I met a lot of characters on my trip to Tallinn. One of these characters is called Dimitri. I met Dimitri one evening in a bar in Tallinn. I went to a bar called Viru Lokaal with two people I met in my hostel to have a beer with foreign students. We sat on the terrace, where the atmosphere was very calm. A man sat down at our table at once. He only spoke Russian and was already quite drunk. His face was flushed and bloated. He introduced himself as Dimitri. Dimitri was about 1m75 tall, fat, and in his late forties. We involved him in our group, which was not exactly easy with my limited knowledge of Russian. Nevertheless, we understood each other with words and sign language. Another man joined us at the table. It was a friend of Dimitri, who like Dimitri was also Russian and drunk. However, he was about 1.90m tall and very athletically built. He had a shaved head and was wearing a black bomber jacket. He didn’t want to reveal his name to us, however. Dimitri opened his jacket and took out a new vodka bottle, which he shared with us. We all took a drink, including his friend. Then his friend went into the bar. After about two minutes, an employee stormed out of the bar and shouted: I need help! Your friend is causing problems. I quickly went into the bar to see what the problem was. There I saw the Russian friend who was causing problems with an Estonian man. I went to him and tried to lead him out of the bar without violence. The people calmed down, as did Dimitri’s friend. I managed to get him out and tried to calm him down. With my limited Russian, I said to him ‘everything is good, everything is good’. He calmed down. Then I wanted to tell him not to cause trouble. But I missed the Russian words. The best that occurred to me at that moment was: Please no war today, which means please no war today. He laughed and hugged me. He had calmed down, ran around and then made a Hitler salute. Then we knew it was time to change location. Dimitri stayed behind with his friend.
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