Helsinki and Tallinn are two great capitals in Northern Europe. Just 50 miles and a two-hour ferry ride apart, these two cities—facing each other across the Baltic Sea from their respective countries of Finland and Estonia—are not only neighbors, but soul sisters.
Finns and Estonians share a similar history—first Swedish domination, then Russian, then independence after World War I. But while Finland held on to its freedom through the Cold War, Estonia was gobbled up by the expanding Soviet Empire and spent the decades after World War II under communism, regaining its freedom in 1991.
