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Published: January 13th 2007
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Thongs in the Snow
An Australian in Estonia.Häid Pühi (Happy Holidays) from Tartu, Estonia!!!
Well it certainly has been a while since I’ve been in touch with most of you, and as you can see I'm still in in the Baltics in the beautiful little country of Estonia.
I’ve been here since the start of September so I’ve had a real opportunity to get to know what life is like here. Now that I think back on the last four months I really have done a lot of cool stuff. It really too hard to capture it all here but some of the things which stand out for me include walking and mushroom picking in marshlands, canoeing recently on an icy river (and during the post canoeing sauna sliding naked on my stomach across a frozen pond 😊 ). I've also eaten lots of black bread, salads, potatoes (the perfect winter food), cakes and pastries. The climate here and maybe the past soviet rural lifestyle has also led to a culture of producing and preserving your own fruits and vegetables so I've also had lots of tasty home-grown, home-preserved and home-made food such as stawberries, cherries, cranberries, rasberries, blueberries, red-currants, cucumber, mushrooms and sauerkraut. I've also
Tallinn
Like Tartu, Tallinn is a mix of old and new. This photo was taken during the Tallinn car free day festival. had some great home made tea and wine, drunk many shots of plain vodka as well as vodka flavoured with home picked berries and peppermint vodka liqueur (mmmmmm....I think I’m starting to like vodka). I’ve been in at least seven different types of sauna (no, not seven different saunas but seven different types). I've walked in native pine and birch forests (forest still covers about 50% of Estonia) and seen deer, migrating geese, foxes and the work of beavers (see the photos) and a moose - well I think it was a moose, it was kinda dark but lets all just agree that I saw one.... Unfortunately I haven't seen any bears or wolves yet, but if I get homesick I can see some wallabies in Tallinn zoo. I've had snow fights and gone from -12 to +90 degrees in about half an hour, visited the baltic sea and walked on a snow-covered beach at sunset (wow). Hopefully soon the weather will settle into a 'real' winter and I'll be able to go skating outside, cross-country skiing and I've been told that I can go walking on the Baltic Sea when it freezes near the coast 😊
I've lived
Fairytale Tallinn
Part of the old city wall in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. in an old soviet apartment block (they’re everywhere, even in the middle of tiny country towns - the Soviets certainly loved collective living) and a cosy pre-soviet wooden house. Maybe its the cold climate or maybe its the soviet/russian influence but alcoholism also seems to be a bit of a problem here as well. Even in modern cities like Tallinn and Tartu however its still pretty common to find old decaying timber houses, bad roads and poverty. Then again you could probably find things like that in a lot of cities, couldn't you...I think some of those old wooden houses are beautiful and give the place a raw, down-to-earth charm. They can also be quite beautiful when they've been renovated and painted. The cosy wooden house I mentioned before is actually on the corner of Kalevi tänav (which means street in Estonian) and Õnne tänev. Kalev is the hero of an Estonian epic and is also a much loved chocolate brand here, while õnne means happiness in Estonian. So I must be doing alright if I'm living on the corner of chocolate and happiness streets 😉 For me however, any negatives I've found here are easily balanced out by the
Tallinn-Old Town
Part of the Medieval section of Tallinn. new or beautifully renovated buildings, the availability of modern technologies, the beautiful landscapes and closeness to nature, the warm, friendly and down-to-earth people and all the great cosy little cafes.
Estonia regained its independence from Russia (for the second time) in 1991 and travelling through the baltics I've started to get an understanding of what life was like under a murderous soviet regime. The country has shrugged off its soviet past pretty well though and people here are very proud to be Estonian. Its been almost 16 years since Estonia gained its independence but as you may expect there is still a lot of tension between the two countries. Russia and Russian Estonians are regularly accused of not acknowledging the atrocities of the past and not wanting to integrate or even learn the language here, while Estonians are often accused of racism against Russians. For a very good and brief summary of Estonian history and to find out just how popular a place it has been to have a piece of over the last 800 hundred years or so then have a look at
thissite.
One of the important factors in gaining independence here was the proud embracing
by Estonians of their language and culture. Over the three years before independence there were many peaceful rallies and protests which were often accompanied by singing. There were also many beautiful songs written at the time which stirred the national pride and strenghthened the national consciousness. This time in Estonian history is known as the
singing revolution.
The singing revolution was probably just a natural extension of the already existing love of song and dance here. For such a small country of only 1 million people Estonia has an extraodinarily rich culture (eg. There are hundreds of different songs and dances that are uniquely Estonian). Every four years there is a national song and dance festival attended by many
thousands of people in their traditional outfits (most regions have their own) and although the kids brought up post 1991 might find their folk culture a bit daggy, there are still many guys (
1,
2) and girls (
1,
2,
3) both old (
1,
2), young (
1,
2) and somewhere in
between who really
enjoy this important part of the culture. Although I haven't been to one of these major folk festivals, I have had the pleasure of watching lots of beautiful and interesting
Mushroom Picking in Soomaa
Soomaa is a large National Park in the south west of Estonia that is mostly marshland (ie 'soo'). People are free to pick berries and mushrooms there and thats exactly what we did. folk dance and contemporary dance.
Humour and satire are also very important parts of the culture which is not surprising after so many years of occupation by other countries. The presence of other countries here has left its mark in other ways too with obvious influences from Germany, Russia, Scandinavia and now of course America. The people I've spent time with have all been warm, bright and funny and seem to prefer spending time with their friends and family, talking, playing board games, hanging out in cafes, seeing live music and making each other laugh rather than just going out and getting drunk (although of course people like to do that as well). So for me, Estonia is a really interesting mixture of modern and old , solemn and celebrational, down-to-earth and high-tech.
I’ve made new friends, worked as a Geography teacher at a local high school, spoken about Australia to school kids at a holiday camp in southern Estonia (where kids learn about their local dialect, songs and dances) and I've also spoken and volunteered at the
Tartu Environmental Education Centre. Estonians have a pretty strong affinity with nature and seem to be fascinated by Australian landscapes and animals. Lots
Fairytale Mushroom
Looks pretty, but it can kill you. of people came to my talk at the environment centre and it actually had the second-largest attendance ever for one of the public lectures there 😊 . I've begun to learn the language (well sort of...trust me it’s....ahem....a bit of a
challenge )and for those interested it’s part of the finno-ugric family of languages which also includes Finnish and Hungarian). I’ve also joined the 21st century and have used Skype (a free internet telephone system), Messenger and wireless internet for the first time. Wireless internet access is very common here and is provided for free in lots of cafe’s, public places like libraries and the other day we even found it driving deep in the forest !! 😊
But the best thing I’ve done since I’ve been here is to spend lots of time with a fantastic girl named Kati 😊. We met when I was in Vilnius (the capital of Lithuania, a couple of countries south of Estonia), I came to Estonia to visit her and basically I haven’t left yet. We’re sharing a place in
Tartu (ie. the cosy wooden place), which is Estonias second largest city of 100,000 people and is Estonias intellectual capital (Tallinn is
Fairytale Mushrooms
Looks pretty, but they can kill you. the capital and the largest city). She is studying to be a choreographer and teaches various types of dance (including folk dance) but doesn't teach ballroom or latin (sorry Dad).
Although I wasn’t lucky enough to have a white Christmas (it was a snowy New Years Eve though - yay!!!) I was lucky enough to have been to three Christmas parties and have a traditional Christmas dinner with Kati’s family on Christmas eve. It was a good solid meal of verivorst (blood sausage), pork, fish, bread, salads, hapukapsas (sauerkraut) and of course its traditional partner vodka, baked potatoes (mmmmm), brandy and cake. Trying to stay a vegetarian, I filled up on the fantastic potatoes, hapukapsas (starting to get used to it), potato salad and cake. Its also traditional to get a visit from Santa (maybe thats a benefit of living so close to santa's house), but of course being in Estonia you don’t just put your hand out to get your gift, you have to entertain everyone with a story, a song or whatever else you can think of. For present number one I dazzled everyone with a stirring rendition of the chorus of Waltzing Matilda (hmmm thinking about
Conifer Forest at Abja-Paluoja
The forest behind a friends house in the south of Estonia. Beavers, foxes, deer, elk and probably many other birds and animals live there. the lyrics of that song, maybe they were baffled expressions rather than dazzled expressions), for present number two I charmed Santa by singing Jingle Bells and doing 'the shovel’ (see the photos). By present number three I was out of ideas and just did the shovel in slow motion while singing White Christmas😉
A week later New Years Eve rolled around and I found myself sitting down to two more traditional meals as it's common to have a meal with family and friends before celebrating the New Year. Kati, her friends and I then went into the centre of Tartu to watch the fireworks by the river and although it was pretty crowded night for the centre of Tartu, it was nice and cosy compared to the hundreds of thousands of people packed around Sydney Harbour every year for the New Years fireworks extravaganza.
Anyhow, I hope you all had a great Christmas/New Years Eve and you'll probably hear from me again in Northwest England. Kati and I will be leaving Estonia at the end of January to live in Chester for about six months. Kati will be studying at Chester University and hopefully I'll be earning lots
Beaver Dam
Beavers are industrious little animals and like to 'renovate' perfectly good streams. They are actually a bit of a problem here and are having a big impact on rivers in this part of the world. If only they were interested in finding a sustainable and large scale alternative to oil or building cultural bridges between the muslim world and the west... of English Pounds 😊
Head uut aastat!!!! (Happy New Year)
Geoff
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anonymous
non-member comment
not if you dry it out. welcome to shaman town.