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 ... .

arb

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"

arb

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!

arb

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 ... .


arb

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).

arb