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Published: September 11th 2006
Today began with a hangover… Again. This seems to be becoming a pattern here in Tallinn. I was aiming to meet the Aussie girls at the bus station at about quarter to nine, but by the time I had been on an anti-hangover mission to Mc Donald's for a “Big Tasty” and made it back to the hostel to get a cab, the 10 o clock bus we had agreed to catch had already left. Never mind!
I caught a taxi from the hostel and chatted with the driver in Russian about how Russian language is used in the Baltics these days. It turns out that because Estonian is not a Slavic language (but a Finno-Hungarian one), it bears zero resemblance to either Latvian or Lithuanian and even they don’t understand each other. Thus, Russian often takes the role of Lingua Franca. However, after the rebellion of the Baltics against the Soviet Union, Russian as a language was not taught to young people, but was replaced with English - reflecting the politics and feelings of the time. However, the people have come to learn that Russian is infinatley more useful here than English - which is only good for speaking with leary British stag parties - whereas Russia is next door for trade and travel. Thus, school children now learn Russian again and not English. There is however a generation around my age who are unable to speak Russian - although many have found the need to learn it to get a decent job. A good example of when learning English has proved to be not very useful!
The bus to Tartu takes about two and a half hours and travels through some spectacular Estonian landscapes. The countryside consists of thick green forests made up of very tall silver barked birches with smaller conifers filling-in between, producing an impenetrable and dense wood. This is interspersed with cleared fields, which, due to the lack of enclosure and incredible flatness of the country meant that I had a feeling of being on an American prairie with the ‘big sky’ effect of the horizon seemingly miles away. Occasionally, every 4km or so, nestled against the edge of the woods far in the distance are small farmhouses, often built out of timber, which are very picturesque. The fields themselves often had small islands of trees in them and were made up of Dartmoor like stubbly grass interspersed with heathery looking stuff. Other than the very occasional cow - that was all that seemed to be happening with the fields. I was wandering why, having cleared the forests, the fields appeared to be in such limited use. The only other signs of activity were the occasional tractor making hay bails and the steep roofed barns. The farm equipment was very shiny… Farming here has come a long way since Khrushchev’s time.
The comfortable bus rattled its way along the very bumpy single lane road to Tartu while I tried to sleep off the last two nights. I arrived in the south-eastern town and was met by my old friend Maarit, who, much to my surprise, actually has blonde hair - not the fiery red she had at school!
We walked to the supermarket to stock up and chatted about what various people from school are doing these days. The shopping mall had been built last year and was large and spacious. The supermarket was really well stocked - how things have changed in only a decade. We dropped the stuff off at Maarit’s modern and airy ‘ikeaed’ throughout apartment in the middle of town and went to get lunch. The old town of Tartu is very quaint, with cobbled streets and neo classical (I think) architecture. The central square with the town hall in is where we ate and met with a friend of Maarit’s called Trin. She’s going to be studying in St. Petersburg at the state university, so we decided to swap emails in case we wanted to meet up there. Maarit and her friend were drooling over the waiter when Maarit suddenly decided that she thought she knew him from somewhere. After much discussion with Trin she decided that she was mistaken. When the waiter came with the bill she asked him, and it turns out they are in the very same class every day at uni…
We were eating on the terrace in the warm sunshine and had a great view of the bridge crossing the river. The original bridge had been knocked down by the Soviets, and a big steel affair with a loop over the top (like the bridge between Newcastle and Gateshead over the Tyne, or the Sydney Harbour Bridge) had been built in its place. Maarit told me that the students run over the loop when they’re drunk and the police chase them off. I couldn’t believe that - the bridge’s loop goes right up in the air, perhaps a good 20 metres. Maarit said she’d never done it herself. However, sure enough, while we were eating, a group of girls proceeded to climb up onto the ‘loop’ and walk up. My stomach was in my mouth - if the wind had blown they could very easily have lost their footing on the 2ft-or-so wide walkway and fallen, certainly to their deaths! Yet they seemed to be having fun and were followed by others. This was absolute insanity - but made good meal time viewing.
Due to my lack of baggage I went to buy another shirt at the shopping mall and headed back to Maarit’s to phone the airlines about my bags... Still no luck. I sorted my life out on the internet and got ready for dinner at Maarit’s parents’ house.
On the bus I was sat at the front facing backwards and looking at the other people on the bus when it occurred to me that the older generation in Estonia has clearly had a very hard life. You can see it in their faces, their hands, their posture, their eyes. It is so easy to forget, when you are surrounded by steel and glass buildings and well stocked shops, what life here must have been like here as recently as a few years ago.
Maarit’s parents live in a modern house a relatively wealthy suburb of Tartu. I was welcomed by her father, and introduced to her mum and grandmother as well. The meal was to celebrate the start of the new school term - something I know my family has never celebrated! We ate chicken in sauce and potatoes and washed it down afterwards with a bottle of the wine available during Soviet times that her dad had found in the supermarket. It was a sweet white Hungarian wine and wasn’t bad at all! We spoke afterwards in German as Maarit’s mother used to be a German teacher and her father was also reasonably fluent. Her father told me some Russian jokes (which weren’t very good, although he seemed to like them…) and we talked about Russia. It was interesting to hear this from someone who had first-hand experience of the Soviet times. Referring always to the Soviets as Russians and the Union as an occupation, it soon became clear how he felt. He told a story of how he had once been asked why he was so bothered by the Soviets, he asked that person how they would feel if, say, the Chinese moved forcefully into their country, made them all learn Chinese and annexed them into a “Chinese Union”. His strong feelings reminded me of the in-flight magazine I had read on the Air Estonia plane. It came across to me, even then, as containing some anti-Russian propaganda with such choice phrases along the lines of: “In Estonia, the residents eat more meat than in Russia” and an article consisting of what Estonia was better at than Russia. The Estonians are a definite nation - it is not just a group of people who live in one area and have little else in common - they have a completely different language and culture and are very protective of that. I was beginning to understand why the revolution against the Soviets under Gorbachev began in the Baltics. All the time that this conversation was going on, Maarit’s grandmother (who only speaks Estonian) was watching Estonia get a good thrashing from Latvia in the basketball.
That evening when in the “powder cellar” bar - a bar built inside an old gun powder store in the side of a hill and which resembles the Queen of Hearts in Fallowfield on the inside - Maarit spoke more about her views on Russians. When she was younger she lived in an area with a mixed population of Russians and Estonians. In a disco, the Estonian DJ was dragged outside and beaten up by Russian lads to the extent that he had zero teeth left all because he had played too many “Estonian songs” (remember this happened in Estonia). Some of the Estonian girls Maarit knew could speak Russian and used to talk with the boys (Maarit never learned Russian). These girls were attacked by the Russian girls for “stealing our men” and left in a bad way. When you hear the stories from the Estonian point of view, Gorbachev’s view that the Baltics would come crying back to the USSR shows just how out of touch he was with feelings in the republics. The combination of looking at the older generations on the bus, the stories from Maarit and the conversation with her father left a strange guilt in my mind that I was going to study Russian.
While we were in the Powder Cellar bar, I observed some more of the Estonian drunkenness I had witnessed previously. A man, barely able to walk, was making his way from table to table talking nonsense and stumbling on the stairs. No one raised an eyebrow. A man danced with a giant stuffed tiger in the bar and no one cared. These people weren’t just drunk - they were absolutely paralytic. Outside on the street there were more people in this state. I have never seen so many people not just leary (like you see in England all the time) but absolute hospital jobs. This country has a real drink problem. The scare mongers in Britain don’t even know what drunk means. This was Sunday night in Tartu and the people were wrecked. Maarit told me how this was always the case and that she hoped the problem would die down as the economic situation improved. I had already seen some people absolutely wrecked during the day, just aimlessly wandering the streets drinking dodgy voddy. I guess it will improve with time. Life expectancy for a male in Estonia is 56 (**66, I stand corrected - see comments) - an age so low due largely to abuse of alcohol (which I entirely condone). I should point out that the vast majority of the Estonians were perfectly reasonable, probably more so than an average friday night in Nottingham!
We made our way (via a few other bars) to a hidden bar down a back lane near the university building. Maarit told me that this is where the students go when everything else is closed. While I was squashed in at the bar I heard a British accent. He was a big guy of about 40 years who told me he was from Newcastle, and when questioned about his obvious southerness told me that his parents were from Surrey. Maarit asked what he was doing in Tartu. He told us that he’d been in Tallinn for six years but had decided to move to Tartu and still hadn’t figured out for himself why he was here at all. Judging by the fact that he was in a hidden away bar with two attractive young ladies accompanying him and the expensive drinks he was buying them, I figured he knew exactly why he was in Estonia. I guess he moved away from Tallinn because too many British tourists were in the same game as him and the locals had wised up somewhat. He had moved to Tartu where there are very few tourists. As far as I’m concerned, his game is as good as prostitution - taking advantage of people because he is fortunate enough to be in a better situation than them and exploiting that fact. Maarit just called the girls naïve but the more I looked at him the more it pissed me off.
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total population: 72.04 years male: 66.58 years female: 77.83 years (2006 est.) From CIA Factbook. Russian used to be A foreign language, english/german B or C. Now, mostly, russian is B or C. These three languages are mostly taught at school and the A foreign language can vary (french, swedish, english, german) but is never russian. The russian topic is a difficult one and needs more time to explain, but read this blog (not mine) www.palun.blogspot.com. He recently wrote about things that can clear up a few points (an american, writes in english)