EVS in Estonia

It is not secret, we have come back to Estonia to enjoy another summer, but the idea is to work this time ! When we were volunteers, things seemed more or less easy and planned. Now, we are seeing another part about living in Estonia.

We have thought at first that we might have enough work as guides for one travel company which we had already been in contact with in France. Soon after we came, we discovered that they only needed us a few times a month. Not only could we but we needed to find more work as well. So we did ! We printed out a few CV’s, took our courage in both hands and knocked on doors, trying to convince secretaries (in estonian) to see a director of some sort and finally made good contacts. They are just starting to pay now and we hope we will continue to receive offers from the companies we have met with. We have to thank once again our friends which have done their best to find us contacts (the son of the cousin of the sister who used to work there), they have given us hope when we were a little lost. Now, our schedules are filling up a bit : apart from our regular tours with cruises, we receive random offers like transfers from the airport to the hotel, and we also found more unformal visits like the funky bike tour we had done last summer. Amelie works on Saturdays at the museum of Rebala Heritage Reserve and we will try bringing tourists there on a half day tour from Tallinn.

Let’s hope our projects work, at least we are discovering how it is to be freelance guides, and we have learned a lot about Estonia’s history particularly about Tallinn’s old town. We tried our first visit with a group of volunteers in both spanish and english. For us, it was good practice and they said they liked it as well.

Welcome to Tallinn ! We are just getting used to our new life here. First of all, we are no longer volunteers, but we are so full of projects that it seems we are doing another EVS. Remember, we even had a on-arrival training ! Since then, we have been hanging around, with volunteers, some that we knew already before, and were happy to see again, others that have just come to Estonia and with whom we are glad to show different aspects about living here.

We have a good group of friends : Cecile from France, Luis from Spain… sorry Basque country, Zsofia from Hungary, Julia from Germany, Oleksi from Ukrain, the list is long and if I forget someone they might be offended. Let me just tell you about Thomas, our “ambassadeur de l’amour” who came to visit recently and reminded us how nice it was in the good old days when we were volunteers. Only four months ago, but I guess we have to get used to it, we are now “ex”volunteers, the old, the wise, though for us it feels almost the same. Almost is the word, for we miss our fields and the tranquility of the countryside. Like real estonians living in Tallinn, we crave for an escape out of town and all the excuses are good, a rehearsal for choir, church on sunday, to see our friends from Jõelähtme. For those who have followed our blog for some time and have a good memory, we even saw Leelo, the lady who had a cow. She is much better now (not the cow, may it rest in peace) and she was so happy to see us again that we left her with two kilos of potatoes.

We have found a place for traditional dances, a few streets away from us, and some of the musicians are the same as the ones we had in our village. Even in cities, you can find traditions alive, one just needs to look a little.

The video below is a show given in the old town, a nice little concert we enjoyed listening to. Hope you will too !

Home sweet home, how good it feels to have a place to call yours ! After having stayed for a couple of weeks in our ex-appartment, thanks to Margit, who really helped us get settled here in Estonia for the second time, we now have a place to stay… And it is not so bad actually ! Now that we’ve bought a few things such as silverware, sheets, and a few other things which were missing (internet for instance), our two-room flat is becoming more and more home.

Sorry for having waited so long to write new articles, but between looking for jobs, visiting appartments, negociating prices, fighting with banks so that they would make up their minds on where they had put a little more than a 1000 euros (they finally found a solution the day we brought sleeping bags with us), we have been quite busy and not close enough to a proper internet connexion.
Ahaa ! I hear already people snearing and saying “but I thought Estonia had wireless internet everywhere?”, the answer is Yes, but though we do like to give news of our adventures, freezing ourselves to death to the point of almost loosing our fingers just to write an article was a little too much for us. It has been quite nice weather recently, for those who want to know, but though the days are getting longer as we are approching June, the temperatures can sometimes be surprisingly chilly.

Our little nest, is located in the old town of Tallinn, just on a tranquil street bordered by the medieval city wall. What a change ! We used to see four kilometers of fields in Jõelähtme, now our living room window offers a magnificent view… on a wall ! 16 meters high, 3 meters thick it’s sometimes a hastle, for it not only cuts the light, but also telephone network, but finally it’s charming to think we are “protected” by these walls and are very lucky to live in this historical part of town.
We hardly have neighbours, except for the ones above us, which are very silent and that we still haven’t seen. Otherwise, we have a souvenir shop and hairdresser to one side and a miniature looking church, with a cute crooked steeple, belonging to a Ukrainian catholic group. Anyway, with 80 cm thick walls we can’t hear a sound from the street !!!

All this to say, and we could go on for hours, that we love our new appartment.

On the third of May, we took part in the “Teeme ära” campaign as 34 000 or so other volunteers did, to clean Estonia from scattered rubbish and illegal dumps. 10 000 or more sites had been marked, using a very sofisticated software (created by one of the estonian conceptors of Skype) and visible on Google Maps.

We were only a small team of 5, Amelie and I, Piia, Margus’ wife, and her two children : Madleen and Taveet, but to be part of such a big event, was very rewarding. We have to say that the site that our team had been assigned to clean up had probably already been cleaned by some people during the last week, for we found quite a lot of trash, but already in plastic bags. We still had to put it all in bigger bags, which are easier to process, and we are very proud to have managed to carry a rusted bath tub, partially full of ciment !

If you are interested, you can watch a video from the BBC, (where our friend Indrek, the judo athleet is in too) which tells more about it.

We were hardly back from Pärnu, that we went to dance at our local culture house, with Zsofia, a hungarian volunteer we had met during the training. It was sunny and pleasant outside, so we started dancing in the grass, the musicians perched on the branches of an apple tree.

Our usual dance group has changed quite a bit. The musicians but also the dancers, who not only come from Jõelähtme, but also from Tallinn. It is not so bad after all, for it teaches us new dances and we can meet new people.

Zsofia did quite well, (better than us actually) and danced with everybody. You will see on the video, how good she was.

At the end of last week, we were invited by the National Agency Euroopa Noored, to give a presentation during an On arrival training near Pärnu. How great it was for us to go to a second On arrival training, these things usually happen only once in your life. There were about 10 volunteers from different countries and they were a very good group. We had been asked to give hints on how to mix with the local community during an EVS.

We therefore gave an account of our own experiences but also discussed several questions about volunteering.

The two days we spent enabled us to meet new people with whom we hope to keep contact, especially with a few volunteers who live in Tallinn.