Dodgy Christmas Pt 2
So you think your neighbours Christmas decorations are bad?
On one of the main streets in Tallinn sits a rather imposing looking hotel, just outside the gates of the old town and beside the shopping centre. 
The Hotel Viru was build in 1972 and at the time was the highest ’sky scraper’ in the city. Now it has been outstripped with the new construction going on around it. And yet as you walk past it something still calls to you of the old order. In the 70’s the hotel was used to accomodate tourists. In the late 80’s the commies were shoved out of Estonia and the hotel was privatised and bought by the Sokos chain of hotels based in Finland. In 1989, a few months after the hotel had been bought workmen discovered a room on the 23rd floor that was not marked on the hotel blueprint. Upon entering they found it exactly as had been left when the Soviets were booted out. A ‘listening room’ complete with radio equipment, papers, microphones and bugs. The room was a communications base from embassies located in Scandanavia back to Moscow. And now, 16 years later, it’s still there, kept by the hotel as a museum piece, although it’s not open to the general public.
In addition to the secret radio room, the hotel was also bugged and guests who were considered ’suspect’ were accomodated in one of the rooms on the 3rd floor, while the KGB up on the 23rd floor would record everything that happened in those rooms.
Why have I posted about this today?
Because my apartment in Tallinn last week was right next door to the hotel.
