EVS in Estonia

As one old lady once told us “you’re like birds, you fly away when winter comes and spend summer in Estonia”. The leaves are turning yellow, the weather is getting cold(er) and there are so many unmistakable signs that summer has ended, it must be time for us to go back to France. We held our promise as good estonians would. We came back. Estonia has become our second home though this time we discovered so many new things we hadn’t seen as volunteers.

As last time, it was hard to part, but concerts, restaurants, tea with friends, made things easier. We received even some mysterious gift from unknown people in Joelähtme with “have a happy life” written on it with money, sweets, a small painting and a very lovely card but though we do not know who gave this to us, this is another proof (as if we needed more !) that we have been more than well greeted in Estonia. But cheese, family, and friends are calling. A new life, new work (we hope), is waiting for us.

The best thing was to sing together (see video) and we also rented a private sauna to party with the volunteers which added to the warmth of these last days. A second time on this blog we want to thank you as well for following our adventures and hope to keep you posted on future news about Estonia.

While visiting Tallinn or in other cities of Estonia, one is bound to find a flower market. Generally open every day, even during the cold months of winter, these colourfull stands are very popular. From roses to jonquils, or even sunflowers, there is usually a large choice for all occasions.

Indeed, estonians tend to give flowers to each other very often : to visit a friend, to give to work colleagues, at any small ceremony, all excuses are good to offer some flowers. Men can give a bouquet to women without any misunderstandings on his intentions, moreover, men can even receive flowers, without putting aside their virility (this takes a little time to get used to, but it can become very pleasant !).

Students give each other lilies of the valley, not on the first of May (as it is the tradition in France), but to celebrate the end of the school year and success in their exams in June. This comes from the fact that these flowers don’t bloom as early in Estonia as in France.

Another difference : if we tend to wrap our bouquets in a nice clear paper, estonians like to keep the surprise until the very end and not show everybody in the streets what they’ve just bought. They therefore wrap their flowers in an opaque sheet of paper, almost like newspaper, and stapple it up so no one can see. Receiving flowers is then like opening a present !

Last week, Jonathan had been invited to play at a concert, given in one of the prestigious places in the old town. The queen of england, Chirac, George Bush have all entered this building, which in medieval times, when Tallinn belonged to the Hanseatic league housed the St Maurice guild of merchants (also nicknamed guild of black-heads).

the idea was to help out and play a little of tin whistle, as a transition between the different scenes of the concert. What made it even more special was that the singers were….. babies ! Yes, 8 month old babies which were helped by their parents to do something on stage dressed up in ladybug costumes or wearing strange hats. Who would want to go to that ? Well, all the families of course, which were ready to pay 80 Kroons to enter and stand for 2 hours. There were about 400 people !

The time on stage being very limited for these small children (the oldest were 3 years old), there were many transitions, and each time the tin whistle played ! It was not always easy to improvise something in the spirit of the event, but it was good fun, especially for Amélie, who was enjoying the scene in the crowd.

Below is a picture of the famous entrance of the “Mustpeada maja”.

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.

I remember April last year… We had just arrived to Estonia and were discovering the Rebala Heritage Reserve where we were going to volunteer for 8 months. There had been quite a bit of luck in finding this project, though it was our favourite. After so many discoveries last year, we decided, by choice this time, to come back to Estonia.

” But are you crazy ?… Estonia ? Again !? ” This is usually the first reaction when we announce to people about our coming back. But then, yes, we might be a little crazy but we like challenges and Estonia even more.

This time, we won’t be volunteering, but we hope to work as guides for french, spanish and english- speaking tourist during the summer season. Most of them come from the hudge cruise ships which anchor in Tallinn’s harbour. The demand in guides is then pretty important, however, the proportion of ships carrying french and spanish visitors is not big enough to have us work on a regular basis. The challenge will be to patch different bits and pieces to pay for all our expenses this summer. It’s true that life in Estonia doesn’t cost as much as in the rest of Europe (yet) but the wages are still very low.

One should not think therefore that we have come to Estonia to make a fortune, as french pioneers in a new El Dorado. No, no, we came back because we said we would and if not now… When? We have real good friends out here (and they have all been so sweet helping us and welcoming us back) and we felt like we still needed to be with them. It’s a real pleasure for us, to be able to see this wish of coming back come true.

The picture is of Lena, an ex volunteer like us, from Ukraine and Audé, from France, who was volunteer last year and was in Tallinn for a few days.

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.

Here it is at last ! the first snowfall of our estonian winter. After having seen the seasons pass by, the days which used to end around 11h30pm or later now end at 4pm. It’s incredible how much life here is dependant on the weather ! We were exited like children to see the first snowflakes falling. I woke up and was jumping up and down and soon, we were throwing snowballs and telling everyone how happy we were. I even caled a friend in India to show her the snow through my webcam ! unfortuneately she was at work and didn’t think it was a good idea. Anyway, we managed to speak with amélie’s parents through skype, directly from the snow-covered tombs, thanks to the new Wifi connection. We hope more snow will come, the countryside is just marvelous in white.

Here it is, after the long days of summer, the bustling around, the frenzy for hikes in estonia’s beautiful nature, the song and dance festivals all across the country, this is autumn already. If the trees have adopted their new orange and yellow clothing pretty unanimously, estonians, on the contrary, seem to hesitate on wearing thick winter jackets, or a simple T-shirt. It’s a very strange site, to see people walking next to each other, one wearing leather boots and fur coat, the other still in shorts and wearing sunglasses. It can be hard, to finally accept that the days are getting shorter, and that darkness is creaping slowly, but as the temperatures are still fine, it has been an absolute delight, to wander in the forest, kiking leaves as we go, watching them float gently in the air, before being carried away in a stream. I love autumn, it’s a romantic season. It anounces the coming end of our volunteering, in just a couple of months, but Estonia is so gorgeous at this time, that I’m grateful to be here still to admire its beauties.

Yesterday, after work, we went to the village fair of Vandjala, a small village located in our reserve. We were to meet two French photographers there, who had asked us where to meet “real” estonian people. It was the perfect occasion : a very small local fair where everybody met each other to spend some nice time together. There were among others : traditionnal games, dances, songs, election of the chief of the village (not really like a mayor but just to represent the inhabitants during the meetings of the community district), cakes, home made beer (very sweet), false russian champagne and very good mood !

We met some very nice people there, very welcoming, as if we were part of the village. We almost managed to make a whole conversation in estonian with a kind lady. We even received the official tee-shirt of the village.

It was also the occasion to learn more about local stories and traditions, very interesting !

Finally, at the end of the day, we made a small tour of our reserve to Cyril and Julien, the two French photographers, and share with them a good meal.

What seems to be very banal to us in France, becomes here an adventure…

For example, last weekend, we both decided to go to the haridresser (juuksur in estonian). We both were a little anxious trying to explain our haircut to an estonian hairdresser, but as we are courageous we finally got an apointment.

The woman who took care of us, spoke a little english and was very nice. Quite brusque in her movements, we sometimes got the impression that she was pulling our head out instead of our hairs, but she told the story of her country so passionately and she seemed to be really fond of her job, that we forgot her.

Finally we got out of there with a quite nice haircut, a little shorter than expected from Jonathan’s point of view, but it was a risk to take. At least, we won’t be too hot this summer.

An other funny thing when we are walking in the streets of Tallinn, is trying to understand the advertising pannels. We manage quite well this exercice, and we really love the humour and creativity of estonian campaigns. The estonians seem to be very good graphists. They even make publicity for strawberries ! The road signs are sometimes amazing, and make us laugh a lot. It is fun also to see the movies posters, translated in estonian, like “Shrek kolmas” or “oceani kolmteist”

Here is a small composition on the trams of Tallinn. There are a lot of them, different from one to another. They probably create regularly some new ones. We have our favorites, but all are very nice as they are colourfull and bring life to the capital city.

The tickets are also coloured, they cost 8,50 kroon by 10 ( a little more if you buy them directly to the driver). You have to obliterate them in old machines, which make some holes in them, depending of the line you take. For the moment, not all the trams have the automatic system working.

The other day, there was a kayak competition going on near the Jagala falls. Since we had cleaned up the place from all the trash, we wanted to see what it looked like when people were there and see the kayak competition.
The goal was to go down the river as quick as possible, going through “gates” (green or red) . the green ones mean they can go strait through, but the red ones mean they have to go around and go through the gate paddling against the current. It was nice to see and I was near the start as well as some of the first gates. I therefore got some nice shots of the kayak-men in action.

Sunday morning,
as many people do, we went to church, for it is where people from the village all meet. For us it was a good way to make new contacts and also, a good excuse to sing. Moreover, we wanted to see what a mass in estonian would be like. The priest was named Margus, we had heared about him and knew we were going to see him one day or another. Though we could not understand a word of his speach, we enjoyed the service, the singing, and even trumpet playing ! There was also a little boy who didn’t seem interested in all this and was having fun hiding behind a column and making faces at us or droping wood clippings from a balcony. Since we couldn’t follow the service, we had fun watching his mischief.
After mass, we were invited to share coffee and pastries at Margus’s place, not far behind the church graveyard, with some of the people we had met already at the dancing on friday evening.

We enjoyed the rest of the day riding our bicycles on the flat roads around our place. not much to see, but it felt good to be in the sun… (on the picture, here is a storks nest we saw on our way)