Mystery Sign

We're not sure about what this sign (on a side street in Tartu) is prohibiting. Does it mean no playing soccer, no driving, or no putting your house on skis?

arb

Leeks and Soup

The range of fresh vegetables available in Estonian supermarkets in the winter is not great, but one of our standbys has been leeks. We had remarked on the impressive size of the average Estonian leek, and then a couple of weeks ago I read the following on an Estonian food website:
"I realised last week that 'thick leeks' in Scotland must be much smaller than 'thick leeks' in Estonia. ... The recipe prescribed 6 'long, thick leeks', which I dutifully bought. However, after halving and rinsing and slicing just three of these monster leeks, I realised I already had more than enough."

Chloe and I strolled up the left bank of Tartu’s main river, the Emajoe, on Tuesday and into the part of Tartu known as “Suppelinn” – literally, “Soup Town.” Historically, this was a slum neighborhood of Tartu, with poorly constructed wooden houses built on low-lying land next to the river that was prone to flooding every Spring. Apparently the name comes from the fact that all the streets in the area are named after vegetables – there’s Potato Street, Cabbage Street, Carrot Street, etc. The reason for this is that the area used to contain allotments (small vegetable gardens). In the picture below, “Hernes” means “Pea.” I’m not sure what “Marja” means.


The area still has a run-down feel to it – though it hardly qualifies as a “slum”. The houses are still predominently made of wood, and most of the roads are unpaved. But it has a picturesque, old-fashioned sort of feel to it, and it made for an interesting walk.



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Adventures in Estonian: Part 3

I've mentioned in an earlier posting that Estonian lacks 6 letters of the English alphabet (c, q, w, x, y, z), but adds several more accented vowels, which are considered to be separate letters, such as ä, and ü. (Incidentally, our Estonian dictionary has only two entries for 'W': Wales, and WC.)


We were intrigued when the bus passed a supermarket on the outskirts of Tallinn called Ülemiste, whose symbol is just a single Ü. We took the above picture of the sign.

Another previous post on a linguistic theme mentioned that the Estonian word, "jäääär", meaning "edge of ice", holds the world record for most consecutive repetitions of the same vowel in a single word. We were excited, therefore, when posters advertizing a performance of a band called Jäääär started appearing in Tartu last week. Unfortunately I was away in Sweden on the day of the concert, so we still don't know what they look like or sound like. In fact the rest of the poster (see below) proved to be a challenge to decipher.


The key phrase is "Naistepäeva järelkontsert." From my scanty knowledge of Estonian, I already knew that "päeva" means "day", and that "kontsert" means "concert." But what day were they talking about? I knew it wasn't one of the days of the week, so I tried looking up "naiste" in our handy pocket Estonian-English dictionary. They didn't have that exact word, but the closest match was "naistepesu", which apparently means "lingerie." A lingerie-day concert? The mind boggles. It was not until several days later that the mystery was solved. The prefix "nais-" turns out to mean "woman". Estonia celebrates 'Women's Day' on March 9th, apparently a relic of the Soviet era, and this was what the concert was in honor of. Meanwhile, "naistepesu" in literal translation means "women's laundry", i.e. lingerie. (I might have been able to guess this if I had thought about it, because one of the first Estonian words we learned was "pesupulber", which means "laundry detergent".)

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Tallinn Trip (Part 2)

So now a Chloe's eye view of our trip to Tallinn. One highlight was seeing a performance at the Estonian National Puppet Theatre. The show we saw was aimed at the 2- to 4-year-old demographic, which was perfect for Chloe (and also meant that any Estonian involved was not crucial to following the plot). Various interesting animals were featured, as well as unusual supporting cast members like an animated rain cloud. After the show the puppeters came out into the audience with a sampling of puppets. Chloe had mixed feelings about this (as you can see from her expression in the picture below).


Chloe has an ambivalent relationship with fake animals -- on the one hand really excited in seeing them and watching their various antics, on the other hand quite scared when she meets one up close. For example, here is a flashback from last summer near Swarthmore when she met Cookie Monster in person ... .


Food (of course) was another highlight of Chloe's trip to Tallinn. She did very well on the ice cream front, and probably the most impressive thing she demolished was the chocolate sundae at Monday lunch. Here are two 'during' and 'after' pictures.



Perhaps Chloe's only disappointment was at the size of Tallinn. I told her when we got on the bus in Tartu that we were going to a big town called Tallinn and that it was the biggest city in Estonia. She asked what a city was and I reinforced the idea that it was like a town, just bigger. When we got off the bus in Tallinn and walked into the Old Town and to the apartment we were renting, Chloe said plaintively, "Where's Tallinn?" I told her that we this was Tallinn all around us, and she cried "I just want to go to the big city. Where's the big city?"

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Tallinn Trip (Part 1)

So, as mentioned in the previous post, we spent three days in Estonia's capital city, Tallinn, earlier this week. The city has one of the best preserved medieval centres in Europe and we rented an apartment right in the heart of 'Old Town', next to the main square (shown above at night, after a light snowfall on the first evening). We had the chance to explore the alleyways, churches, and fortifications, and got some nice views of the city roofscape from the hill on the west side of Old Town.


We ate well too, and Chloe joined us in our various culinary adventures. On our first night we sampled what was billed as the best Russian restaurant in town, and put away large quantities of hearty Russian specialties, including red caviar on pancakes (blini), pickles with honey and yoghurt, and meat dumplings under pie crust (which is what Shelley is eating in the picture below).

Chloe seemed to have a great time, walking the cobbled streets, pointing out dragon-shaped gargoyles on the side of the town hall, staying up late to eat interesting food, and waking up early and having books read to her by Granny.

More Tallinn stories coming soon!

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Bus Blog

We've been quiet on the blogging front for a few days because Granny has been visiting and then we all went to Tallinn on Sunday. In fact I am taking advantage of Estonian 21st-century technology to post this brief entry. We are on the bus on our way back to Tartu and I have my laptop plugged into an outlet on the ceiling. It turns out the bus has wireless internet access -- very convenient! Here is a 'live' picture taken over my laptop ... .

Hopefully we will be able to put up some pictures in the next day or so showing some of our Estonian travel adventures with Granny.

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Its a Wrap

So for the first time in a couple of weeks it is actually not bitterly cold. The temperature has risen to above freezing during the day, and the roads and sidewalks are turning to slush. But Chloe has got so used to having every exposed part of her body wrapped up against the extreme cold she still insists on leaving the house dressed as shown above. A further complication yesterday was that there was also light snow falling. Chloe complained about the snow falling in her eyes and asked for her woolly hat to be pulled down right over her eyes. This turned her into a kind of purple mummy.

arb