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.

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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!

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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!

arb