I'm going to Estonia in my mind....

I woke up from quite a vivid dream this morning.  I don't often remember my dreams, so remembering it at all was an event in and of itself...but oooh, there was so much more to it!  In my dream, I had been on my way somewhere (I can't remember if I was flying or taking a train or what), and I woke up and was in this old raggedy city built onto a hill.  I thought "I THINK I was going to Estonia....right?  This must be Estonia.  I think.  Or maybe Bulgaria?  But I think Estonia."

So I'm wandering around the street, trying to figure out where I am and what I should do next.  And I run into this other native English-speaker who's talking really loudly (as native English-speakers in foreign countries are wont to do) and he says he'll help me out.  I don't actually remember what we talked about, but there was this apartment thing with gold steps (!) across the street, and we were sitting on a little covered walkway in front of a building next to some giant kettle thing.  Then this lady came over holding a giant smoldering coal in some tongs, and she reached over me with it (eek!) and stuck it into a lantern hanging on the wall.  She went around the rest of the street lighting the lanterns that same way.

A little bit later, we got up (for reasons I can't remember) and started walking down the street and down the hill.  And we passed ANOTHER house with gold steps!  I'd thought that the first one must belong to the prime minister or something, but apparently the occasional person in Estonia-or-maybe-Bulgaria just happens to have gold steps.  And there was a wooden door to the alcove/porch thing of the house, and everyone who passed knocked a couple times on the door.  Oh--and all of us were walking down the hill, by the way.  So we get to the end of the street and there's a set of stairs, and we go down those...and it turns out we're going down to the sea!  Aah...that explains the steep hill.  On the second-to-last step, the letters ESTONIA are painted in white.  So that solves that mystery!  Thanks, totally unnecessary painted step!

Then, someone said that we all needed to wade across this shallow cove to the opposite shore, although I'm not sure why.  And it was cold, yo!  And I was wearing sneakers, which were going to get all wet!  But I did it, and when I was almost all the way across there was a sudden drop-off, and I was in up to my chest.  My giant orange purse had been unzipped, and all my stuff dumped out of it into the murky water--aack!  But my native English-speaker friend helped me collect the purse, most of the contents of which were still inside, and we spread it out on a rock to see if it was all there.  My passport was there (although I'm a safety queen and always wear a money belt...unless I'm dreaming, apparently), as was my digital camera (still works!) and my laptop (also still works--but again, why the poo was I carrying it in my purse in a foreign country?!)  But my wallet was missing!  OH NO!  Plus, my new friend said that he didn't see my "very favorite possession in the world," which I had apparently showed him earlier, though I couldn't remember what it was.  So I started frantically searching the cold, murky water for my wallet and my very favorite possession....and then I woke up!

WHAT THE POO?

(Incidentally, I have heard positively glowing reviews of Estonia from several friends who went there a few years ago.  It's supposed to be extremely friendly, extremely beautiful, and extremely cheap to travel in.  Yet in my dream, it was extremely gray, extremely depressing, and extremely foreign.  Go figure.)