EVS in Estonia

Hello,
Finally a little time to write.
Last week, my parents came ! yes, as faithful readers of this blog they wanted to see how things were for real here in Joelahtme. As parents, they wanted to see their son after 5 months away. The four days they spent were simply marvelous, very full, but we had a great time all together and it was as if we were back at home again for a short while.
Apart from being happy that they came, I am forever grateful for the delicious smelly cheese they brought from France at the market. They stink heavenly in our refrigerator and the thing which we missed the most about food in Estonia is now present at the end of each meal. Thank you !

In this video, you’ll see a little bit of the great times we had together. And the song is called “Ode to my family”…
To my parents : “Thanks again for coming !”

The day after the pilgrimage, took place as every sunday the mass at the Jõelähtme church. But it was a more festive ceremony than usual because 3 women of the church were celebrating their 50 years of confirmation. At this occasion the church was pretty well decorated with colourful flowers and rubans and people sang very nice prays a capella.

As usually, we haven’t so much understood the topic of the pastor’s speach, but we still have laughed a lot with Madeleine (the pastor’s daughter) trying to sing the only estonian words that we knew.

After the mass, a big party was organized for inaugurating the new swing some people of the community had been built behind the church. Everybody was here : children and adults, even a baby with his father who seemed to have a lot of fun, and some grandmothers who stayed almost 2 hours on the swing. Another good excuse to make a party, to meet each other and have nice time together.

Concerning the music in the video, it is from Genticorum, a group from Québec we discovered during the Viljandi festival. Emily one of our friend from the village offered us their cd, the song is called “cascou” (in french) and that exactly the feeling that we had when we went up to 90/110 degrees with the swing !

Last Saturday, only just come back from St Petersburg, we participated in a event going on in our reserve : a pilgrimage between the Jõelähtme church and the Saha chapel, about 10 kilometers.

It was really funny to see all these people crossing the highway with a big cross, the police even had to stop the traffic for a while.

The good mood was here as usual and it was nice to take the time to chat with our friends from the village whom we hadn’t seen for a while. The walk was ponctuated with dances, songs and comments about the sacred places we were passing by.

Once arrived in the chapel, Margus the pastor gave a nice ceremony during which Jonathan played his irish tin whistle. The place were intimate and everybody seemed happy to be together.

We finally came back by bus to the Jõelähtme church and shared a very nice soup, and some blueberry juice with some delicious cakes.

It would have been a crime not to visit St Petersburg at least one time during volunteering. Beeing so close, but at the same time quite far with the russian border being a little long to go through.

Amelie’s parents visiting us was a good excuse and we could all discover something new for everyone. Of course, once in St Petersburg, we did visit The Hermitage museum, with some paintings of van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, and other famous painters which I hadn’t seen these painting from them before.

we walked around town quite a bit, the best way to let the atmosphere of the city sink in. it was a mixture of beauty and pollution, noise and a general sense of hugeness. You feel so small when facing these immense buildings built in soviet times !

There were many tourists (and therefore pickpockets), especially in the golden triangle where many monument are located, we therefore tried to escape it a little and visited a market where we used some of our basic russian to buy food for a picknic (but ate at an exquisite georgian restaurant). We tested some of the local cuisine, with strange discoveries sometimes, but it was a good laugh.

We said goodbye to Amelie’s parents on the Nevski Prospekt, and headed back to Joelahtme, where new adventures were already awaiting us.

You might have noticed that articles have been a little late recently, that’s partly because summer is a busy time here, but also because we’ve been having family over. Amelie’s parents were there for ten days, with Amelie’s sister and her boyfriend. We spent some good times together in an appartment they had rented in the old town. a perfect location to walk around, as well as go discover places like Tartu which we did on a day trip, guided by Alar, an estonian friend. They brought with them some good products from france and we were able to feel ourselves back at home, with family and food and wonderful weather. What could we ask more ?
Margit took us around Lahemaa in her car (yes, we managed to fit 7 of us in her car !) and Margus showed everyone around the church. It felt nice to know they could share with us places, people, which we had been telling them about.
We finished the trip together, by going to St Petersburg with Amelie’s parents. but you’ll be able to read about that better in an other article.

A few weeks ago,the estonian national TV chanel (ETV) came to interview us for a show called OZONE, apparently known by people around here as an environmental show. They came with the idea of showing the reserve and present its missions, but also show the work done by volunteers (us) and how this EVS programme was a good opportunity for organisation to work on such environmental and heritage protection projects. When you see how few projects there are in estonia on environment and heritage protection, compared with the richeness of the land in natural beauties and the importance of saving estonian heritage, We hope this show will help convince some organisations to think about EVS as a solution and add new projects in that field in the european database.

Although we were a little deceived by the fact that they were not interested in us telling them a few words in estonian (which we were really eager to do) we had a great time showing the team in their TV truck all the assets of our reserve, re-act some of our work, such as stone-wall-building, restoring bronze age tombs… It wasn’t always easy, especially under the hot sun which was shining that day, but we ended the day pretty contented of the good promotion we had done about the EVS and the reserve.

We hope to be able to put at least some extracts of the show on the blog (for those who unfortuneately do not receive estonian TV) but that’ll be sometime in mid-september we think.

Estonia is a beautiful country and still has, unlike other places, quite many pristine landscapes. If 40% of its territory is covered by forests, up to 30% of the land is covered with bogs. These marshlands are a fantastic reservoir of freshwater, but also have an incredible biodiversity. Plants, birds, insects, though they might seem barren at first sight, they are full of life. Sooma is one of the biggest and impressive humid zones in estonia. Located not too far from Viljandi where our training was. To protect this fragile environment (any alteratrion can take up to seven years before disapearing), a natural parc was created. We set to discover part of it by canoeing 4 hours on the rivers which go through Soomaa. it was very peaceful, a bit tirering after a while, especially carying bags we could have not carried with us. I’ll remember the apple fights between canoes, Margus fixing tea with his stove, the good laughs when we would run into the banks (except one where Amélie fell backwards). After that we hiked a bit into the bog, on a boardwalk which led to an observation tower and small ponds, with very deep and dark waters (had a swim there as you can see). In the peat around, one can put a 5 m or more pole in without hitting the bottom. A very dark storm was approaching, with menacent roars of thunder, but though it passed very near to us, it did not hit us. This is how we got this wonderfull light on Soomaa (see movie and picture).
That night, we fixed ourselves some panckakes on a campfire, with the homemade jam we had brought, then slept in a barn on stacks of hay. We loved it (the mosquitos too.)

Just after the Viljandi Folk Music Festival, we met with six other people , two trainers (Piret which we had had before and Margus, a sportive but nice trainer) and four other volunteers (Thomas from France, Simon from Germany, Lee from Portugal and Louice from Sweeden), with whom we spent 5 days for our mid-term training, halfway through our volunteering.

Our training took place in Kopra Talu, a great setting in a wooden ancient farmhouse, surrounded by forests and near a small pond. The activities were quite nice, a little too much philosophical discussions but it was still important to think about our experience here in Estonia.

The volunteers and trainers team was very friendly and we had a great time all together.

We really enjoyed the good food from the place, made a nice barbecue with original but delicious sausages (half wild pig meat, half goat meat). We went to the sauna, as usual, but this time with a refreshing swim in the pound just after.

So, we were not bored at all, we even made an excursion in an estonian national park called Soomaa all together, but an other article will talk more about that later.

On the 27th-28th of July, we went to the Viljandi music festival in the southern part of Estonia. This event is very popular, and each year, young and old meet to listen to traditional groups from all over the world. From estonian folk, to portuguese, quebec, norway, chili or other countries, artists shared their music with the public, with instruments or styles they might never have heared before. We absolutely LOVED the concept of this festival, in addition to its wonderful setting, on the top of a hill, overlooking a lake, the different stages spread around town, the main one being in the middle of a ruined castle. Though it rained quite a bit, everybody didn’t seem to mind and kept dancing and cheering even under buckets of water.

Though there were many people, we ran into many that we knew, volunteers from all over, people from Joelahtme, Estonia is a small country and that’s one thing we like, you can always meet someone you know. We stayed at some of Merle’s friends who were nice enough to let us camp in their garden. They were very welcoming and we had great estonian brunchs on the grass, with fruits and homemade juices and good company.
A very pleasant weekend, just before our mid-term training.