EVS in Estonia

That was an idea, I aways wanted to realize… Promoting Estonia in my own town : Le Bourget du Lac, located in the French Alps.

As my mother is now in the city council , and with her team decided to organize one Festival about Europe on the 18th of July 2009 (with Irland as guest country), I proposed to take part in the event, through the european market set in the main street of the village, creating a stand on Estonia.

I had prepared everything, with the help of my family of course. My mother had found some artificial cornflower (national flower in Estonia), I brought back from our last trip some estonian specialities such as : dark bread with garlic, moose sausages, Kalev chocolates, roasted almonds with cinnamon. And my estonian flag was waving in the air.

At first, we had some rain, and only a few people were stopping by. But in the afternoon, the sky cleared up, and my stand was a success. I was so happy to explain, and to do my best to promote Estonia. I answered questions, first one was usually “but where is Estonia?”. But finally it is good point I think that for now nobody really know about Estonia, because thanks to this, they don’t have any prejudice about this country, everything for them is a discovery. Lots of people told me that the pictures we had taken (especially Jonathan’s one) were beautiful, and were given them the desire to go overthere.

I was so touched, when small children asked me if they could take the small estonian flags, and after that I saw that they were wearing them or brandishing them in the streets of my village. I was hearing “Tere, tere !” everytime I was crossing somebody in the street. And that was for me one of the best pleasure I had.

Thanks everybody for passing by our stand, thanks to our dear estonian friends who helped us promoting well their country ! Hope we are good ambassadors of this small country !

Here is also an extract of an interview on my EVS (European Volontary Service) experience in english done by a journalist from RFI (Radio France International) in Paris, during the Day of Europe on the 9th of May 2009 :

For the common, going to Estonia is already quite a surprising idea. Going back puts you in the category of weirdo’s and other strange people you want to avoid, but a third time back has the effect of leaving most people open-mouthed and eyes wide open. Why would anyone impose himself such a long journey in a place like this ?! Amelie’s colleagues imagined that for our holidays we would be going to a warm sunny place somewhere south, but never would they believe the things we saw and did in Estonia !

Hopefully, you faithfull reader of our blog, you can understand our love and passion for this little country. We were welcomed as kings and our friends took us around as one of theirs. It was as if we had never left and even though time had passed since we had last seen each other, we caught up on news and told them all about our new life.

The excuse was the huge singing festival, UNESCO world heritage, called “Laulupidu”, which united 26 000 and more singers, plus two French, who were lucky to be invited as part of this incredible choir. But, Estonia was for us a haven of tranquility, friendship, and a simplicity which we have a hard time finding anywhere else. It just felt as if we were coming home in some way.

Thanks to all of you whom we saw during this trip, to the others, hopefully we will meet again next time !

Since we are living in Paris, we always wanted to visit the estonian embassy in France. Last Wednesday evening, an estonian concert was given there, so it was the perfect occasion for us to go. Jaak Sooäär and Tuule Kann, two famous estonian musicians, after a short stay in Lille, for Europe XXL festival, and especially for a kind of a “midday-midday on Baltic countries” event, were stopping by in Paris, before going back to Estonia.

We went then in La Baume street, where the estonian embassy is located, in the 8th district of Paris. We were already so excited to see only one estonian flag, so you can imagine how happy we were when people, and the ambassador himself, welcomed us so warmly in french and in estonian. Strangely we felt as “at home” again.

The atmosphere of the concert was intimate, only 30 people were there to listen to it, that enabled us to enjoy this traditional estonian music in the best conditions. The originality of the group was that they played kannel (sort of zither and one of the main instrument of estonian folk music) with electric guitar. That gave us an impression of mixture between past and future, heritage and new technology, a good symbol of Estonia in some way.

During the whole evening, we could hear with pleasure, “regilaulud”, these songs with only one chord, lasting hours and hours, sometimes without real end… And we could even understand some lyrics. We were also so surprised to discover one popular song coming from our dear estonian village of Joelähtme, a song you sing traditionally when you go on a swing, and called “Kolm Järve” : the three lakes. (it is the last song of the video)

At the end of the concert, we even sang some songs from Setumaa and southern part of Estonia, and danced all together with musicians.

This evening gave us the chance to feel as we were back in Estonia, thanks to this authenticity and simplicity which we missed a lot. We found back estonian humour, through musicians words, and we were so happy to be able to hear and speak estonian again.

For all these reasons, we surely will be back for other nice receptions organized by the estonian embassy in Paris !

After having been elected European Capital of Culture in 2004, the city of Lille, located in the northern part of France, offer this year festivities until the 12th of July 2009 around the theme of Europe XXL (a wide vision of Europe from Berlin to Kazakhstan passing by Baltic Countries and Turkey). From March to July, four months of different kind of cultural events linked to this theme are taking place overthere : exhibitions, concerts, dance, shows, theatre, movies, conferences, etc…

Saturday 14th of March, was the opening parade and we were there ! For this occasion, a project called “A thousand voices” proposed to Lille’s inhabitants to sing songs from different european countries, especially from western Europe. We listened to one very nice concert from a french choir about traditional estonian songs written by the famous composer Veljo Tormis. It was a success, the room was full, and the estonian music sounded particularly well in this closed place with a good accoustic. We really appreciated the effort of the different members of the choir to sing in estonian and we could hear that they were doing their best for the prononciation of the words, and for the adaptation to estonian rythms and sonorities really differents from our traditional french songs.

We are really more than happy that one event like this help promoting european countries almost unknown like Estonia in France. We are now waiting for the midday-midday event around Baltic Countries from the 10th to the 12th of April 2009, still in Lille of course !

Here is an article to wish you all a Happy New Year 2009 (”Head uut aastat” in estonian) ! This is the occasion also for us to catch up on the end of 2008 during which we were surprised to hear about Estonia in the “Fête des Lumières” in Lyon. This festival of Lights is famous in France for its different works of art using light in the city.

Apparently, the French Institute in Tallinn had cooperated with an estonian artist to propose one estonian participation at this festival : “Re-Use”, a contemporary work of art using traditional folk songs and lights and shadows. It was a bit strange but at least represented this small little country to the inhabitants of Lyon. What many people appreciated most of all was the complementary shot of vodka (Viru Valge, an estonian brand) and a piece of “leib” or dark bread.

We were so thrilled to see these familiar things that we immediatly poured all our refraint estonian to the blond girl holding the bread. We hadn’t spoken for a few months and thought she would be happy and surprised. She was surprised for sure and we could see that on her face by the was her eyes looked wide at us. But she did not seem as happy as we thought. We found out quickly that she wasn’t estonian but german and was just helping out for this event. A little frustrated, we still met THE estonian guy who held the stand. He made us feel better by saying that “we spoke perfect estonian” but in reality we didn’t understand his indications for another place we should see very near by. In the end, we said “head ööd” (good night) and walked in the direction we thought was good, we never found it !

Before coming back to France, we had been asked to participate in the Day of European Languages by organizing a “french day” in a small school in the seaside village of Neeme. Inga, one of our friends is a teacher there and had prepared this small event with the children. We were surprised to see drawings of the Eiffel Tower and proverbs in french and estonian when we entered the school. “To be great, one has to have been little” was the schools motto. Our mission was to give the 27 children in this school a better idea about differences and similarities in France and try to show them that though there are 25 national languages in Europe, we could still find ways to communicate.

What we did not know, or hadn’t realized was that Inga had planned to leave us alone for three times 45 minutes in the morning, with the children and two hours with all the school to entertain in the afternoon. It was as much a challenge for the children to understand us as it was challenging for us to use all the estonian we had ever learned and put it to use at last.

Through games, short movie extracts (in french, which they thought they would not understand if there were no subtitles), dances, songs and best of all through the tasting of some of our most famous stereotype food (baguette, salted butter, croissants, and false champagne). We gave our best to be good embassadors of french culture. We spoke about different regions and they asked questions like “you said you lived in Versailles, do you live in the palace ?” One of the most popular games was “Do we eat this in France ?” That’s when they discovered for the first time that we have very strange eating customs : first, we do not eat moose (as in Estonia), but snails, pigeons, frogs, oysters (live !), horses even, rabit, we all do. A little bit of culture shock can’t really hurt, can it ?

This blog has been, since last year, a fabulous way, not only for us to tell about our adventures in Estonia, but also to create situations that only internet can make happened : a couple of months ago, we had received a message from some french scouts searching for a place to help a local community or parish, so we immediatly thought of Margus the pastor and his plans for building a place for seminars. There is enough work there until 2015 and four young people wanting to help is always welcomed ! We forgot about it and then one day Margus told us about the arrival of these scouts. They did some work for the church, but our friends from Jõelähtme are so welcoming and took them around to different concerts and places they had to see.

On the day we were supposed to go and help them, we found ourselves in just a few minutes, all 6 of us, all french people, on the island of Rammu, not knowing exactly how this happened. Being on an island with a bunch of scouts is really a pleasure : wood is picked in no time, doors which don’t open, open ! , and water is fetched from the weel (the latest being unquestionably their favourite chore).

Though we enjoyed some walks around our 3km long island and admired splendid views from old rusted soviet watch-towers, we wanted to do something usefull as well for the family which was letting us use their small summer house (and sauna !) by reinforcing the pier. It was in construction still and the main structure made with logs needed to be filled with granit boulders. We therefore carried more than a ton of rocks and consolidated the pontoon for the next who will come enjoy the island of Rammu…

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…

If you’ve followed the news, you might know that last sunday (22nd) was the first turn of the elections in France.
We followed the news on internet and had voted ourselves through our parents, but it was fun to see how the estonian news reported the event. They showed all our candidates, and talked about the arrival of electronic voting machines which have been put in place for the first time in some cities.
Now, in France, the interesting thing is that they have been mentioning Estonia ! Why ? Because Estonia was the first country to use a voting system through the internet. Indeed, though the country is small, it is in the constitution that each citizen has the right to access to the world of information which is offered by internet…

So, for those who would like to know more about how the estonian elections went on (March 4th 2007), here is a short video about it…