehta
I was sitting at a table that was shared by two others—a student from Moscow and a tourist from Rostock, Germany. The former was chewing on life and chunks of marzipan while waiting for his beer. The latter had her laptop out and was taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi floating about by having an animated conversation via Skype.
Sitting between the two, I was caught in a classic moment: Both were enjoying Estonian inventions in the heart of its capital. Estonia gave the world Skype, the revolutionary peer-to-peer software that has redefined Internet telephony. In the medieval town setting that wouldn’t be out of place in a Brothers Grimm work, pioneering software and Wi-Fi networks could seem like faces of a very distant future. But its cobbled streets and medieval skyline notwithstanding, Estonia has firmly set its sights West. Ever since it woke to a capitalist dawn in 1991 after decades behind the Iron Curtain, Estonia—a tiny country in the Baltic region—has been in a hurry to catch up with the rest of the world. Which is why Estonians were the first citizens anywhere to use the Internet to cast their vote in the legislative elections in February 2007 and why they routinely pay their parking fees from their mobile phones.
Marzipan, on the other hand, was born out of a master’s terrible cold and an apprentice’s fussiness back in the Middle Ages. Legend has it that an apothecary at the Town Hall Pharmacy once prepared an elaborate medicine to cure a town alderman. But since a nasty cold had affected his taste buds, it fell on his lackey Mart to taste the medicine. This being the time when medicines weren’t considered effective unless they tasted supremely ghastly, and Mart being something of a sweet-snob, he apparently replaced all the bitter ingredients in the concoction with more palatable ones. The new medicine was delivered to the alderman, who not only made a full recovery but also loved the sweet pill so much that he ordered vast quantities of it, never mind that he was fit as a fiddle.
The fame of this preparation grew around Tallinn and beyond, and the sweet bread-like confection came to be known as Mardileib or Mart’s Bread or Marzipan. Today marzipan shops in Tallinn do brisk business because making colourful marzipan in all kinds of shapes has become a finely honed art.