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.


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Saun(a) Time!

The sauna (or 'saun' in Estonian) is an important part of Estonian culture, but -- for obvious reasons -- visitors to Estonia often remain unaware of this fact. Most apartments here, including ours, have a built-in sauna, as do all hotels and apartment blocks, and even some restaurants! The Estonian saun is part of the Finnish sauna tradition. The basic elements appear in the picture above: heated coals (usually heated by electricity these days), benches to sit on, and a bucket of water and a ladle. Water is periodically scooped from the bucket and poured onto the hot coals. This produces an invisible cloud of steam which makes things a lot hotter for half a minute or so.

I've used our apartment sauna a couple of times, following instructions that I read on the Internet. The Finns and Estonians like their saunas hot (even by sauna standards), typically in the range of 70 to 100 degrees Celsius (i.e. between 160 and 212 Fahrenheit). According to the thermometer on the wall of our sauna, the second sauna I took reached around 170 Fahrenheit -- plenty hot for me.

Anyway, yesterday I gave a lecture to some professors and students in the Department of Mathematics in Tartu. It was my first time in their building so I was given a tour. Up on the 6th floor is a faculty lounge and adjoining the lounge is a sauna! Noting my interest, the professor who hosted my talk yesterday invited me to their weekly Mathematics Department sauna party. So it was that I headed across campus this afternoon carrying my towel and not knowing quite what to expect. I was excited because I knew from talking to people that being invited to take a sauna in Estonia is a big deal.

It turned out to be a very interesting cultural experience. People (it was an all male group) arrived at different times, undressed in an adjoining changing room and then headed into the sauna itself, which could fit up to four people at a time on its upper bench. Distinguished professors to whom I had been lecturing the day before were sitting around naked in the steamy haze. I'll leave you to imagine the scene. Suffice to say that it didn't look like this:


From time to time someone would throw more water on the coals. After a few minutes of sweating you would go out for a quick cold shower, wrap a towel around you and head out into the faculty lounge where beer and snacks were consumed. After drinking a while, and cooling down, you would head back in for another blast of sauna heat. I managed three rounds of the sauna-shower-beer rotation before calling it a night. It was a memorable occasion and I plan to go again at least once before I leave Estonia next month.

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Scarlett Linda

Estonians have some strange names for their kitchen appliances. Our kettle, for example, is called 'Scarlett Linda.' Our stove is called 'Classic Candy.'

Staying with the culinary theme, I have been saving up some examples of 'restaurant English' that we have seen on menus in Estonia. As you will see, there are some funny ones. But it has to be said that the overall standard of written English that you see on signs, in official documents, etc. is very high. Anyway, here are the menu highlights:

Grilled wild animals with basil potatoes

Lamb's casserole with potato peeling

Pork cutlet overcooked with cheese

Fungal Stew

Minced dollop in sauce



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Spring Days

It's felt different here in Tartu over the past few days. Mainly, of course, because Shelley and Chloe are back in the U.S. now and I am on my own for the remaining 5 weeks in Estonia. But the season is also definitely changing over into Spring. Here are four recent signs of Spring:

(i) On Friday they finally turned on the 'Kissing Students' fountain in Tartu's main square.



(ii) On Saturday I saw my first Estonian butterfly -- and managed to take a picture of it! It's a brimstone (typically the first species to emerge in many parts of Europe).



(iii) The outdoor tables that were set up in the main square by several cafes now have significant numbers of Estonians sitting at them. (I have seen other people using them before this, but they turned out to be English!)



(iv) While on the bus back from Tallinn last week I saw a stork's nest on top of a telephone pole, with a stork sitting in it.



Oh, and a final important part of the Spring-like feel has been the weather -- sunny and mild (in the mid-60's) for several days now.

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Helsinki Trip (Part Two)

Another place we visited in Helsinki was Temppeliaukio Church, also known as the 'Rock Church' because it is mostly underground and carved out of the natural rock. It is dramatic, both inside and out, with a striking copper roof surrounded by skylights to let in the natural light to the main part of the church.


The picture below shows Chloe in contemplative mood inside the church, modeling the new sweater that Shelley finished knitting her just before we left on our trip to Finland.



An annual event in Helsinki on the Saturday evening preceding Easter is 'Via Crucis', a play re-enacting the story of the crucifixion of Jesus. After Chloe went to bed I strolled down the dockside from our hotel to the steps of the Lutheran Cathedral, where the play begins. There were already several thousand people gathered in the main square in front of the Cathedral. After the first couple of scenes, the actors moved off through the streets of Helsinki with the audience trailing behind, until they reached a nearby square where the next scenes were played out. Then the procession continued, eventually ending up back in the main square where everything had started. It was all very atmospheric -- various buildings were lit up in striking colors, and some of the 'guards' carried flaming torches as they marched between the different venues. The picture below shows Jesus being led back up the cathedral steps with the cathedral lit up in the background and some torch-bearers in the foreground.


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Helsinki Trip (Part One)

We spent Easter weekend in Finland's capital city, Helsinki, conveniently located less than two hours by ferry from Tallinn. One of the obligatory sights in Helsinki is the monument to the nation's most famous classical composer, Jean Sibelius, located in Sibelius Park, at one end of Sibelius Avenue (Sibelius is very famous in Finland).


The main part of the monument consists of a densely packed array of vertical silvery cylinders, looking like suspended organ pipes.




We arrived at Sibelius Park about 3 seconds ahead of a coach-load of tourists from Taiwan. As usual, we tried to get Chloe to pose for a couple of photos, and, as usual, she refused to smile or to stay still long enough for us to get our pictures set up. But in the meantime various Taiwanese photographers had arrived at the monument and began snapping pictures of Chloe in front of the organ pipes, and posing with her for other people to take photos. Chloe gradually got into the spirit of the occasion and began hamming it up for the assembled paparazzi. She beamed at them, ran back to the base of the monument and sat on a rock for more photos, marched up and down, and generally preened and pranced around like a 2-year-old runway model. Somewhere on some Taiwanese travel blogs there will soon be lots of pictures of Chloe!


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Picture Quiz

Below are two things that I have seen in the past couple of weeks. What are they? (Hint: Despite appearances, they are two very different things.)




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Chloe's Guide to Tartu Baby Sculptures

Tartu boasts an unusually large number of outdoor sculptures and statues, dotted around its open spaces. Chloe is particularly keen on the two sculptures that depict babies. The first, next to her favorite playground, shows the artist and his infant son, reduced and enlarged respectively, so that they come out the same height. Chloe refers to it as the 'Big Baby Little Daddy Sculpture'.



The second baby sculpture sits atop a monument that was erected by the pedestrian bridge across the river in the 1970's to mark Tartu's population surpassing 100,000 for the first time. Ironically it soon dipped below this mark due to migration and a low birth rate, but apparently it is now back over 100,00o again.



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South Estonia day trip

On Saturday we rented a car for the day and headed out into the countryside of south-eastern Estonia. The brilliant sunny weather continued and we had the chance to see a variety of aspects of rural life. Our first stop was at Rouge, about an hour's drive south of Tartu, and reputed to be one of the most picturesque villages in Estonia. It is situated in the only (relatively) hilly part of the country: the highest mountain in the Baltics -- over 300 meters! -- is only a few miles away, and in the background of the picture below is the deepest lake in Estonia.



Perched on the hill overlooking the village was a picturesque church, parts of which date back to the 18th century.


After lunch in the nearby town of Voru, we spent the afternoon meandering back towards Tartu, taking in various churches and manor houses on the way. Manor houses are something of an Estonian speciality. They mainly date from the 18th and 19th centuries, during which time they housed members of the ruling German aristocracy. Several hundred have survived intact and a few are open to the general public. But not in March, which -- current weather notwithstanding -- is still definitely 'out of season' as far as tourism is concerned. Our favorite manor house was at Rapina. We did manage to get inside this one because it houses an art school.



Our final stop of the day was at the church in Vonnu, situated next to one of the rivers that empties into Lake Peipsei, a body of water several hundred miles long that forms the border between Estonia and Russia.




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