EVS in Estonia

We came back to France a few days ago from Estonia. The come back trip was ok, we even have a nice surprise in Copenhague’s airport where we stopped : Irja one of our Joelahtme friends was here, coming back from Japan. It was as if Estonia wanted to say goodbye to us for the last time…

Here we are now in family, me in the Alps and Jonathan in California. It is so strange to listen to all these people speaking french around us, we have the impression to hear the thoughts of all.

We already miss Estonia, but we also are happy to see France, our families, and friends again.

We would like to thank you all, our colleagues, our estonian friends that welcomed us so well during this year, our volunteers friends, our families and french friends who supported us and followed our adventures, our meetings through this blog… Thanks to all of you : GRAND MERCI, SUUR AITÄH, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!! We wish you all the best for the new year to come.

We will remember from this experience only good memories, so don’t hesitate, just do what we have done, do an EVS and go to Estonia!

As we are finishing to fix our luggage, to head back to France, Silja, our dear friend which has helped us discover so much about estonian culture, from dances to singing in a choir, wanted to thank us for the work we did for the Reserve and for helping the community and taking part in local events. She wrote an article, in which she mentions at some points of our work, the Cd-Rom, and also some of the good times we’ve had together.
We were very touched by this and though the Estonian television had talked about our project this autumn, to be in the local newspaper, read by most people in the surrounding villages, made us feel nice.

During a meal, organized for the end of the year, by the city council, the Mayor (which we met for the first time today), thanked us briefly, for what we did. This followed a concert which had been given in church, so you can see him on the left hand side of the picture (bellow) accompanied by singers.

It was time for us to say goodbye, at least for some time, to Margus, Silja, Merle and Meelis, not always easy when we have spent so many good times together this year, but we promised to come back to estonia as quick as we could.

As soon as we had arrived from our trip to Latvia and Lithuania, we went to see the Nutcracker, or “Pahklipureja” as they call it here, a ballet composed by Tchaikovski which is very popular around Christmas time.

We had been wanting to go to the Estonia Opera house for quite a while, but it was also the opportunity to accompany Lee, our portugese volunteer friend, which was spending her last evening in Tallinn, before going back home.

The audience was mostly composed of children, which were dressed up as if for a wedding, with suits ties, skirts and makeup at only ten years old or so, a generation (or cultural) shock for us. The show was fantastic, even though there was a problem at the very start, the rest went smoothly and the magic of the dancing made us forget the time.

We loved it as it helped us get into the Christmas spirit, but for me it had also a special meaning, for it reminded me of a childhood memory when my grandparents took me to see this same ballet when I was very young…

(click on the picture above for a short musical extract)

Incredible but true ! We were watching as we usually do on internet, our french national news, when, at the very end, they presented how christmas was being prepared in… Estonia ! We thought they would talk about Tallinn, but not at all, they chose to go to Kasmu, a village, not far from Jõelähtme, which also has a small museum. An old man, with a grey beard and dressed as the captain of a ship works there and they interviewed him and showed him welcoming a group of students. They sang Christmas songs and the man explained how Christmas has a special signification in Estonia and how even during the soviet times, when it was forbidden to celebrate it, many estonians did continue to celebrate in secret. A very pleasant report, which surprised us, for it could well have been filmed here in our museum. For those who understand a little french, you can try watching the video…

We couldn’t come back to France without having visited, even briefly our two Baltic neighbours. Although we had visited Helsinki in Finland and St Petersburg in Russia, we have mostly explored the estonian countryside and though it is a small country, have many things yet to discover. We therefore decided to spend a week, travelling to the main places in Latvia and Lithuania (video above), using buses and trains to get around.

In this winter, with no snow, there was not so many things to see as there could have been in summer, but the people and places we saw all seemed peaceful and we too were very relaxed during this trip. We didn’t see everything, not at all, but we did get impressions of Riga, Kaunas and Vilnius, some of the more important cities of Latvia and Lithuania. We also traveled to some less urban places, such as Sigulda, in what they call the “little switzerland” near Riga, and in Trakai, an interesting village with a brick castle, where a small turkish community, landed there by the strange twists of History, not far from Vilnius.

We mostly walked all the streets of the old towns, tried many restaurants mentioned in our guide and slept in hostels. We met some nice people along the way, some spanish, an australian couple and even a french girl who was on her way to China, through Russia.

This trip helped us cut from our volunteering project and to think of something different, while staying in the baltic countries and traveling, a good transition towards coming back to France.

Below, here is the video on latvia :

At last ! After months of work, to try and get to a perfect result, here is the CD-Rom we made for the Rebala Heritage Reserve. About half way through our volunteering project, we had the idea to create a good promotion tool, which would add interactive content to the museum, and, through educational games help children better understand what the exibit is about.

With the help of our two colleagues, as well as Mari, which worked with us this summer, we worked on interactive maps of the reserve, short movie clips, animations, a virtual visit of the church, 360° panoramas, games, and wrote everything in three languages : english, french and estonian.

We tried to include as well useful information such as opening hours, contacts, detailed information about archeological findings in the reserve, as well as its missions so as to satisfy the curiosity of visitors, families, specialists and tourism professionals which would want to know more about the Rebala Heritage Reserve.

It was finally sent to the printer, and edited at a limited number at first. We hope that it will be a success and that the reserve will be able to sell it in its shop or in other museums, so as to promote its territory. It is a tool which would have cost a fortune if it had been done by a private company, but as volunteers we were happy to contribute, with this personal initiative, and to be able to apply something lernt in university.

Yes, we have finished our voluntary project. It’s usually a sad moment, but for some reason, it isn’t really the case for us. We’ve had wonderful times here in Estonia and we did what we had / and wanted to do in our project. We are also staying until the 19th of December, which gives us time to enjoy a little more of Estonia, travel to the neighbouring baltic countries (coming soon) and realize this is the end. As we said, maybe we will get to come back one day and work this time in Tallinn. Who knows ?
For now however, we have been doing departure parties with our different friends. For our estonian ones from Joelahtme, and the people we’ve met, from the city council, or our estonian teacher in Loo, we did a french buffet dinner party, at MArgits new house. an intimate family type party, where we nicely discussed and watched slideshows of pictures we took and tested a swing we built that evening in Margits living room.

On Friday, we rented a private Sauna in a restaurant, in Tallinn old town. There was a very large room to eat and sit in, and then a shower and sauna room where we could all relax and continue talking. A great time we had, with volunteers we knew and new ones which have arrived more recently. Some were also ex-volunteers which came back to Tallinn and are now working there. There were people from all countries : georgia, ukrain, poland, germany, spanish, portugese, french… more people from other countries joined us later in the evening. How unique and pleasant it was to be with people like us, but from all over ! We ate well, and enjoyed being together. A good way for us to say goodbye, even if we will see some of the volunteers again before we leave.

As we enter the first day of Advent, Christmas decorations, cooking, and handicraft markets are apearing. We’ve been preparing some songs, with a little choir we made up with some friends from Joelahtme and a nearby village called Kuusalu. They’ve done a little research, and found some good estonian as well as old versions of english Christmas songs. They aranged the words, the music, and here we are, singing with four voices, these very different and pretty tunes. For me who has sang in choirs, and even done a little chrismas caroling when I was younger, with my parents, this was a very nice experience. It felt good to be participating in one of the things estonian people like best : singing. They are pretty good at it if you remember the singing feltival in July (Laulupidu), with 30 000 or so people. It didn’t take that many rehearsals to get to a very pleasant result. We first gave a concert on Saturday 1st of December in church, with a large group of guides which came to listen to us, then on Sunday, we sang in a Cultural center in Mustamae, in Tallinn. There was a pretty setting and they had elves (in estonian “Päkapikud”) do a little show about how they put gifts in the slippers on the first day of advent (and not only for christmas like in France). They also had a pastor tell about the meaning of Advent, and he lighted a candle, which the people of Mustamae, lighted their candles from. If I understood well, all the candles they light for Christmas are lighted by the same flame. A pretty symbol. Our singing was Ok, you can judge from the short extracts in the video, but I prefered our first time in church.

Last thursday, we were asked, by the association VITA, which we had been to previously in Narva Joesuu, to come back once more, this time in Sillamae. Now, this town has an interesting history, for it was a secret city during the soviet occupation and was not on any map. The reason was that there was some research being done, as well as phospore extracted, for military nuclear uses. No need to say that today, the city still wears the marks of soviet occupation, with block buildings, concrete everywhere, a strong proportion of russian speakers, very similar to Narva. So, for us, it was as if we were taking a trip to Russia. We were welcomed in the school as princes, and everybody, from teachers, students, the principal, all treated us as if we were some important guest. This impressed us a lot, for never in France would we have received such a welcome ! Students were saying “bonjour !” clearly, everybody knew two french people, maybe the first, were coming. We were shown around the school, and cookies, coffee, everything was done to make us feel at home. We were helped by Ilona, which was our translator from english to russian. We were suprised to meet Yelena also, the girl who had stayed at the door to say goodbye in Narva Joesuu. She told Amélie how she had impressed her and motivated her in her studies, and thanked us for our presentation which gave hope and ideas for the future. We were both very touched (especially Amélie) by this, and the gift she had made for us.
We then did our presentation, with no Powerpoint this time. Everything we said was translated into russian, which was interesting, for the small jokes we made would be understood moments later, once they were put into russian.
We then had a talk with the french teacher, and a small group of students, who want to organize a youth exchange with a french school, and study Napoleon during their trip to France. They asked for our help to find places to visit and also a school which they could do this exchange… Not easy, but we will do what we can to help.

We were then accompanied back to the bus, by a group of students, which we enjoyed talking with, and were back to Joelahtme in the evening. Wow, what a day, what a warm welcome, it is things like this which make us feel useful, even after we finished our project in Rebala.

Last weekend, we were invinted to go to Parnu, in the South Eastern part of Estonia. We went with some Estonian friends which we had met quite some time ago when we went kayaking… It was a very fine day and we were lucky to be able to have some sun after weeks of grey snowy weather. We were invited to different places which they wanted to show us, from a typical estonian hamburger place, which reminded nostalgicaly the times when they were students, to a luxurious villa, which has become one of Parnu’s most fancy hotel. Villa Amende, was built by a rich man, which had made his fortune in the commercial navy. He wanted a nice setting for his daughter’s wedding and had this villa decorated in the most refined Art Nouveau style which was the fashion of the time. The family lived there ten years before going back to germany, where they were originally from. The villa later became a hospital and a casino, but it always managed to keep the decorations and even some furniture which make it today one of the best and rare examples of Art Nouveau in Estonia. We only had a hot chocolate and a few pastries there, but it was enough to see how nice it was inside.
We stayed at our friends parents house, an old farm which has been refixed as a house, with a nice garden and a sauna house at the back. We spent most of the evening there, eating hearing and estonian cheese,accompanied with a cool beer, as most estonians do on a saturday night. It felt so good to relax and discuss in this friendly atmosphere, that we almost forgot the meal which we had after. As you can start gessing, yes, we ate most of the time. We tested different coffee places, especially a place where they did heavenly doghnuts. However, we did go for walks, on Parnu beach, at sunset, a really pretty sight, and to some very high dunes, close to the boarder with latvia, with a great view on the sea and immense marshland.
It was a magic weekend, as if our friends wanted to convice us to come back one day. We might, at least we hope we will. They gave us home made apple juice (6 litres!) pickles (3litres!) and estonian hats from the island of Kihnu, to keep us warm this winter. As ususal, we are always treated as kings and are very touched by the warm welcome we receive here in Estonia.