The police escort (Tallinn, Estonia)

After a day wandering around the old part of Tallinn in Estonia, I took the bus back to the harbour to board the ferry for the return journey to Helsinki.  

I headed for the ferry which was in clear view — except that, from that distance, I couldn’t see the wire fences that separated the area I was walking in from the ferry embarkation area.  

By the time I got close enough to see that I couldn’t get through and would have to walk all the way back, and enter the embarkation area via a different opening, a police car had arrived, having been alerted to the fact that this obviously foreign intruder was wandering around where she shouldn’t go.  

I pointed at the ferry, and they kindly offered to take me there, so it was that I arrived at the ferry in a police car, with the whole of the ferry population turning out on deck, watching keenly, wondering what I might’ve done.  

When I got out and the policemen and I waved a friendly goodbye to each other, I could feel a collective sigh of relief from the passengers — and perhaps disappointment that there was no drama to be enacted in front of their eyes after all.

(Tallinn, Estonia, August 1996)