Back in the USSR

The surface features of daily life in provincial Tartu make it easy to forget how recently it was -- in historical terms -- that Estonia broke away from the Soviet Union. Unlike in Tallinn, it is rare to hear Russian spoken on the street in Tartu, and the city as a whole feels very Estonian. Yet during the Soviet era, Tartu was a 'closed city', with foreigners completely banned from visiting it for over 40 years. The excuse for this was the presence, just a few miles away, of one of the largest airforce bases in the whole Soviet Union. But I suspect it was more than just this coincidence that led to the soviet authorities closing off access to Estonia's intellectual capital.

But if you look more closely, there are clues to be found of the recent soviet legacy. The shelves of books in my office in Russian, including the works of Karl Marx. The presence, still, of a few Russian-speaking senior academics scattered across various departments in the University. The derelict hulks of Soviet collective farms scattered around the Estonian countryside.


And then there are the stories told by colleagues, especially Margit and Endla, both of whom are in their 40's and thus had their academic careers straddle the shift from the Soviet era to Estonian independence. Endla talks about eating her first banana at the age of 30 after getting a scholarship to study in Scandinavia. There are also various features peculiar to the Soviet academic system, some have died out since and others have persisted. During Soviet rule it was, for example, impossible to get a phD in English at the University of Tartu. English was considered a poltically sensitive subject, so the only PhD's granted were from institutions in Russia on which a closer eye could be kept ... . Another peculiar feature of the time was the practice of so-called 'forward Marxism.' Academics working in politically innocuous fields, such as philosophy of science, were pretty much left to publish without outside interference. But to be on the safe side, these academics would typically insert a few remarks at the beginning and end of each paper saying how much their work owed to Marxist thought and upheld Marxist ideals.

One practice that has persisted is that of publishing conference proceedings before the actual conference has taken place. This struck me as rather odd, since it does not give those presenting a chance to modify their papers in response to audience comments before having them published. It was explained to me that this was a hold-over from the Soviet era when conference proceedings were pre-published so the authorities could vet the content prior to the conference taking place.

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Farewell Party

The day before I left Estonia, the Philosophy Department threw a farewell party for me in the Centre for Ethics. Left to right in the above picture are Margit Sutrop, Head of Department (and host of my visit to her family's summer house a couple of weeks earlier), Daniel Cohnitz, Extraordinary Professor of Theoretical Philosophy (on a several year appointment, from Germany, and with an impressive-sounding job title), Endla Lohkivi, Docent in Philosophy of Science (and the main person responsible for arranging my Fulbright), and me.


I had been discussing Estonian foods with various members of the department the previous week, and unbeknownst to me the secretaries and administrative assistants in the different subdivisions of the Philosophy Department (some of whom are pictured above) had each prepared a different Estonian speciality for the farewell party. Moreover they were all specialities which they knew I had not yet tried!


In the above picture, proceeding clockwise from the bottom left corner: Baltic herring open sandwiches; rhubarb cake; ham stuffed with garlic, cheese, and mayonnaise; oatmeal cookies with cherries. The packets in the bowl in the top right of the picture contain bars of hardened cottage cheese covered with chocolate. These come in different flavors including plain, vanilla, coconut, and kiwi. To the right of this bowl is a red jug containing a bag of a sour milk / yoghurt hybrid. In front of that is a large package of 'Kama.'


Kama is a flour made from a mixture of various grains and peas. It is mixed with one or other of the sour milk products available in all Estonian supermarkets and then drunk as a refreshing summer drink. Either salt or sugar can be added to it, depending on one's preference. I tried it sweetened and found it quite delicious.

Finally, the picture below shows Bruno (a postdoc), Jaan (a PhD student), and Daniel again. In an unlikely coincidence, it turns out that Bruno had actually attended a series of 4 lectures that I gave in Cambridge in 2000 when I was there as a Junior Research Fellow and Bruno was doing an MPhil in Philosophy.


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Sending Flowers in Estonia

Estonians are big flower givers. Guests are expected to bring flowers if invited to dinner, flowers are widely given on people's birthdays, and there are semi-permanent flower stalls set up on many streets in Tartu. Unfortunately, at least for foreigners, is that there is a huge number of 'rules' about what you can and can't do when giving flowers. Here are the ones that I managed to uncover:

(i) Always give an odd number of flowers, unless it is a funeral.

(ii) Rule (i) can be ignored if you are giving more than 10 flowers (presumably on the grounds that people don't bother checking when there are that many).

(iii) There is a superstition in Estonia which says that yellow flowers are a sign of a coming loss of a loved one.

(iv) Only give red roses in romantic contexts.

(v) The flowers traditionally associated with Soviet monuments have been red carnations.

(vi) White flowers are generally avoided, with the exception of white roses.

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Trip to Lake Peipsi (Part 3)

Here is the third and final batch of photos from my day trip earlier in the month. The picture above shows the shore of Lake Peipsi as storm clouds began to roll in during the afternoon. The statue is some sort of war memorial and in the background to the right is a small fishing boat heading ashore.

Later in the afternoon, and further inland, I detoured to take in one of the many bogs that are a characteristic feature of the Estonian countryside. Selected bogs are equipped with board walks that enable hikers to get across them.


Another stop was at the renovated 19th-century schoolhouse attended by one of Estonia's best-known writers, Oskar Luts. I was impressed that the main classroom contained not only an abacus but also a chamber organ!


Finally, here is a rustic, Eastern Estonian bus stop ... .


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Trip to Lake Peipsi (Part 2)

I left Estonia last Friday (May 19) and am now back in Swarthmore. Packing up and getting organized to leave meant I didn't have much time to post over the last week. But I have quite a few more posts I want to write, so I plan to continue with the Estonia theme for at least a couple more weeks.

This post contains the second batch of pictures from my day trip to the shores of Lake Peipsi that I took last weekend. The other main attraction of the region, aside from the Russian Old Believer villages that I mentioned in the first post about the trip, is the 19th century 'manor house' at Alatskivi. The Estonians use the term 'manor house' for what is often more like a French chateau, and this is the case with Alatskivi. Reputedly modeled on the Queen's residence at Balmoral, Alatskivi was completed around the turn of the 19th century, but then became increasingly dilapidated during the post-war soviet era, during which time it was used as a military training center, a collective farm, and a technical college. The interior is currently being renovated -- a few rooms have been finished but most of the inside still needs a lot of work.


Surrounding the chateau are extensive grounds, including a landscaped garden and a large lake.



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Student Lock-Up

With only a few days to go before I leave Estonia I am rushing to get through the list of things to see and do. Today I visited the University Art Museum, situated in the Main Building just around the corner from my office, and consisting mostly of 19th century plaster copies of ancient Greek sculptures. More interesting was my trip up to the attic of the Main Building to see the preserved student lock-up which was used up until the end of the 19th century to incarcerate students for short periods of time if they infringed any of the University regulations.

It was fascinating to compare the punishments for different sorts of misdemeanors. For example,

disturbance of the night's rest......2 days
failure to return library books.......2 days
insulting a lady.........................4 days
insulting a cloakroom attendant.....5 days
cursing..................................5 days to 3 weeks
deceiving a shopkeeper.............3 weeks
duelling.................................3 weeks

To pass the time, students in the lock-up covered the walls and ceilings with pictures and graffiti. Some of this has been left on the walls of the restored lock-up. (There were originally five lock-ups in the attic of the Main Building, but three were destroyed in a fire in 1965 caused by an electrical fault and the other remaining one has not been restored.)


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Trip to Lake Peipsi (Part 1)

Yesterday I made an impromptu day trip to some bits of the Estonian countryside around Tartu that I hadn't yet seen. About 20 miles to the east of Tartu lies Lake Peipsi (see photo above), a large body of water (over 100 miles long and 20 to 30 miles across) that forms most of Estonia's eastern border with Russia. Along the shoreline on the Estonian side are a string of fishing villages inhabited by Russian speaking communities known as 'Old Believers'. These split off from the main Russian Orthodox Church in the late 18th century and have preserved many of their traditions because of their isolated position. In some ways they are Estonia's equivalent of the Amish, one difference being that the Old Believers have no problem with adopting modern technology.

Another difference is that the Old Believers see very few tourists, again largely because of their isolated location. I spent the morning wandering around several of the villages, watching boats coming in off the Lake, wood being chopped and piled for next winter, and farmers out in the fields ploughing and sowing crops. The Old Believer communities make their living catching fish from the Lake and growing onions. In the foreground of the picture below are onion fields waiting for the spring sowing.


Having eaten a couple of weeks ago at the only Brazilian restaurant in Finland, on the Lake Peipsi trip I managed to do one better and have lunch at the only Old Believer restaurant in the whole world. Given what I knew about their lifestyle, it seemed clear that I should focus in my menu choices on fish dishes and onion dishes. I started with 'Lake Peipsi sprat soup':



Then I tried 'Fried pike-perch in tomato and onion sauce', which also came with a side dish of spring onions in sour cream:


I washed this down with tea, served from a large samovar that was placed in the middle of the table. The teapot containing the (strong) tea sat on top. You pour the tea into a cup and then add water from the samovar tap to dilute it. It is served with hunks of raw sugar-candy, and apparently the correct thing to do is to munch on a piece of candy and then sip your tea to dissolve the candy in your mouth!


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Country Retreat

Last weekend I came back from my Finland trip and then went straight off to a Philosophy Department 'Spring School' for their graduate students held in a rural guest house about 20 miles outside Tartu. At the end of this 2-day event I got a ride back to Tartu from Margit Sutrop, who is head of the philosophy department and director of the (semi-independent) 'Centre for Ethics.'

En route back to Tartu we stopped off at the country retreat belonging to her parents. They are (or were) both academics at the University of Tartu -- her father is now retired -- and they had bought the collection of rundown farm buildings in 1974. Over the years they have gradually renovated various bits and then about 5 years ago built a brand new house alongside (see the picture above).

It definitely had the feel of an Estonian 'La Cabane' (the main difference being that it is only 20 miles from Tartu, so they would come down most weekends, or even just for a single night). Down the hill from the farm is a series of interconnected water channels, partly manmade and partly created by beavers. Margit, together with her husband and daughter, took me out for a spin in their rowing boat.


Then we had tea on the porch of the new house, looking out over the older farm buildings.




They still use the older buildings when there are more guests than can be accommodated in the main house, and the old interiors feel like they are from another era.


Margit is one of three candidates currently running for election to be the next head (or 'rector') of the University of Tartu, the most influential academic post in the country. During our visit, her parents were offering her various pieces of campaigning advice. The election is being held shortly after I leave Estonia, though as a temporary visitor to the University I would not have been entitled to vote in any case.

arb

Ethnic Food

I used to have a rule of thumb not to eat 'ethnic' food in foreign countries unless the food came from somewhere with a historical connection to the host country. (For this purpose I don't count either Britain or the U.S. as a foreign country.) The rule allows -- for example -- having Brazilian food in Portugal, but not Japanese food in France.

It was never that strict a rule, but I have certainly broken it several times during my recent travels around the Baltic and Scandinavia. I had (incredibly expensive, but quite good) Indian food in Norway, allegedly the best Chinese food in Estonia (see the posting for April 26 on Tsink Plekk Pang), and on my most recent trip I sampled Brazilian food at the only Brazilian restaurant in Finland. I also ate at a Russian restaurant in Latvia, but that would fill within my rule given the long historical association between these two countries.

Here in Tartu we have been warned by various people to steer clear of the only Indian restaurant in town. We have also declined to try the seedy bar/restaurant just off the town square which advertizes Estonian-Mexican, or 'Est-Mex', food on the blackboard outside. Meanwhile our favorite Georgian restaurant has had 'peakook' written on its blackboard for several weeks now. We were relieved when an Estonian friend explained that this did not mean that they were featuring peacock on the menu. It turns out that 'peakook' means 'head chef' in Estonian ... .

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Helsinki Train Station

I'm just back from a 3-day trip to Finland to give a philosophy lecture. My destination was Turku, which had been the capital of Finland when the country was under Swedish rule, before the Russians moved it to Helsinki in the early 19th century. To get there, I took a train from Tartu to Tallinn, then a ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki, then another train from Helsinki to Turku. It was my first time in Helsinki's train station and its architecture (see picture above) reminded my alot of St. Paul's Church in Tartu (see picture below). It turns out that they were both designed by the famous Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, and built within three years of each other (1914 and 1917 respectively).


Meanwhile, Tartu's train station is so run down it looks derelict



Talking of Helsinki's train station also gives me the excuse to link to this video of the 'Helsinki Complaints Choir' which I found hilarious. Some of the footage (including the beginning) is from inside the Helsinki train station. And I was struck by the number of complaints that involve saunas ... .

Finally, continuing the Finnish theme, the Finnish language is closely related to Estonian and no less complicated. Consider, for example, "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkään." This one Finnish word means something like "even with his (or her) quality of being untouched by disorganization"

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Cricket in Estonia

Cricket is certainly not the first sport that comes to mind when one thinks of Estonia. (Actually not many sports come to most people's minds when they think of Estonia -- it turns out the most popular sports are basketball and cross-country skiiing.) Estonia has yet to be a major force on the international cricket scene, although it did recently join the list of 'official' cricket-playing countries, and as of last year was ranked in 123rd place (out of, yes, 123 countries).

Surprisingly, however, Estonia has made its mark on the cricketing world, namely as the originator and world leader in the fledgling sport of 'Ice Cricket.'


Ice cricket is a winter sport, thus better suited to Estonia's semi-arctic climate, and is played on various ice-covered lakes in the vicinity of the capital, Tallinn. Its been going for about three years now and several teams from abroad (mostly from England) visit each winter to challenge the local teams. Matches are limited to 6 overs per side because of the challenging conditions, and a specially modified ball is used.


Estonian ice cricket has caught the attention of the media and there have been various stories about it in the British and Australian press. Below is a link to a short video story about ice cricket from the Reuters news site.

Ice cricket video

Its an interesting coincidence that one of the first teams to come to Estonia to play ice cricket was from Wolfson College, Cambridge, where Shelley and I were from 1998 to 2000, and whose cricket team we used to play!

arb

Estonian jokes

During my recent visit to Riga I was told independently by a couple of people I met that Latvians have a whole genre of jokes about Estonians. The theme of these jokes is that Estonians do everything very slowly. When I got back to Tartu I asked a colleague whether Estonians tell any jokes about Latvians and she said that they don't. (It transpires, however, that there is a phrase in Estonian, 'to be as stupid as a Latvian.') I hadn't noticed any particular slowness to Estonians until this weekend when Don, Nina and I went out for two successive meals where the service was incredibly, mind-boggling slow. Luckily we were not ourselves in any hurry so it didn't matter. But I began to think that there might be something to Latvia's 'Estonian jokes' after all ... .

One theory for why Latvians have Estonian jokes but Estonians don't have Latvian jokes, a theory suggested to me by a Latvian, is that Latvians are envious of Estonia's economic success in the transition from Soviet rule to independence. Another theory is that jokes go from South to North. It turns out that Estonians have a genre of Finnish jokes, featuring Finns who are rich, stupid, and drink too much. Finland is both economically more prosperous than Estonia and to the North of Estonia, so this doesn't really tell in favor of one theory or the other. But I have found some serious scholarly research on the issue, including "Targets of Estonian Ethnic Jokes Within the Theory of Ethnic Humour," by Liisi Laineste, published in a recent issue of the journal Folklore. I haven't had time to read this yet, but once I do I will report on any relevant findings.

Another interesting feature of jokes in Latvia is that Latvians often tell jokes in Russian, even if they themselves don't speak Russian as a first language. There is also a class of jokes in Latvia where the narrative is in Latvian but any reported speech is in Russian. Apparently some of this humor just cannot be translated!

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Don and Nina in Tartu

I am having fun this weekend hosting Don and Nina who are visiting Estonia for 5 days. Their time in Tartu coincides with the annual 'Student Days' Spring festival, a weeklong prelude to the holiday on May 1st which involves various outdoor activities, concerts, drinking competitions, etc. The picture above shows Don and Nina sampling local cuisine in the beer tent that has been set up in Tartu's main square. Below is an example of one of the eccentric competitions happening during the Student Days, this one involving seeing who can sit on the tallest tower of plastic crates without falling off. The guy in the picture was the best one we saw, managing 22 boxes before everything came tumbling down.


And this is Don modeling the local handicrafts ... .


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Adventures in Estonian (Part Four) -- and Latvian!

I'm just back from an enjoyable 3-day trip to Riga, capital of Latvia, and largest city in the three Baltic countries. The excuse for the trip was to give a philosophy talk at the University of Latvia, but I also managed to fit in a lot of sightseeing too.

It was also interesting to compare the languages of Latvian and Estonian. They are completely unrelated to each other, but Latvian -- like Estonian -- is very distant from most other languages spoken in Europe. While wandering around Riga I saw lots of signs on windowfronts saying 'Pasta'. Also lots of pizza places, but no signs saying 'Pizza.' It turns out that the Latvian transliteration of 'pizza' is 'pica'. (This works because c is pronounced 'ts' in Latvian.) Meanwhile the pasta signs were actually post offices ('pasta' is post in Latvian)!

On the topic of transliteration, as I mentioned in a previous posting Estonian lacks various letters from its alphabet, including w, x, y, and z. Also the j is pronounced as a y. This means that one word which is particularly hard to give an Estonian version of is 'jazz'. Their solution is to write it 'dzhass.'

After my seminar last night we went out to a Chinese restaurant, reputedly the best in the whole of Estonia (not that there is a whole lot of competition). The name of the restaurant is 'Tsink Plekk Pang'. The joke is that this sounds Chinese but in fact all the words are Estonian. It means 'zinc plated bucket' in Estonian (and the light fittings inside are indeed made from zinc plated buckets with holes in the bottom of them).

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Visiting the Twins

I thought I'd post some of the pictures from a couple of weeks ago when Shelley and Chloe visited the twins in London on their way back to the U.S. I'll leave Shelley to add any commentary of her own. The above picture shows the twins modeling the hats that Shelley knitted (taking just one week for each!)

And below are Chloe and Shelley taking turns holding Lucy.



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Chloe's cooking gallery

With Chloe having left Estonia I can't take any more pictures of her for this blog. Luckily I have a large archive of 'Chloe in Estonia' pictures that I can raid from time to time. Today's theme: cooking.





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France vs. Estonia

I was amused to stumble across the following piece while browsing the Web the other day. It's from the blog, “Letters from a Broad”, written (so it seems!) by an American living in France:

WEDNESDAY, MAY 10, 2006
I should have moved to Estonia instead...

That's what I tell myself every time I see yet another book by an American or other anglophone about how hilarious it to live in France surrounded by those outrageously wacky French people!

By contrast, I doubt that there is even one single book about how humorous it is for an American to live in Estonia surrounded by those lovably quirky Estonians! Estonia even has a funny-sounding name. Say it a few times. Estonia. I could be writing that book! If only I hadn't followed every other pathetically unoriginal American on the planet to France, the country that comes up first when you google "travel -- been there, done that."

Still, even though it would be more original, I'm not sure that "Letters from a Broad" would be funnier if these missives were coming from Estonia instead of France. I can just picture myself spending the whole morning giggling while crafting the perfect line that is a subtle riff on some typical stereotype about Estonians. And then I picture my American audience reading it and going “Wha...? I don't get it...”

Helsinki Trip (Part Three)

This is a final post of pictures from our trip to Helsinki over Easter weekend. Above is the main harbor, with the Lutheran cathedral in the background. Our hotel was beside the harbor, to the right of this picture. There is no subway system in Helsinki, but there is a convenient network of trams. Here are Shelley and Chloe, on their way to the 'Rock Church', with the harbor in the background:


Here is the cathedral again, shown just after sunset on Easter Sunday evening:


And this shows Chloe and I reading a book on the ferry back from Helsinki to Tallinn. This fast, small ferry (which does not run in the winter because it cannot get through the ice) takes only about an hour and a half to make the trip across this narrow bit of the Baltic Sea.


arb