EVS in Estonia

As we enjoyed it so much last year, we could not avoid the Viljandi festival this year ! It is a folk music festival, that takes place at the end of July in a small town in the south of the country.

Like we did last year, we took the train to go to the festival. It was full of young people, dressed with the most strangest clothes they could find, with colourfull hats, etc.

This year, we slept in in our tent at some friends of our friend Piia’s (the pastor’s wife) garden. It was a particularly beautiful house and an immense garden. And Christian and Anita, our hosts, were so nice. We really spent some good times together, sharing 2 hours long breakfast with estonian specialities, such as kama (some keefir/sour milk mixed with some cereal powder), cold beetroot soup, some cherry jam, eggs, bacon, pastries, and even more !

As last year we really enjoyed the festival. We met many people that we knew there : volunteers, colleagues, friends who we hadn’t seen for a long time. It is really a special place to meet again with people during the summer.

On Friday night, we only saw one concert, called “Armastuse ja rõõmu laulud” (songs of love and joy), it was a very nice concert, in a small room, with traditionnal estonian music. Some of the songs were very old, and we particularly loved to hear kanel, this typical estonian instrument. The artists also sang some Regilaulud, these songs which tell stories and which repeats all the time. The public was completely into it, the atmosphere was intimate. Well we enjoyed it !

On Saturday, we had took the day pass to see as many concerts as possible. If the music of the first russian band Trio Solnyshko was good, we prefer the ukrainian estonian one called Svjata Vatra, who really shared their music with the audience. We then heard one american guy Bruce Molsky who charmed us with his blues music and his banjo. After we decided to see the end of one famous estonian band Vägilased, and to go to see Majorstuen, some very good violonists from Norway. Impossible to access to the Zetod concert, a Setu band from the southern part of Estonia, because it was full of people.

We instead decided to go with or new friends Christian and Anita to a such nice place : a very cosy open air café, where we could eat home made estonian food. And the originality of this place was that there were no prices at all, we could give at the end of the meal what we wanted to give. It was very popular during the whole festival, so we were lucky that Christian and Anita arranged kindly a table for all of us !

We finally finished the day, assisting to a gipsy music band concert. If we are quite used to this type of music in France, it was a complete discovery for the estonians who were jumping all around at the rythm of the music. Even the members of the gipsy group Parno Graszt were amazed by this so warm atmosphere.

On Sunday, we were first planning to leave by train in the beginning of the afternoon. But we finally decided to stay a little bit more longer, to see Mari one of our estonian friend who we haven’t seen for a long time, but also to hear the Flook concert, an irish band and we didn’t regret it. The concert was really good, the musicians were really talented, the one at the irish flute but also the one at the bodhran. They even played a breton piece, and we loved watching estonian people trying to dance with their little fingers !

We are now back in Tallinn, but we will keep in mind all these nice memories from the festival !

Recently, during the last training we participated in, we were lucky to be able to test a smoke-sauna or the authentic estonian sauna. This is the time for us to explain a little more of this tradition is in Estonia. Most people know the finnish sauna which is broadly spread in the scandinavian Europe.

Without getting too much into the details, it is basically a fire which is lit under some granit stones (sometimes this is replaced by an electric heating) in a pretty small room, more like a closet, but very well isolated, in which you get in with a few friends if possible to enjoy the heat. It is a very dry type of heat, so you can pour a little water on the stones to make it more humid. The humidity actually brings down the temperature slightly but it feels suddenly much warmer and some find it hard to breath. In reality, it takes time getting used to going to the sauna and it should be done gradually (without trying to beat reccords) to fully enjoy the experience. Each one has his own technique but the options are usually between :
a) jumping into a river or lake
b) rolling yourself in the snow or in a hole in the ice
c) taking a cold shower or pour bucket of water over your head

This stimulates the blood circulation as you can imagine and also cleans your body (and your mind as well, for the only thing you can think of is “it’s hot in here, it’s hot it’s hot !”

The estonian sauna is based on the same principle, but the heating is different, instead of an electric or wooden stove, it is an open fire which is done inside a small house (well isolated), the smoke accumulating inside and the heat warming up the stones.
A person has to maintain the fire going for at least four hours before it gets warm enough inside (that’s probably why they are not so common as the finnish sauna), then the smoke is let out very quickly and you can enter the small cabin with a plank of wood to sit on. You have to try not to touch the sides for the walls are hot but also because of the soot.There was always a little smoke left which gives it a peculiar smell. Some throw beer on the stones in addition to the water to have a nice smell similar to that of baked bread. Purist will go as far as whipping themselves with branches of birch to help stimulate the blood and the sooting. Personnally, we liked this new type of sauna, which we hadn’t tested yet and which left our skinks very soft. This by itself would have been a reason to come back to Estonia !!!

The picture is that of a smoke sauna being prepared in Soomaa during our mid-term training last year, unfortunately we had not been able to try it at that time.

As ex-volunteers (which is now the status that we have to accept), we have been asked by the national agency for volunteering, to participate in on-arrival trainings for people who have recently arrived in Estonia. Some might remember the article we wrote about us going to Pärnu, this time it was deep in the forest, about 16 kilometers from the main road, in the region of Kõrvemaa. The name is usually associated to vast landscapes of wetlands (as in Soomaa), but this time we stayed in the woods and though it was pooring rain, we joined the other volunteers on a hike.

Though we were very wet, a bit cold, and have been devored by mozquitos, we were relieved when we finally discussed different topics around a table, after a nice warm tee. Our fourty five minutes presentation lasted two hours in the end but trainers and volunteers seemed interested and asked quite a few questions.

It was also the occasion for us to meet new volunteers, from different horizons, trainers which we hope we will meet again, and surprise the few volunteers we knew already during their on-arrival training.

I really wanted to write this article for a long time already to show you what we are doing several times a week. We do guided tours for cruise ships, and take them around the old town.

The cruises have a really big impact on Tallinn’s city. Usually our tourist groups are from 20 to 40 people maximum but as the demand is enourmous (2600 tourists in one boat like the Costa Mediterranea which you can see in the video), most of the time, we take bigger groups and sometimes our company is even obliged to refuse some people. We regularly have some groups of 46 tourists, and it is not easy to guide them for four hours or more.

Amélie does visits in french, for me it is more in spanish or in english. But spanish groups have become my speciality for a lot of estonian guides speak english better than spanish.

We all have the same route and sometimes it creates traffic jams in the little medieval town of Tallinn. One hour later, the old town is completely deserted, but visitors usually ask if “It is always overcrowded like this?”

In reality, Estonia is not really a country of mass tourism, as one could imagine watching the video. On the contrary, the country is full of natural landscapes, forests, rural areas and small peacefull villages, but unfortunately most of the tourists have no time to see this aspect of the country. All of the estonian tourism is for the moment concentrated in its capital, Tallinn and especially in the old town.

Last Saturday, we went to an Island, very close to Jõelähtme, called Rammu saar. Unfortunately, Amélie couldn’t come, for she was working at the museum, but I went with Cécile, a french volunteer (and friend). We met with Silja and the others and left from the little fishing port of Neeme. Though the sun was shinning, there was a small debate to decide weather or not we should go to sea. Indeed, there was some wind and the little fishing boat we were taking was going to rock quite a lot. We finally decided to go in the first boat to try the adventure and the others would join us in the afternoon if the wind died down. The ones who stayed on the shore were probably right not to go, but we went anyway and found ourselves drenched to the bones, by the spray. It took us about 20 minutes to get to the island, though it was about 5 km away.

The Island of Rammu is uninhabited since 1952, when the soviet soldiers forced the families to leave and installed a small military base on the island. There used to live two families on Rammu, descending from Finnish fishermen who had settled there. There had been up to 30 people living there and there was even a small school for the younger ones. One man still living today, remembers going to high school by row-boat (in summer) or walking on the ice (in winter). A lady came to us and wanted to tell us her story about the island. She was born on the island, (there were no hospitals, so it was probably at home) and had lived there until she was 6 years old. She remembers some of her childhood there and it is a very important place for her, she never went back to live there. Now, in the village of Neeme, many inhabitants come from these two families from Rammu. Even the first husband of the Estonian presidents wife is a descendant from these families (yes, it is a little outstretched).

Here is an archive picture (thank you Cécile !) which shows a burial ceremony in Rammu before 1952.

We were going on this Island, with Margus, the Pastor and other villagers, to commemorate the fishermen who were buried in the small cemetery. Once we landed on the island, (soaking wet) we headed for a small summer house (see picture) still belonging to one of the families. They had a Sauna and it felt good to warm ourselves in it. Our clothes were put to dry on a rope for most of the day, so we walked around the island with towels around our waists. Rammu has become a bird sanctuary and we had a small picnic watching them fish and jabber around us. It felt as if we we Robinson Crusoe or explorers on this abandoned piece of land. We climbed in an old rusted soviet watchtower, where we could get a very good view on all the surroundings. It was wonderful to be there and we could feel a great feeling of freedom.

We did the ceremony in the small cemetary, then headed back to the boat in the afternoon. It took us only 7 minutes this time, for the sea had calmed down. All this fresh air had made us feel hungry, so with Silja, Karl her son, Cécile, and Madleen, we fixed ourselves a nice barbecue before coming back to Tallinn. What a day, it was so sad though that Amélie wasn’t with us to share this…

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