Letters from Estonia

HEAD AEGA

2008-06-30T17:47:00.005+03:00

It is time to say "Head aega", literally "(wishing you a) good time" to Tallinn. Tomorrow we leave Estonia, having spent three wonderful months here. As with any other trip or experience, we have regrets that we have not been able to do as much as we might have, but we also have fond memories of what we did see and experience. I will bring with me a lot of pictures in my camera, and a lot more in my head. I will also bring home a new screen saver, a view of Tallinn taken from the Pirita pier just as the sun is setting across the water.

There are the famous icons on this skyline. The tallest structure in the middle is Oleviste Kirik (Church), a starkly Lutheran structure built by the folks in the lower town to show the rich guys on the hill that they could build a taller church steeple (and you wonder why modern Estonians are so competitive?). To the left of Oleviste is the Toom Kirik, or the Dome Chuch that has all the coats of arms of the noble households of the Baltic Germans. Further to the left you can see Pikk (Tall) Hermann where the flag still proudly flies. To the left of the tower is St. Nicholas Church, the incredibly ornate Russian Orthodox church with its onion-shaped towers. Moving further left is the steeple of the Holy Ghost Church (where my parents were married), and more to the left is the tower of the old city hall, Raekoja (Radhus in German). To the left of this is one of the protective towers of the Old Town. The twin towers belong to Karli Kirik, or Karl’s Church, which is like the national cathedral, where the important national ceremonies take place.

But the most prominent structure on this skyline is not a church or a tower. It is a smokestack! There it is, to the right of Oleviste Kirik – a huge, ugly beast intruding into the peaceful gentility of the Old Town. Every old picture of Tallinn I have seen shows this stack belching smoke, including a picture taken by my dad from exactly the same place sometime in the 1930s. Below is a paining done in 1967 that shows the stack in all its glory.

The power plant that fed the stack is long gone, but it is impossible to eliminate this stack from the picture, for it is now a historically protected monument! A smoke stack, for heaven’s sake! Oh, well. It's nice to know that with all the change occurring in Estonia, at least some things will remain constant. I look forward to seeing that smokestack on the skyline the next time I come, and I hope this will be soon. Head aega Eesti!

-- Aarne

GUSTAV ERNESAKS

2008-06-30T16:40:00.003+03:00

There is an old joke about USSR Chairman Leonid Brezhnev who was obsessed with having statues made of himself. Apparently a monument was planned in Soviet Estonia commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the birth of A. H. Tammsaare, a widely respected Estonian man of letters during the last half of the 1800s. For that purpose a contest was arranged. The third prize was awarded to a design representing Tammsaare reading Brezhnev’s works. Second prize went to a design representing Brezhnev reading Tammsaare’s works. First prize was awarded to a design that showed Brezhnev thinking about Tammsaare. : )

I don’t know of many statues that show people thinking about something (except “The Thinker” of course, but we don’t know what he is thinking of.) In the case of the statue of Gustav Ernesaks, however, we are fairly sure what thoughts are going through his bronze head.

If you have been reading this blog, you would know about the “Singing Revolution” and how the Estonian people showed the USSR that there is strength in song. It was Gustav Ernesaks, more than any single individual, who kept alive the tradition of song and singing during the darkest days of the occupation. He was the one who convinced the authorities to keep the song festivals going, and he wrote songs that the people could sing, and he organized and conducted the RAM, the National Men’s Choir that brought these songs to all parts of Estonia.

When he died in 1991, the people of Estonia decided to erect a statue of him, and placed it at the back of the “lauluväljak”, or the “singing field”, where all the large song festivals are held. The statue is of him sitting, looking down at the field and the singing shell.

It is very imaginative of the artist to depict Ernesaks as if he is listening, instead of having him be majestically conducting or performing. And it looks to me that he is not only listening, but that he is also thinking. His thoughts seem far away from the song he is hearing. Perhaps he is contemplating his career and his contribution to the nation he helped to save from extinction.

Sometime in the early 1980s he had a chance to travel to the USA and he spent a few days with my dad, who was a boyhood chum. He told my dad that he had had a great career, but that it had been under the wrong flag. Now the singing festivals (the next one is next summer!) are once again under the right flag, and much of the credit for this goes to Gustav Ernesaks.

-- Aarne

SAILING LESSONS

2008-06-29T16:34:00.012+03:00

About two months ago, I began to notice each afternoon after school and on Saturday mornings a cluster of tiny sailboats in the bay. I went down to the Pirita marina to see what was going on. There I found children, perhaps nine years and older, helping each other to push tiny sailboats down a ramp into the channel of the Pirita Olympic Marina. One child, one boat—sometimes twenty or more children and boats at a time. At other times I watched a different class of older kids having their group lessons.

The smallest boats are no larger than generous bathtubs, and their masts are so short that the young sailors get lots of experience in trying to catch wind in their sails as they tack in zig-zag fashion between the piers and into the bay. Their instructors, in motorized rafts, help them only when they are in serious trouble. The sailors call back and forth, excited and teasing, exchanging advice about how to go faster. They test each other with short, informal racing, and they sail so close to each other that I wonder how they do not get tangled up. Learning how to sail looks like a social experience for them. They are already behaving like their own yacht club.

In a sense, we could say that Estonians have sailing in their blood. With such a long coastline and so many islands, people living in this region have sailed for thousands of years. (You can check out some history at the Maritime Museum in Old Town.)

And Pirita is famous for sailing. The Olympic Centre is described on the web as “the most famous sailing centre in Eastern Europe.” Imagine a wide sandy beach, a protective river mouth, and strong, even tricky winds.

As a young man during Estonia’s first period of independence, Aarne’s father, Paul, built his own boat and enjoyed sailing it out of Pirita harbor into Tallinn Bay. In those days of the 1920s and 1930s, Paul would only need to be thinking about his skills, the weather, and his boat. Family lore says that the Vesilind name, meaning “waterbird,” was earned when long-ago ancestors smuggled goods along the coast in boats so fast that they outran any pursuers.

But later, during the twentieth century Soviet occupation of Estonia, a guard was positioned twenty-four hours a day at the mouth of the Pirita River. Only sailors with special permission were allowed to exit the river and go into the bay. If a boat went out, even with permission, and did not return on time, the incident was reported. (If anyone reading this knows how Soviet sailing permissions were granted and how difficult it was to get such permission, I’d be glad to learn about that.)

Some Estonians from coastal areas and the islands had earlier escaped to Sweden and Finland in their family boats and in fishing boats, and so the Soviets tried hard to lock up the coastline. After the fisheries were collectivized, all fishing boats became state property. This meant that trying to sail out of Estonia on a fishing boat was not only punishable as escape but also as theft of state property. [Glenn Eric Kranking. (2004). Agitating the Minority: Propaganda Aimed at the Ethnic Swedes in Soviet-Occupied Estonia, 1940-41. Master’s Thesis, University of Tartu Department of History. (http://www.utlib.ee/ekollekt/diss/mag/2004/b16719360/Kranking.pdf)]

One man told us that, as a child, he was warned never to stand on the big rocks in the water along the beach, because guards would confront him. Another woman described how workers in Pirita every night raked the beach to draw a line in the sand beyond which people were not allowed to step. The guards must have thought highly of Estonians’ swimming abilities!

At the same time, Soviet leaders valued sports as a way to promote health in workers, and, as occupation continued, they encouraged development of facilities for competitive sports and general recreation. For example, the Kalev Yacht Club organized in 1948 as the Tallinn Kalev Yacht Club. (Did the Soviets realize that “Kalev” is the name of the legendary Estonian national hero?) During occupation, Pirita hosted major yachting events, such as the Baltic Regattas. Yachtsmen also came from across the U.S.S.R. to Pirita to train for Olympic regattas.

In 1980, when the U.S.S.R. hosted the Summer Olympics, Moscow was the main venue, but the sailing competition was held in Pirita. The Soviet government built a marina in Pirita, the same marina where I watch the young sailors. The marina sits at the mouth of the Pirita River, where the river enters the Baltic Sea. This summer tour buses arrive almost daily to photograph the 1980 Olympic logo, which still stands as a tall red marker at the marina exit, along with the large bowl that held the Olympic flame.The next photo shows a 1980 Olympic sailing button and an Olympic promotional booklet—Pirita: Venue of the 1980 Olympic Regatta by Jaan Tamm.

In this booklet Tamm hints at the international aspirations of Estonian sailors. He wrote, “Our yachtsmen have friendly relations with the yachtsmen of other countries. Especially sound are the ties that bind Tallinn’s yachtsmen with their colleagues in Poland and the German Democratic Republic who have taken part in all international Baltic Regattas. . . . In 1961 Britton Chance from the USA, the Olympic winner at Helsinki and world champion, sailed in the Bay of Tallinn, being the first yachtsman from abroad to win the Baltic Regatta.”

Then, before the 1980 Olympics, the U.S.S.R. invaded Afghanistan. Although the U.S. and other western countries responded with a boycott of Olympic events, the Soviets held the games and regattas anyway. While Soviet leaders in Moscow may have seen the 1980 Olympics as an indication of international approval and leaders in the west saw the boycott as a means of disapproval, the Estonian sailors in 1980 must have yearned for international competition, to test themselves against the best.

A leader and trainer for that 1980 Olympic sailing program is still at Kalev Yacht Club. In a notice about a 2006 race, he was described this way: “Mr. Rein Ottoson, Chief Trainer of the Estonian Olympic Team, is a worldwide known character and a skillful organizer. The basic planning and running of the coming Event lays [sic] in his steady hands and his Eagle sharp eyes.”

So, when I saw on the internet that Kalev Yacht Club is hosting a regatta in July 2008, in one way this seemed no surprise. Then again, as I read more details, this rather dry, formal announcement made my heart beat faster. Some races will be as long as 90 nautical miles, out in the Baltic Sea, out of sight of shore. And the announcement of rules includes this: “Estonian yachts shall be registered in Estonian Yachting Union and entered into the Estonian Register of Ships or Small Craft – all registration letters and certificates shall be presented.” Furthermore, helmsmen [and helmswomen?] must follow International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea. (http://prizrak331.ru/race/2008/muhu/poloj.pdf) It may sound like business as usual, but behind all this protocol is the understanding that sailors clearly have returned to supervising their own sport.

It turns out that sailors are not alone in appreciating the tricky strong winds at Pirita. Did you know that websites for kiteboarders now report Estonian conditions? Having found Pirita on a map for kiteboarders, my son Drew arrived two weeks ago with his equipment. Like sailors, kiteboarders use the wind as well as their bodies and boards to change direction and speed. Also like sailors, kiteboarders control their kite (sail) with ropes and board (rudder.) A sailor of a small boat holds onto the line that pulls the sail in or lets it out, while the kiteboarder wears a harness that is hooked to the kite lines. From these photos you can imagine how strong the wind was when Drew tested Pirita (or was Pirita testing Drew??) As Drew was unpacking his sail, he realized that he had brought the Estonian colors—just a coincidence??

As Aarne, Drew, and I were walking home from the Pirita beach, we noticed that one of the young boys in the sailing class had lost his line. Evidently he had forgot to put a knot in the end of the line, or perhaps his knot had come undone. The strong wind was blowing his little boat toward the bridge, and his mast was not going to clear the bridge surface. While he struggled to hold the boom with his hands, the wind filled his sail and pushed the boat up against the marina wall on which we were walking. Although we did not want to embarrass this young sailor by leaning over the railing to hold his mast for him, in the end that became the only solution until his instructor could come to tow him back to the launch ramp.

Later the three of us talked about how impressive a lesson this must have been for the boy. From now on his knots will no doubt be excellent. So when I see the tiny white sails all clustered together like waterbirds out in the bay, I imagine that the boy with his improved knots is one of them. And I wonder if these adventurous children understand the history that launches them into their sailing.

--Libby

OLDE HANSA

2008-06-28T22:26:00.004+03:00

There are those historians who argue that people who lived in the Middle Ages were happier overall than people who lived at any other time in human history. If this is true, then Tallinn, which developed during the 1300s, would certainly have been a happy place. A re-creation of this moment of human happiness is the restaurant Olde Hansa, in the center of the old town.

Sure, it is all glitz and show, but it is a fun place. The waiters are friendly and personable, and multilingual, and the atmosphere is studied olde tyme, with beams and banners and painted walls galore. The restaurant is on three separate floors and the live Renaissance music (lutes and recorders) is charming. But the best part is the food and drink. The honey beer (mead) is a “must drink” and the food choices vary from wild boar to elk to even bear. The best choice is a roasted ham hock that is served with barley and sauerkraut. All in all, it is quite possible that people who ate like this would have been very happy indeed.

-- Aarne

JAANIPÄEV

2008-06-28T18:47:00.006+03:00

There is a famous letter, written by a German cleric, sometime in the 19^th century, complaining to his superiors in Germany about the loose morals of the Estonian people. The good father attests to the fact that his flock would come to his church on midsummer night as required, but that afterwards they would all go out and have large bonfires and sing, and drink, and dance, and have sex.

I have always held that this cleric’s complaint accurately characterizes the Estonians’ approach toward religion. The church has always tried to take pagan celebrations away from the people, the expropriation of the midwinter holidays being the most successful example of this. But they have not succeeded with Jaanipäev, at least not in Estonia. The only thing they did was to name the otherwise nameless day. (Jaan is the common Estonian name for John and päev is day, so it’s the vulgar version of St. John’s Day, which is what the church wanted to call midsummer day).

Today the Jaani tradition lives, and it is coupled to a national holiday that occurs on the 23^rd of June when the nation commemorates the victory of the Estonian Liberation Army over the troops of the German Landeswehr at Võnnu (Cēsis, Latvia) in 1919. This was a decisive battle against Baltic Germans who wanted to retain the region as a German colony. The fate of the young republic was decided on that day, and thus both the 23^rd and the 24^th of June are, as one Estonian said with a straight face, “Holy Days”. Indeed, the capital city empties out. Woe be to you if you want a bottle of milk or a loaf of bread. The nation is celebrating both its independence, and its summer.

We went to a Jaanipäev celebration a few kilometers up the coast, to a town named Viimsi. They have an open air museum of history, including a village swing, which was put to great use by the youngsters.

There were bands that played tunes ranging from Euro Pop to old country to patriotic, and some of the old people had a great time dancing.

As midnight approached, the great fire was slowly dying, and the sun was setting in Finland across the gulf. During this night it would not ever get really dark, and dawn was only a few hours away. In the meantime, the Estonians celebrated their day as they had for centuries. There was drinking, and dancing, and singing, and whatever.

--Aarne

STORKS

2008-06-28T17:07:00.004+03:00

“This stork comes into a bar and asks for a beer.” And so on and so on. Jokes like that are funny because of the incongruity of the situation. A stork does not, under usual circumstances, walk into a bar and ask for a drink.

Similarly, I did not expect to see storks walking calmly around a newly mown hay field, looking for little critters whose cover has just been blown. So seeing these two long-legged fellows for the first time made for a potential car wreck.

The truth is that storks are common fowl in southern Estonia, and it is not at all unusual to see their nests on utility poles. One wonders if they have a connection to the hot wire to plug their refrigerators into. Maybe they don’t have a need to walk into a bar to get a beer.

--Aarne

OF BONES AND STONES

2008-06-25T11:39:00.006+03:00

In the 1920s the cloister was a convenient place to get building material. The stones, which had been held together since the early 1400s with a mortar made from egg whites, were readily accessible and free. And there were old walls and ruins everywhere. So when my grandfather started to build his house and dug into the ground he found walls and arches, and used the stones from these to build his foundation. He told his son, my father, that he had found doorways and passages, and that he was sure there were tunnels underground, probably escape routes leading from the old cloister, he speculated – a rumor that persists to this day.

In the late 1990s, when we started to dig the foundation for our house on the site of my grandfather’s house, we encountered the same ruins, but now these stones had historical value and we had to stop construction until the heritage protection people could do an archeological dig. Unfortunately, they did not have the money to conduct such a dig, so we paid for it, setting back the construction of our house by over year. But it was neat to see the ruins, which turned out to be of a house constructed in the late 1300s, probably to house the workers who went on to build the cloister. The picture below shows some of these ruins. Note that right behind me there is a more substantial wall with modern mortar. This is part of the foundation my grandfather built.

We did not discover any priceless artifacts, but several neat stones turned up. The two stone fragments below are clearly in Latin but there is not enough of it to make out what the message was.

After the dig was done we had a large hole in the ground. How now to build our house? Clearly none of us wanted to destroy the ruins, but there appeared to be no better building site on our lot (as had been attested to by the builders 700 years ago, and by our grandfather). So we decided to fill the entire hole up with sand, being careful to preserve as much of the structure as possible, and to build the house on a floating concrete slab. The elevation of the house had to be raised to make this possible. But there was a limit to the increase in elevation and there was one particularly interesting arch that would have had to have been destroyed if we were to go ahead with the construction. The solution was to allow the arch to stick up through the floor! We put a glass case around it and now history pops out from the middle of our floor as a daily reminder of the people who used to live and work on this very spot.

-- Aarne

THE FOURTH OF JULY

2008-06-19T21:16:00.002+03:00

It was a “Fourth of July” party on the “Sixteenth of June”. The huge tent was full of people; the food was excellent; and anyone who was anyone was there. Hendrik Ilves, the president of Estonia made an appearance. The prime minister came in and looked around. Arnold Rüütel, the former president, sat down at a table and waited for people to come talk to him. It was network heaven.

I had received an invitation to the Fourth of July bash through a fellow expatriate, and I figured it would be fun to see what kind of a party the ambassador from the United States would throw.

Not knowing anyone important at the party, I talked to the Marines. The corporal admitted that this was a cushy job. All he had to do was to carry the flag around now and then and spend the rest of the evening chatting up pretty girls.

As it was, he bungled his one and only duty that evening. At the appointed time, the Marine color guard got all ready to march to the podium, but the Estonian band struck up a march that was much too fast for them to march to, so they tried unsuccessfully to stay in step to their own tempo. The crowd parted in front of them as they marched to the podium, and there they stood, with their backs to the audience, as the band struck up the Star Spangled Banner. Then, for good measure, I guess, they played the Estonian national anthem as the Marines stayed on the podium with their backsides to the audience. I looked around, and there was not a single Estonian flag in sight in the entire huge tent.

With the conclusion of this song, the Marines did an about face and blundered back down the podium, continuing through the crowd as the band struck up the same march in quick time. That was it. Afterwards I asked the corporal if he got paid for this. He laughed as he filled his beer glass and headed for a bevy of very good looking women.

Then it was time for the ambassador to give his talk. He said that he was immensely proud. Of what it was not clear. He gave no specifics, and no substance. I guess he figured that it was enough to be proud.

And then he told us why the Fourth of July celebration was on the 16th of June. It turned out that it was his wife’s birthday (everyone, for some reason, applauded at this news). What his wife’s birthday had to do with the Fourth of July is unclear, except that maybe the ambassador could throw a big birthday bash for his wife and get the people of the United States to pay for it.

I came away from the event thinking that we Americans certainly could have found a better person to do this job. Being a big contributor to George Bush’s campaign should not have been sufficient qualification for representing the United States of America to the Republic of Estonia. It was an evening when to be an American was an embarrassment.

-- Aarne

KOLKHOZ

2008-06-18T22:00:00.004+03:00

“You want to buy this?” he said hopefully.

“No, no,” I said. “We’re from Tallinn.”

He was trying to get me to buy the run-down buildings that were once a collective farm, near Tartu in central Estonia. We had driven in the driveway not expecting to find anyone and instead encountered him just as he was closing the door of the building where he keeps his sheep. I don’t know who was more surprised, he or us. There was nobody else around, and the place was deserted. We struck up a conversation.

“Did you get any rain yesterday in Tallinn?” he said.

“Yes, it rained hard, and we needed it,” I responded.

“You don’t really need rain in Tallinn. You don’t grow potatoes there.”

I laughed. The attitude of the farmers down south toward the city slickers in Tallinn is all too familiar.

What he wanted me to buy was the remnants of a kolkhoz, from the Russian word for a collective farm. Skeletons of collective farms now litter the Estonian countryside – abandoned and ugly – a testament to a failed experiment.

In 1944, Leninist/Marxist communism in Estonia targeted private farms. In order to drive the farmers off their farms and into the kolkhozes, the state imposed high taxes and restrictions on selling products from privately owned farms. When the farmers still resisted, in 1949 the Russians deported the ones they thought were the biggest troublemakers and sent them to labor camps in Siberia. The other farmers got the message. Survival required moving family and meager belongings to a bare room in a cement block building and participating in cooperative farming.
But something strange happened. As the country became fully collectivized, the farm output declined, steadily decreasing from the high point in 1938, the last year of independence. This made no sense to the central planners in Moscow. The theory said that if farmers are concentrated into larger farms where there is economy of scale (only one tractor that is always busy instead of ten tractors that sit idle 90% of the time), and where there is common child care, common kitchen and common food preparation, the output and efficiency will increase as the costs decrease. The planners recognized that moving farmers to the collectives was traumatic for them, and thus allowed each family to have little garden plots for private crops. The productivity of these small private plots should have been a warning to the policy-makers in Moscow, for these plots, which represented only 4% of the farmed land, produced fully 22% of the farm output. How could this happen?

Much remains to be written about the collectivization experiment, but the reasons for its failure are fairly clear. Taking land from private production and giving it to a commune reduces the incentive of the farmers to work hard. That’s why you need propaganda, and the secret police, and fear, to keep people in line. Put yourself in the place of the farmers. Everyone in the kolkhoz gets paid exactly the same, and that is essentially nothing (the pay for workers in the kolhoz did not change over decades while prices increased many fold, making the workers essentially slaves). But maybe you are enthusiastic and you work hard. Where does it get you? Exactly the same place as the guy next to you who does the absolute minimum. After a while you concentrate on just staying alive and tend your own little plot, and simply do what you can to help your family. You know that there is no future for you, or for your kids, for your children will also be forced to work at the kolkhoz and will not be allowed to leave, just like slaves.

The worst part of the kolkhoz experiment was what it did to the agricultural productivity of the land. If a manager of a kolkhoz needed to meet production quotas, one of the ways to do that (besides lying about it) was to over-fertilize the land. Not only did this over-fertilization produce ground and surface water pollution, but is slowly destroyed the structure of the soil as the phosphates precipitated out. The managers had no reason to worry about the land. It was not theirs. They were just working there.

Today in Estonia the private farm is coming back. As you drive through the countryside you see more and more land under cultivation, and small farm buildings with barns and tractors (that are only used 10% of the time). The country has lost two generations of farmers, and is now trying hard to convince people to go back to the land. Anyone interested in becoming a farmer here will find that land is available. All you have to do is to grow potatoes and hope for rain.

-- Aarne

VILLEM REBANE

2008-06-18T19:27:00.006+03:00

Ants Rebane was a peasant who tilled a farm just north of Tartu, in the middle of Estonia. He had three sons, and only one of them, the oldest, could take over the land, so his third son, Villem, had to find other work and he decided to become a blacksmith. Villem had one son, August, who had greater interests than being a blacksmith. He liked school, and he liked to read. He liked music and attended concerts. He began to collect things like stamps and match books and ex libris (bookmarks). Eventually he went north to Tallinn to get an education and to seek his fortune. But that was a turbulent time, and he got involved in some political activities in the interest of a free Estonia, and this put him in harms way. He had learned a trade in the meantime, of typesetting, and took this with him to Helsinki, across the Gulf of Finland. There, at the Estonian House, he met a young lady whose spark and verve appealed to him, and soon Elviira and August were married. By 1910 they felt that it was safe to return to Estonia, and two years later, they had their first child, a girl named Aino, who was my mother.

August never had a picture of his father, so he drew a pencil sketch from memory. You can see his signature on the lower right corner.

Underneath the picture August had written the following,

which translates as

Villem Rebane, the son of Ants, smith at Lähte village, Äksi township, Tartu. Born 15 January 1851. Died 4 March 1915. Buried in Äksi cemetery.

We recently took a trip down south and found the Äksi chapel. It is one of the most beautiful chapels I have ever seen, stately and earnest and humble all at the same time. Besides, next to
it was a restaurant that served some pretty good lunch so my worldly needs were also met.

The cemetery is about two kilometers down the road from the chapel but we did not venture there to see if we could find Villem’s grave. It is enough to know that he is there, and to be able to tell him that his son did well in life, and that his granddaughter, who he never met, also had a full and eventful life, and that his great grandson was last seen poking around in his old neighborhood.

-- Aarne

THE SINGING REVOLUTION

2008-06-14T18:21:00.004+03:00

Chris Endy, a historian of some note, and coincidentally my step-son, told me of a thesis expressed some time ago by a political scientist who set out to defend nationalism. His idea was that nationalism is good because it makes it possible for each nation to contribute something special and unique to the world. If this is right, then what can Estonia claim to having contributed to the world?

The answer is not Skype (invented in Estonia) or even Baltic herring in sour cream with boiled potatoes (which is still a state secret). Chris believes that Estonia’s contribution to the world is the power of song, and he might be right.

The tradition of song in Estonia runs deep into the roots of the culture. The first Üldlaulupidu (National Singing Festival) was held in Tartu in 1869, and these have continued every four or five years even through the darkest of times. Choirs of all kinds from all regions of Estonia gather in Tallinn at the Lauluväljak (Singing Field) to raise their voices as one people. The present stage where the song festival is held holds 20,000 singers, and there is room for an audience of 300,000. That is about thirty percent of all the Estonians in the country!

The song festivals continued to be held throughout the Soviet time. Stalin thought, incorrectly it turned out, that cultural identify ought to be encouraged because this would convince more people to embrace communist ideals. He also thought that cultural events can be shared by others in the USSR and that this would promote solidarity. Thus every song festival in Estonia during the occupation had its requisite visitors and participants from the far-flung reaches of the empire. But Stalin made a strategic blunder. Cultural events only highlighted national differences and kept alive the hope of freedom and self determination for each of the captive nations. That tradition fed directly into “The Singing Revolution” eventually ending the Russian occupation of Estonia and the formation of a free republic.

The revolution started innocently enough. During the Old Tallinn Days in 1988 a stage was set up in the town square where concerts were to be held. The performers were increasingly enboldened by the reactions of the people, and by the apparent inability of the KGB or the police to do anything. The 15,000 people finally decided that the town square was too small, and marched the three miles to the song festival site. They sang old songs and stayed through the June white night. By word of mouth, the event encouraged others to come the next night, and after six days there were over 150,000 people in the singing field, holding hands and singing. Then an amazing thing happened. A drummer from a rock band got on his motorbike and rode around the field holding aloft the Estonian blue/black/white flag! This was the first time many of the participants at the singing field had ever seen the national flag. Then, as if on signal, others unfurled the flags that they had secretly kept hidden for 45 years, and the field was awash in blue, black, and white.

The national singing festival was scheduled for the next year, 1989. At the festival the mood was one of excitement and optimism for the future, but also of fear in the knowledge that the Soviets still had the power to crush dissent. Although people were no longer being arrested for flying the national flag, the country was not yet free and independent, and the organizers of the festival did their best to temper the enthusiasm. But at the end of the festival, the crowd would not leave, and instead started to sing the national anthem which the communist authorities had forbidden them to sing. The 20,000 on stage joined in -- all without a conductor! At the end of the three verses, they started again from the start, refusing to quit. After the third time through, it was evident to all that Soviet power had been dissipated. It was a revolution in song – a singing revolution.

The events that followed are complex and I don’t have the time to recount them all. They are beautifully told in the film “The Singing Revolution”, presently playing in 60 theaters in the United States, and by the accompanying book written by my brother, Priit Vesilind. For more information, go to www.singingrevolution.com.

-- Aarne

TALL HERMANN

2008-06-13T15:38:00.009+03:00

Pikk Hermann (Tall Hermann), the tower originally constructed by the Danes during the years 1360 to 1370, is 45 meters high and dominates the old wall surrounding Tallinn. It is also the most sacred and recognizable icon of the Estonian people. The presence of the blue, black, and white flag, first hoisted up the flagpole on 12 November 1918, a few months after the declaration of independence, symbolizes free Estonia.

But the flag on top of this tower, as the country itself, has had a turbulent history. On 27 July 1940 the Russian invasion replaced the tri-color with a red Soviet flag. On that day my father was in Tallinn and he remembered watching a young communist climb up the pole to release the Estonian flag that had been purposefully stuck up there and to replace it with the red flag. The German occupation the following year allowed for a brief flying of the Estonian flag, but then in 1944 the Red Army took over the country and the Estonian flag was not seen again for 45 years. It its place came a god-awful looking flag of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic.

It wasn’t until 1989 that some brave Estonians defied the Soviet rules about national flags and ran up the tri-color, fully expecting to be arrested. But nothing happened, and the flag has been flying there ever since. It is probably difficult for people whose countries have not been brutally occupied by belligerent neighbors to understand just what the presence of that flag on top of Pikk Hermann means to Estonians.

The tower is attached to a large palace complex that was built by Peter the Great to house his ministers and bureaucrats who were to administer the Estonian colony. Over the years the building has maintained its governmental status, and today it houses the Estonian parliament, or Riigikogu. The front of the building looks across to the Russian orthodox cathedral, while the side runs into Pikk Hermann. The style of the architecture is clearly from the 1700s.

Nestled inside the large palace there is another building, constructed much later, that today houses the parliament chambers. The walls of the parliament assembly hall are flag blue, which is their original color from the 1920s. During the Soviet time the walls had been painted what can only be described as “first grade pale green”.

When we took the tour of the parliament building the guide explained that the design of the inner parliament building was in the expressionist style. I looked this up, and one of the definitions is that expressionism refers to art that expresses intense emotion. Such art occurs during periods of social upheaval and the art is supposed to have the power to move the viewer with strong emotion.

I am not so sure the parliament hall moves me with strong emotion, but I have no doubt that the flag on top of the tall tower attached to the building does.

--Aarne

LILACS

2008-06-13T07:06:00.003+03:00

Time travels both linearly and cyclically. Linear time has caused me to be 69 years old today. But cyclical time has brought me back to the thirteenth of June, and back to where I was all those many years ago.

When I was born, I gave my mother a hard time. My father was so happy that both my mother and I were well that when he came to visit the next day he brought an entire branch of a blooming lilac bush into the hospital and set it at the foot of her bed. What the nurses had to say about this is unknown. I have always imagined that the same bush, or one of its progeny, is presently growing in our yard, and sure enough, on the thirteenth of June, the lilacs here are in full bloom. I am sure my mother loved them at the foot of her hospital bed.

--Aarne

MI, A NAME I CALL MYSELF...

2008-06-07T20:09:00.004+03:00

I had joined the Hamilton Citizen’s Band in

New Zealand

during my 1977 sabbatical. We were rehearsing, and the director looked at me said, “Play the third crotchet in the first measure after the double bar.”

I remember looking at him with a blank stare.

Then, in desperation, I had leaned over to the woman to my right in the second cornet section and asked, “What’s a crotchet?”

She pointed to a quarter note.

“That’s a quarter note,” I said.

“That’s a crotchet,” she said.

And the light dawned. All the notes had names. It turned out that a quaver was an eighth note, a minim was a half note, and so on. The musical notation was the same, but the names were different.

This year I had the same trouble playing with the Tallinn Tehnikal Ülikooli Puhkpilli Orkester (The Tallinn Technical University Wind Orchestra). I realized I was in trouble soon after I sat down in the euphonium section, when the director (a dynamo of a woman named Reet Brauer) asked me to play a “mi”.

“What on earth is a mi?” I thought to myself, trying madly to remember something from the The Sound of Music. Reet sensed my discomfort and asked the entire section to play a mi, and mi turned out to be an E. “Doh, a deer, a….” etc.

I have learned a few more things. There are no “flats”, but “bemols”, and measures are “takts” and so on. Just as in New Zealand, the page of music looks the same, but the spoken language of music is different.

Once the music is played and is in the air, however, it knows no nationality. And musicians from all over the world are united in their love of playing in bands, as I have again learned from my experience here. I was warmly welcomed and made to feel at home with the wind band, and even played a concert with them.

The music they have is a mix of old stuff from the Soviet time and a few purloined pieces from other bands. Most interesting to me is the music from years past. Few of these pieces have an identified composer, and none are of course copyrighted. Others are of curious parentage. We played a piece entitled “Dixie Patrol” and it turned out to be the old Glenn Miller favorite, “American Patrol” with a few bars of “Dixie”. My new-found friends chuckled when they told me that the title had to be changed to accommodate the Soviet censor who would not have allowed the band to play anything American.

LANGUAGE

2008-06-04T22:16:00.003+03:00

It’s the orange color that gets you first. The signs are orange, the shelves are orange, and the sales people are orange. In amongst this orange you can buy all the things Home Depot sells – garden stuff, hardware, lights, lumber, and on and on. The store is BauHof, in Tallinn, but it could just as well be Home Depot in Woodsville NH.

Except for one glaring difference. The signs in the store here are all in Estonian. Only Estonian. It would be difficult to find anything in this store written in Russian. Although almost everyone in the store, both customers and clerks, speaks Russian, there is no presence of the Russian language.

There are good historical and sociological reasons for why in this country Estonian is now used exclusively. During the Soviet time, Russians (and other ethnic groups) came to Tallinn because the city offered a better place to live than most other places in the USSR. The better quality of life was enhanced by the fact that TV signals from Helsinki, Finland, were available, and thus there was a window to the West. The Russian population of Tallinn increased to where perhaps half of the people here now would not consider themselves native Estonians. It is thus all the more interesting that the written signs and the working language in the shops and the city is purely Estonian.

Part of this is a reaction by Estonians who, during the Soviet time, were watching their language and culture rapidly being Russified. There was every reason to believe that Estonia as a culture would someday just disappear. Independence in 1991 allowed them to counter this by removing all vestiges of Russian from everyday life and by emphasizing their own language.

A second reason for the exclusive use of Estonian is that there is a genuine desire on the part of Estonians to build a new nation based on principles and values -- a nation that can co-exist peacefully with its neighbors. A national slogan says it best: “Ühiselt ehitatud riik”, or roughly, “A home-built nation.” And Estonians recognize that the building of this new nation requires the use of a common language. The majority of Russian-Estonians in Tallinn have bought into the ideal, and want to be part of this nation building. They understand well why the signs in the BauHof are only in Estonian.

Constrast this to what is happening in the USA. In America, we seem to be saying that it is no longer necessary to have a common language. We are suggesting that Spanish can be used just as well as English, and we seen to accept the fact that eventually we will have a nation with two official languages.

But history does not treat well nations that do not have a single language. With very few exceptions, multiple official languages in one country has always led to tensions, conflict and discrimination. What the Estonians understand, and what the Americans seem to have forgotten, is that it is language that makes both a nation and a nationality. If we Americans value our nation, we need to take a lesson from the Estonians and be ONE nation, …. indivisible.

-- Aarne

THE HOUSE OF LIISU AND VILLEM

2008-06-01T21:18:00.006+03:00

When my great grandfather Villem came to Pirita he and his wife Liisu built a small farm house between the Pirita cloister and the river. It was very much like some of the small farms on display at the open air museum in Tallinn, with a thatched roof and all rooms in a row, including the barn where animals were kept during the winter. We are fortunate to have a picture of this house, with my great grandmother Liisu sitting in front.

When Priit and I first got our land back in 1993 we were not able to start work on the big house because there were people still living there. But the little house, Liisu and Villem’s old place, was empty and we could begin the renovation. The place was in terrible shape, with a crumbling foundation and rotting wood, and full of rubbish -- 50 years of accumulated of trash. We hired a local architect and contractor and got started. They did a great job and brought the house back to life. Here is what it looks like today.

When my father left Estonia in 1944, only a few weeks before the Russians came back, he had folded up an Estonian flag and hidden it under the eaves of Villem’s house. He said later that when he did that, it occurred to him that maybe he will not be around to retrieve the flag, but he hoped that his sons would. We did not find the flag when we renovated the house (there had been a new roof on the house and the roofers no doubt found the flag), but now his sons have raised the flag in front of the house. I think he would be pleased.
--Aarne

KONSTANTIN PÄTS

2008-05-31T21:57:00.008+03:00

Every American citizen knows who George Washington was. The father of our country. The capital city was named after him. The Washington Monument. The dollar bill!

But who was Konstantin Päts?

When our family was in the displaced persons camp in Germany it was common to see in private and public places a picture of a dour looking old fat guy with medals on his chest. I remember that my father venerated him, and that his feelings were shared by the other Estonians in the camp. Konstantin Päts was someone very special to them.

Päts (the name means a small loaf of bread, attesting to his humble Estonian background) led an incredibly turbulent and interesting life. He was born in 1874 and grew up in the town of Pärnu, and then finished his law degee at Tartu University. Next he went into the Russian army and fought with the Tsar’s troops. He came back to Estonia and was elected to various positions, including the mayor of Tallinn, an honor he declined because he was not a native Russian, and he thought it better for the city to have a Russian as mayor. Then came the revolt of 1905 during which he and many others battled against the Tsar’s troops. The revolt was put down with incredible cruelty, with over 500 Estonians murdered. Päts was fortunate to escape, but was sentenced to death in absencia. Because the political situation in Russia was fluid, he was able to come back some years later and serve a shorter sentence. But he continued his revolutionary activities, and in 1918 he was one of three men who declared Estonia to be an independent nation. The next invasion of Estonia was by the Germans who wanted to set up a German protectorate for the Kaiser, and once again Päts ended up in jail, this time in a Polish prison. Finally he was able to come back, and after the War of Independence was won in 1920, he was elected the first executive of the fledgeling republic.

The Estonians had no experience in self-governance. They bickered and fought among themselves, searching for something that everyone could agree on. There was no constitution as such, and there wasn’t even an office like president. "Riigivanem" was the closest they came to that, and that simply implied that the holder of this office was the guardian of the country. They were deathly afraid of strong leadership, very much like the American forefathers feared having a king.

In the early 1930s, given the turbulent politics and the effects of the global depression, many people looked to Germany for political guidance. The fascist movement in Estonia became powerful, and these people tried to recruit Päts to be their leader. Päts instead decided to declare a state of emergency and to govern with dictatorial powers. He then dissolved the fascist party and put their leaders in jail. This ploy worked, and the years that followed, the late 1930s, was a period of stability and economic growth. But Päts did not want to be a dictator, and pushed through a new constitution, based on the Belgian model, that severely curtailed his own powers. He wanted the country to go back to being a true democracy. And true to his word, by 1938 the new constitution was in place and the country no longer had a dictator with emergency powers. It did not surprise anyone that Konstantin Päts was democratically elected the first president of Estonia. This has to be one of the few times in the history of the world where a dictator has stepped down and received the eternal gratitude and love of the country.

The boom time was cut short by the invasion of the Russian army first in 1939, and then by the full-scale takeover in 1940, culminating in the Red Terror. Päts was of course arrested and taken to Russia, where he died in a psychiatric hospital (a favorite place for political prisoners).

In 1991, after regaining independence, Estonia negotiated with Russia to bring back the remains of Konstantin Päts so that the country could provide him a proper burial. But the event was more personal than national, and his grave is starkly unimposing. A simple stone.

Outside of Estonia Konstantin Päts is basically unkown. If you Google his name, you get almost nothing in languages other than Estonian. Even in Estonia there are few portaits of him in public places, and I have yet to see one in a private house. There are no cities or states or even streets named after him, and most certainly there is no huge monument attesting to his role as the father of the country. And yet Estonia would not exist if he had not been willing to devote his own life to the young nation and had not taken unimaginable risks in its behalf. He was quite a guy. He had sisu.
-- Aarne

THE EDUARD VESILIND PARK

2008-05-31T11:36:00.005+03:00

The history is muddled, but we do know that Villem Vesilind came to Pirita with his three sons – Ado, Otto, and Eduard. The three Vesilind boys owned a local store which Ado managed, and they had a farm that produced meat and produce that Eduard took by boat to Tallinn and sold in the city market. He also had an arrangement with many restaurants to supply them with meat and fish. In short, things went well, especially for Eduard, our grandfather, who to us was always known as “Taat”.

Taat owned some land around Pirita and called it collectively “Lauri Talu”, or “Lauri Farm”. (How he could have known that one of his great granddaughters would be named “Laurie” is a mystery.)

One of the plots of land in Lauri Talu was on a river island, immediately behind the old cloister. Here is a 1930s aerial view of Pirita. The cloister is the ruin in the middle of the picture, and the river island is to the right and down from the cloister. You can see how the island is divided up and cultivated. Taat's piece of the island was at the tip of the island at the river bend, immediately to the right of the ruins.

When the land was given back to us in 1993 we decided to protect this little piece of land from development, and thought that the best thing we could do would be to have a long-term lease with the nuns in the new convent that was just under construction. They agreed that it would be a shame to have development on the island, and accepted the deal. By the year 2002, however, the governmental structure of Pirita had matured, and it became clear that the town would never allow this island to be developed, so we decided to deed it to the town.

But the gift had two stipulations. First, that the land would always remain public park land, and second, that the park would be named after our grandfather, Eduard Vesilind. And so it is. The stone marker is there, and the curious public has worn a path from the road to the marker. I picture Taat with a bemused expression on his face if we could have told him that his old hay field was the Eduard Vesilind Park.

-- Aarne

THE BLACKHEADS

2008-05-30T18:38:00.005+03:00

Last year the city of Tallinn celebrated the estimated 600th anniversary of the Brotherhood of St. Maurice, or better known as The Brotherhood of the Blackheads. During Hanseatic time, some wealthy and energetic young merchants and nobles formed a fraternity of sorts, open only to unmarried young and rich Germans. They sometimes compared themselves to the court of King Arthur – a comparison that is even today used by organizations such as “The Roundtable” – a group of young men bent on socializing and networking for common benefit. The Brotherhood of Blackheads chose St. Maurice, a black officer in the Roman legion who was martyred and beatified in the year 287, as their patron saint, and thus gained the name for their organization. The Brotherhood of the Blackheads became quite wealthy and established chapters in many of the old Hanseatic capitals. Amazingly, chapters of the Brotherhood survive today in some German cities.

As the Order of the Blackheads became powerful it began to exert its influence to the detriment of those the brotherhood did not like, or those who they considered inferior, such as the Estonians. Historical records show how these young men treated others with distain, or worse, certain in the knowledge that there was no need to temper their abuses.

In Tallinn the order built a house in the Old Town that can only be described as a fraternity house. The front door is one of the most photographed doors in the world.

If you look carefully at the door, you will see a relief of St.Maurice himself.

The Blackheads house in Tallinn has been beautifully renovated, and includes a small concert hall. A few weeks ago we went there to hear a concert by the professional National Men’s Choir, which was instrumental in keeping alive the singing tradition in Estonia during the dark periods of the Russian occupation. My nephew, Bill Vesilind, sang with this group for some years before he had to quit in order to get a real job. Fatherhood will do that.

The concert was very nice, even though they tried to sing some very difficult pieces that they clearly did not enjoy. The best part of the concert was the encore when they sang a well-known Estonian song. They put their song sheets down, and just belted it out with gusto. That one song was worth the price of admission! It also occurred to me that these guys would not have made very good members of the Brotherhood of Blackheads. Or I hope not, anyway. I would hope that during the past 600 years we would have learned something about how to treat others with respect.

-- Aarne

THE BRONZE SOLDIER

2008-05-28T17:01:00.006+03:00

After the Second World War the Russians who had occupied Estonia decided to express their gratitude to the Red Army for driving the Germans out of Estonia by designing and erecting a memorial commemorating the defeat of the Nazis. They commissioned a famous local artist to cast a bronze statue of a young Russian soldier. It is a beautiful statue, and it became a memorial for the thousands of young men who perished in the war and whose bodies were never recovered. The authorities at the time decided to place the statue next to Karli Kirik, or Carl’s Church, in the very center of Tallinn. The location is a short walk from Toompea, the seat of government and Tall Herman, an ancient tower that symbolizes free Estonia. This was the “bronze soldier” that has been so much in the news.

The trouble with this memorial is that it commemorates something that did not occur. In the summer of 1944 the tide of the war was turning and it became quite clear that Germany was losing. The Russians were gaining on the eastern front and the Americans and their allies were moving into France from the D-Day landing. The German generals recognized the perilous situation in Estonia, and decided to avoid entrapment by withdrawing German troops back toward Germany, through the other Baltic countries, and into Poland. During the withdrawal from Estonia the Germans left behind the Estonian units that had been conscripted into the German army – Estonian boys in German uniforms. These boys were joined by an irregular Estonian army formed after the Germans left -- men and boys who remembered the Red Terror of 1941 and who under no circumstances wanted Russians back on Estonian soil. It was these forces that opposed the Red Army as it thundered across the border into Estonia. The fighting in Estonia in 1944 was between Estonians and Russians, not Germans and Russians, and the Russians were in no way “liberating” Estonia from the Germans. They were engaged in a blatant invasion of a sovereign nation. The Russian boys who died in that fight were not liberators, but invaders.

But all this was not understood by the Russians who occupied Estonia in the fall of 1944. They honestly believed that they were the liberators and that they had saved Estonia from the fascists. The Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty was kept secret in the USSR and the people believed that Estonia had invited the Russians into their country in order to set up a soviet republic. The Russian boys who died fighting in Estonia, they believed, were therefore liberators.

After Estonia regained its independence in 1991 there was a strong movement to relocate the statue. To Estonians it represented all the horror and deprivation of 50 years of Soviet rule, and it glorified the very people who had helped to cause this agony. If you want to get a sense of how they felt, imagine if the Germans, after defeating the French in the first years of WW II, had erected a large monument in Paris glorifying Germans soldiers, and had set it next to the Notre Dame cathedral. Once Paris was liberated, how long would it have taken the French to destroy this monument?

The bronze Russian soldier did not share the fate of the statues of Lenin and Stalin right after Estonian re-independence because the Estonians knew what it meant to the Russians. It was their memorial to loved ones lost in war, and in the early days of independence it was not worth the dissention that its relocation would have caused. And so it stood, right next to Karli Kirik, and, ironically enough, right across the square from the newly construction “Museum of the Occupation.”

Finally last spring the major of Tallinn ran for office promising to move the statue, and a year after taking office, he had the bronze soldier relocated to the Russian military cemetery. The timing of the move was terribly insensitive on his part, coming right before the Russian May 8^th WW II Victory Day that is one of the most important holidays in Russia. This served to anger the Russians both inside and outside of Estonia, resulting in large-scale rioting by Russian youths in Tallinn. After several nights of broken windows, looting, and many arrests, the riots subsided when the mayor forbade the sale of alcohol in Tallinn. The Russians then attacked Estonia in cyberspace, causing serious disruption of commerce and banking for more than a week and resulting in untold losses to the economy.

Now a year has passed and the bronze soldier is safely in a military cemetery where almost all of the graves are those of Russian soldiers who died during and after the war.

Incidentally, I enquired about an Estonian military cemetery and was told that there is no such thing, and in retrospect, this makes sense. The Russians had no time to honor the dead “fascists” they had defeated, and thus there are no cemeteries for those men who took arms against the Red Army. The Russians were the winners and they honored their own dead.

The new location of the bronze soldier is not easy to find (although the tour buses seem to find it quite easily.) We had to drive through some seedy neighborhoods to get there, but found that the statue itself had been beautifully set into its new stone foundation. The marker says simply “In honor of those who fell during the Second World War.” It is an appropriate place for the statue, honoring the dead who died in a fight the purpose of which they could not have understood.
-- Aarne

AN ORDINARY BUILDING

2008-05-24T03:43:00.003+03:00

Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a poem about Cologne, Germany, in which he described the town as being full of “monks and bones, and pavements flanged with murderous stones”. He could just as well have been talking about the Old Town section of Tallinn. Not only are the streets paved with cobble stones, but there must be thousands of nooks and crannies that have stories. The vast majority of these stories are lost, but some come to life when you read the placards attached to the buildings.

I stumbled on to one of these the other day. It was an ordinary enough building, somewhere down on Pikk street, but the placard told me that this building was far from ordinary.

A rough translation of the placard would be: “Here was housed the offices of the soviet occupation repression headquarters. FROM HERE BEGAN, FOR THOUSANDS OF ESTONIANS, A TRAIL OF SORROW AND SUFFERING.”

In 1941, after the occupation of Estonia, the Russians decided to deport 10,000 Estonians to Siberia. A knock on the door in the middle of the night, a harrowing train ride in cattle cars, many days without food or water, and then being dumped into labor camps. Who were these people who had to be deported? The people in this building decided that they were “enemies” to the Estonian Soviet, but actually they were ordinary people who had either achieved something in life or had any grain of leadership potential. Politicians, professors, engineers, school teachers, shop owners – the list went on and on. Enemies all. But the most cruel part of this was that these people had been incriminated by their own neighbors – neighbors who either held a grudge against them, or were jealous of some achievement, or just wanted to ransack the house after the owners had been arrested. And the Soviet functionaries were under orders to fulfill quotas demanded by Stalin. So in this building the Russian bosses and the Estonian stooges decided who was to be deported and who was to stay, and this is the place where the perilous journey for many Estonians began. Of the 10,000 people deported in 1941, only a third made it back alive to Estonia. Most perished in forced labor camps, or just died of hunger.

Imagine having your parents or grandparents disappear in this way, and then walking past the building that housed the offices where their names first were put on the list. Tallinn, in the course of Estonian history, has seen many cruelties inflicted on the Estonian people. Most of these places and incidents have been forgotten in history, but I hope we don’t ever forget what went on in this building.
--Aarne

WHAT THEY DON'T TELL YOU

2008-05-24T03:31:00.003+03:00

The old cliché is that you cannot really understand a country until you have lived there. This is true, of course, and understanding the culture, values, and societal underpinnings of a nation is very important. But this statement is also true in a far more trivial sense. Each country has its idiosyncrasies that are second nature to the natives but can cause great confusion to the visitor or immigrant. Here are some of the things you do NOT read about in the travel brochures about Estonia:

When buying with money, one never hands the bills to the cashier, but places the bills on a glass tray set between the cashier and the customer. The cashier in turn puts the change in the same tray from which you then take it. I have more than once extended my empty palm towards the befuddled cashier, only to sheepishly withdraw it.
The rear wheels of the carts in the grocery stores spin. Now you might think this is a minor difference, but these carts behaves irratically. They do not always go in straight lines and can turn every which way, even sideways. Not being aware of this can lead to some embarrassing collisions.
The road signs are all European, and once you break the code, they are pretty easy to understand. But what the tourist books don’t tell you is that in Europe the road signs indicate what you are allowed to do, not what you are NOT allowed to do. For example, a white arrow on a blue background at an intersection tells you that you may proceed straight through the intersection. No left, right, or U-turns allowed. In America, we put up signs that tell the motorist what they cannot do, so there might be a no left turn sign, or a no U-turn sign. In Europe, if the white arrow does not show it, it is not allowed.
Packaging for many items in the grocery store is of little help in identifying the product, especially if it’s not a staple. For example, Libby spent several days looking for baking power and baking soda. They are packaged differently than in the USA, and the writing is only in Estonian (and often Latvian and Lithuanian, as if these were of any use!)
It is very difficult to swear in Estonian. There just are no words that have been reserved as swear words. Most bodily function, body parts, and bodily excretions which serve as ready source of swear words in America are simply not available. So most Estonians have adopted English swear words, and these seem to function just as well when the occasion demands. So don't expect to get any swear words here. You'll just have to bring them with you.
Fried black bread with garlic is heavenly. It is the best thing on the menu. You rub the crisp fried bread with the clove of garlic and enjoy. Why do the guide books not tell you that?
English is spoken widely in Tallinn by the educated and those whose job it is to sell things. But you have to be prepared to encounter people who know absolutely no English. And if you drive out of Tallinn the chances of finding English speaking people will be minimal.
If you take mass transit (which is excellent, by the way) you have to be aware that having a ticket is not enough. You have to validate it using a little punch or electric stamp on the bus. Also, most bus drivers do not want to waste time selling you a ticket. If you don’t have one, they will just tell you to forget it. This is well and good unless you get caught by the transit police. Best to get a ticket at any kiosk.
There are no six-packs of beer. This is very surprising for a country that prides itself on producing good beer and consuming it at an impressive rate. At the grocery store you buy all bottles separately, or in cases of 24. Come to think of it, maybe it’s a 24-bottle six-pack!
It may have been invented in America, but the Estonians have taken the notion of the backyard barbecue to its logical conclusion. It’s called a “grill” in Estonian, and it involves a whole evening of outside eating, drinking, and camaraderie. The favorite meat is something called Šešlock, which is pork marinated in various solvents such as yogurt or wine sauce. To be invited to a “grill” during the long summer evenings is as nice as it gets.

-- Aarne

THE FINNISH INVASION

2008-05-11T08:56:00.003+03:00

Winston Churchill once said that America and

England

are one people, separated by a common language. The “one people” is true not only because of the language, but perhaps more importantly, because of shared values.

There is also a very special relationship between Estonia and Finland. We are one people, but in this case we are separated by the Gulf of Finland and an almost common language. When the Finno-Ugry tribes (the Ugry refers to the Magyars, or Hungarians) moved north they settled in diverse locations, and today, in addition to Finnish and Estonian, there are at least a dozen other distinct Finno-Ugry languages in the region to the east of Finland. Some of these languages are tiny enclaves, with a distinct language spoken by a single village. These languages, along with Finnish and Estonian, are so strange that they are not even in the Indo-European language group. Other than some modern words, there is no similarity whatever between the Finno-Ugry languages and all the other European languages.

Historically, Finland has also been a battleground for the wars between Sweden and Russia, and has also struggled for survival as a culture and as a nation. The years when Sweden controlled Finland were, as they were in Estonia, the “good times”, and those years under Russian control were the years of deprivation and repression. Finland finally achieved independence in 1917 when a weakened Russia was happy to not have Finland to worry about.

In 1939 the infamous Ribbentrop-Molotov treaty placed both Finland and Estonia in the Russian “sphere of influence”, and the Russians decided to occupy both countries. Unlike the Estonians, the Finns decided to fight. It was a brave effort. At first, during what became known as the Winter War, they threw back the mighty Red Army. Over 3000 Estonian young men went to Finland and volunteered to fight alongside the Finns (just as thousands of Finns had come to Estonia to fight alongside the Estonians during the War of Independence in 1918.) But the effort by the Finns was doomed, and they finally had to sign a peace treaty that gave Russia the province of Karelia, fully 1/10 of the country. The Finns have never forgotten that, and many still look toward the day when Karelia can again be Finnish.

When Estonia regained its independence in 1991, the support from Finland was crucial in the early years. This support was both official, through the government, and unofficial, from people to people. Most importantly, the Finns discovered that alcohol in newly independent Estonia was taxed at a very low rate and thus was incredibly cheap compared to the prices they had to pay in Finland, and they started to come over in droves. The ferries were full, and more were built to accommodate the weekend traffic. It was typical to see a Finn, stone drunk, stagger off the ferry in Helsinki, pushing a dolly with three cases of Saku (a very fine Estonian beer). The Finns came, and they spent, and their coming over provided the much-needed hard currency to bolster the free economy. In fact, during the early 1990s, the money Finns spent in Estonia represented fully 5% of the total Gross National Product of Estonia.

Since those days, the price of alcohol has increased, and the prices of other goods like hotels and restaurants has leveled out to European standards, so there is less reason for Finns to come. And yet they come, thousands at a time traipsing off the ferries, spending a day or two walking around Old Town, basking in the sun at cafes, and spending their money.

The other day I was sitting at an outside café when three Finnish ladies came in and sat down. The young waitress went over and one of the women told her what she wanted, in Finnish. The waitress had no trouble understanding her, first because what she said was close enough to Estonian to be understood (even I could make it out) but also because the waitress, as with most workers in the restaurants and Old Town shops, spoke enough Finnish to get along. It occurred to me that one of the reasons the Finns enjoy coming to Tallinn is that this may be the only city in the world where they can go and still get along in their native tongue.

The ubiquitous presence of the Finns in Estonia has, as you would suspect, provided fodder for ethnic jokes. Estonians joke about the Russians, but often this humor has a hard edge, and they joke about the Latvians, but nobody knows who they are so something is lost in the telling, but it is wonderful to be able to poke fun at our big brother to the north. For example:

The Finns are fortunate. They get to enjoy a joke three times. First when they hear the joke, second when the repeat the joke to someone else, and third when someone explains it to them.

An Estonian lady once told me that during the Soviet time there was a clear distinction made between the Estonians, who craved to maintain their national identity, and those who believed they were Russians (or at the very least, certainly not Estonians.) The Estonians, she said, were “meie inimesed”, or literally, “our people.” Most Estonians believe that the Finns, with all their foibles, are also “our people.” They have just had the misfortune to have been born in Finland.

--Aarne

THE SINGING WALLS OF HAAPSALU

2008-05-10T21:57:00.005+03:00

We were sitting in a small restaurant beside the castle wall as the late evening sun played on the stones. Libby had a glass of what surely must have been a mediocre house wine and said that she had read where the quality of the wine is often judged to be high when it is consumed in a congenial atmosphere. It’s the ambiance, she suggested, that makes the wine.

After dinner we went to hear the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir present works from both the Medieval past as well as works by the contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, performed in the cathedral within the Haapsalu castle. This castle, on the western coast of Estonia, has been attacked and destroyed and rebuilt and destroyed again and again by the Swedes, the Danes, and the Russians. In 1715 Peter the Great was so afraid that the Estonians and Swedes would rebuild the fort that when he finally captured it, he decimated the fortress and destroyed the town. During the early 18^th century only about 100 people lived in Haapsalu, but then the wide beach and the warm waters began to draw the rich and the powerful from St. Petersburg, and Haapsalu became a major tourist resort. Peter Tchaikovsky spent several summers there and even composed a little-known piece about Haapsalu.

Today the remains of the fortress are once again being restored, with the most impressive effort being the reconstruction of the bishoptic cathedral. In the days when the cathedral was first built, nobody could of course have predicted what the acoustics of the place would be like, but in this case, they were lucky. The acoustics are superb. You can hear a pin drop, and more importantly, you can hear the clarity and beauty of a human voice like nowhere else. It is within this place, within this context, that the works of Arvo Pärt must be heard to be appreciated. The quality of last night’s performance left us breathless.

But why Pärt, in this place? Some of you might not be familiar with his music. He has led an interesting life. Born in 1935, he was schooled in Estonia and then received most of his musical training at the Tallinn Conservatory. He started composing at a time when composers in the Soviet Union needed to tow the party line, but from the very start he was out of step with the party. As a part of his search for deeper meaning in life, he converted to the Russian Orthodox faith at a time when belonging to any church was frowned upon, and then began to write religious pieces that received international acclaim, all the while appeasing the political critics by occasionally knocking off a stock piece in praise of communism. Today his works are widely performed, and there is even an Arvo Pärt festival in Oregon every year. Most of his works are choral, usually a capella, although his “Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten” is a brilliant piece of orchestration for strings and bells that was used by Michael Moore in the film Farenheit 9/11 as the background music for the sequence showing the aftermath of the September 11th attack on New York City.

The musical technique Pärt developed, and for which he is most famous, is similar to the pealing of bells. When a bell is rung, the sound of the bell lingers for a time. If then other bells at different tones are rung, the effect is to sound a chord. Ringing bells in sequence tuned at C, E, G, for example, will give you a C major chord, but only as long as you still hear the C while the E and G are being rung. As soon as the C sound disappears, there is an opportunity to ring something else that will sound with the E and G which are still in the air, and so on. The technique requires that a note that has been sung or played continues to be in the consciousness of the listener.

And this is why the cathedral of the Haapsalu castle was the place to hear Pärt. It almost seemed, as Libby pointed out, that the walls themselves were singing. It would be difficult if not impossible to listen to the same music within any other hall and appreciate it as much as we did. It was the ambiance that made all the difference.

--Aarne

WHAT'S YOUR SIGN?

2008-05-09T09:31:00.010+03:00

Tallinn was one of the northern outposts of the Hanseatic League, an alliance of trading guilds that held a monopoly in the Baltic region during the 13^th to the 17^th century. Not unlike the modern European Union, cities could join the League and then put their commercial activities under the League control. Tallinn joined the League in 1285 and became a prosperous trade center. Much of the architecture in the Old Town dates from the Hansa years.

One of the problems with Hansa, as with today’s Europe, was that not all of the people spoke the same language. In addition, the vast majority of people could not read or write. Wealthy merchants employed professional “writers” who would not only look after the books but would also correspond with their counterparts in other cities.

Shop owners within a Hansa city had a problem with how to advertise their wares. If people spoke diverse languages and if most of them could not even read, how would the shopkeepers tell them what was for sale? The solution was to establish a series of icons, or clever wrought iron signs, that would have universal meaning. In Tallinn, some of these (or at least their modern replicas) remain. For example, a coffee house might be advertised with a metal pot.

Or an optometrist shop might have a picture of spectacles.

Or the baker might have a kringel dangling from the building.

Sometimes other symbols, like flags, might be used as a part of the sign, such as a metal Danish flag advertising the Danish Cultural Association.

Modern adaptations have included a sign for a puppet theater:

and (this is great!) for lingerie,

or for a stip club.

Sometimes the modern signs are intentionally mysterious, such as the one advertising a shop run by artisans.

The most obnoxious Hansa sign, however, is right inside the Old Town, and most Estonians are not loving it.

-- Aarne

ON THE ADVANTAGE OF SURPRISE

2008-05-07T13:46:00.008+03:00

So we’re on the big green bus en route to a concert in Tallinn. Now that my badly stubbed toe is better, I’m wearing my dress-up shoes and feeling good! On the bus I always stand near a door, so that I don’t have to work my way through a crowd when it’s time to get off. Like subway doors, these doors in the back of the bus close automatically.

But this time we’re standing near the rear door because we haven’t yet figured out how to get the little ticket-punching gadget to actually punch the required holes in our tickets. Even worse, we begin to giggle about our ineptness. The driver probably has not noticed us, but all the other passengers are watching to see if we’ll figure out the little gadget attached to the handrail. Nobody offers to help. I imagine them all thinking, “If Americans can’t figure out how to ride a bus, what are they doing in Iraq?” By observing other people getting on the bus, I finally figure out that you have to pull the green button toward you; the whole device is simply mechanical, not electronic. (This tip is not found in your guidebooks to Estonia.) Surely the rest of the evening will go well.

The concert is to be at the Tallinn Methodist Church, located along the bus route. But we’re not sure if the bus will stop right at the church. So we decide to get off before the bus might pass the church; we’ll walk the rest of the way. As we expect, the bus stops well before we get to the church. Aarne steps off first, in order to help me down. Just then the bus door closes between us. Smack. We have just a moment to stare at each other through the window before the bus pulls away with me on it. At least my ticket is properly punched.

Immediately I have a flashback to seventh grade angst—everyone is watching me to see what I’ll do next. So I laugh. Of course I’m OK. No, I don’t speak Estonian. No, I don’t know where this bus is stopping next. But I’m exuding OK-ness. I wonder if Aarne is worried.

There goes the church; my bus and I are speeding right past it.

After another half mile, the bus stops. I’m out! I figure I have just enough time to limp back as fast as I can in my dress-up shoes with my toe that’s beginning to ache again.

Finally, as I’m just half a block from the church, I see Aarne walking as fast as he can from the other direction. I limp faster. I wave. It’s suddenly romantic and funny; I’m thinking we should do this more often.

Now here’s the kicker. We get inside this weird looking 1980s interpretation of a modern church. I mean it’s nothing like the Methodist church in Beaver, Pennsylvania, which is the last Methodist church I’ve been in. This church is imaginative in a 1980s kind of way. Instead of a tower or steeple set on top of a boxy sanctuary, this sanctuary IS the inside of a steeple. So, when you face forward, it’s like being inside a bright white teepee with a supersized cross fixed to the very tilted teepee wall. (For those of you who know, love, and own garden gnomes, imagine being inside the hat of a gnome.) Not wanting to sit directly under this heavy-looking cross, we find good seats behind a short, young couple.

We know nothing in advance about this composer, Tõnu Kõrvits, or his piece—Kreegi vihik (2007). The performers, however, are the famous Eesti Filharmoonia Kammerkoor (Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir.) For this concert the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra will play with the 28-member choir. When in Tallinn, the choir performs regularly in this church, because the acoustics enhance the choir’s amazingly clear tone. Throughout this summer, the choir will travel around Estonia and its islands to sing in small, old village chapels—quite a different sort of venue. Choruses and choirs are more than music in Estonia; as shown in the documentary, The Singing Revolution, much energy for Estonian resistance to occupation and for independence came from national song festivals in the 1980s. So tonight we will hear how a young composer builds on this strong choral tradition.

Silence. The choir begins, each note clear like bells ringing, rising into the space of the steeple. The impression is of vertical sound. Then the orchestra enters in a different musical direction—horizontal, right at us. The choir and orchestra meet and separate thematically throughout the entire piece. It’s as if two individual ideas play off each other, moving toward and away from each other. It’s like water moving forward and then coming back upon itself in eddies. It’s the most beautiful, interesting, original music I’ve heard in so long. We are entranced.

The applause is warm, a standing ovation, and suddenly the young man in front of us is beckoned to the front. He is the composer! Good seats indeed.

Afterward I realize that there was no better way for us to arrive at the concert than the way we did…from different directions. And Aarne points out that, in the program notes, the composer calls himself a “modern romantic.”

--Libby

Links:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/content/articles/2005/05/31/salisbury_fest_estonian_choir_feature.shtml

http:/www.epcc.ee

CLEANING UP ESTONIA

2008-05-05T23:08:00.004+03:00

The objective was to clean up Estonia. The second objective was to get into the Guinness Book of World Records as having had the largest one-day clean up of trash and rubbish ever recorded. Both objectives were achieved.

The program was called “Teeme ära!” or roughly “Let’s do it!”, and it was a pure volunteer effort by a bunch of kids who thought they could organize the entire country to clean up fifty years of trash that had been dumped into the woods and along the roads. At latest count, there were about 50,000 people involved, and they collected over 8000 tonnes of trash. Let those numbers sink in a bit. 8000 tonnes is 8,000,000 kilograms, or 20,000,000 pounds of trash. And the 50,000 people who showed up to spend a pleasant Saturday immersed in other people’s refuse would be the same as 12,000,000 people showing up for a trash collection in the United States. Imagine the entire city of New York, out picking up and bagging rubbish. The effort in Estonia was just astounding.

The project was organized by some geeks who first located the major problem areas on Google maps and then calculated where the trash should be taken, all of this in order to optimize the collection. The maps were put on their web site and we downloaded our assignments before we went on Saturday.

We went with Andres and Triin (above), and their two-year-old Liisu whose heart was in it but who did not contribute very much, and were assigned to clean up the open space on the Pirita River, right across from our house. This was great, because I had wanted to clean this place up anyway, and now I was getting a lot of help. So we filled many plastic bags, put them in the car and took them to the flag station where they were transferred to dump trucks. I thought I was finished, but Andres, in his enthusiasm, volunteered to have us give another team a hand because they were having difficulty finishing cleaning up their assigned location.

This turned out to be private dump, with the age of trash going back at least 20 years. I would have thrown up my hands and called in a front end loader, but the Estonians dove right in, and by 4 o’clock we had the place looking pretty good. There were, I believe, another 20 years of trash under where we stopped, but at least now it looked presentable. We all repaired to the gathering point where we were treated to a bowl of some amazingly good pea soup.

As a reward, we all got buttons, which said “Tegeja” on them, or “Doer”. We went out there and we did it. It was an amazing day that we will not soon forget. The power of volunteers, harnessed and organized to achieve a good end, is impressive indeed.

ESTONIAN JOKES

2008-05-05T21:28:00.003+03:00

I have not been blogging lately because I have been busy trying to get the first draft of a book done. It’s on Estonian humor. You might remember a series of jokes about short books, like “What Men Know About Women” and “Italian War Heroes.” There are those who would add to this list, “Estonian Humor”. Many believe that Estonians are just not funny people. They believe that we Estonians are serious, taciturn, and reserved, and these descriptors are for the most part accurate. But underneath this façade you will find Estonians to be warm, generous, and friendly. And funny. But their humor is different and does not appeal to everyone. Often it is uniquely Estonian and does not travel well to other ethnic groups.

The title of this book, “Estonian Jokes”, could have two different meanings. First, an Estonian joke may be a joke told by others about Estonians, and I admit that often the Estonian offers a tempting target for such jokes. The second meaning of “Estonian Jokes” is that this is a collection of jokes told by Estonians. The truth is that in the case of this book, both of these meanings apply. These are jokes told by Estonians about Estonians. Sometimes they are cutting, especially when they skewer some of the more unattractive characteristics of Estonians, but mostly they are self-deprecating and funny to the very people who are being made fun of.

I started this short book about Estonian humor believing that the Estonian character is open to humor and that there exist jokes that can define that character. What I found is that there are essentially three different types of Estonian jokes, mirroring the often tragic national history.

Estonians have lived in present-day Estonia for at least a millennium. Their language is part of the Finno-Ugri family, with Finnish being the closest relative. Since the 1500s the region of Estonia has been conquered and overrun many times by Germans, Danes, Swedes, and Russians. The miracle is that Estonia continues to exist as a unique culture. The uniqueness of the culture is defined in many ways, including an ethnic humor, and it is this character that I have tried to capture in this book.

The first broad epoch in Estonian history I call Old Estonia, and this includes the period of subjugation to German nobility and the Russian Tsar, which ended with the war for independence and eventual establishment of the free republic of Estonia in 1918. This independence lasted only a short 20 years before the Russians once again invaded. I define the second epoch in Estonian history as the Soviet Time, beginning about 1939 with the occupation of Estonia, and ending in 1991 with the (re)declaration of independence. The third epoch in this book is the modern time, or New Estonia.

Here are a few samples of the jokes I have collected, two from each category:

Old Estonia

An old Estonian is driving to his summer home for the season and spies a dead crow on the road.
“This crow might be of some use,” he thinks and puts the dead bird into the trunk of his car.
In the fall the old Estonian is driving back from his summer home and he stops at the very same place, takes the dead crow out of the trunk and lays it on the road.
“Ahh, I didn’t need it after all,” he says to himself.

A poor talumees (farmer) had a single cow to sustain his family. During a severe thunderstorm, lightning struck and killed the cow. The poor man was absolutely distraught. He was on his knees, wailing and moaning in the rain and calling for God's justice.
God felt so sorry for the man that he appeared to him, apologized for the "friendly fire" and asked what He could do to make amends.
The farmer thought about the offer and replied:
"Kill my neighbor’s cow as well!"

Soviet Time

A Soviet bureaucrat complained to his superior, “I hear on the radio that we’re producing a lot of meat, milk, and butter. Yet my refrigerator is always empty. What shall I do?”
His superior answered, “Plug your refrigerator directly into your radio.”

When the general election took place, the workers and employees were led to the polls by Communist activists who handed them envelopes to be deposited in the ballot box. One worker who was more curious than the others opened his envelope and began to examine the ballot slip.
“What are you doing there?” shouted the activist.
“I’d just like to find out who I am voting for,” the worker replied.
“You confounded fool – don’t you know that this is a secret ballot?”

New Estonia

An American, a Russian, and an Estonian are riding in the same compartment in a train. The American takes out a pack of cigarettes, offers one to the others, and then throws the rest of the pack out the window.
“What did you do that for?” exclaim both the Russian and the Estonian.
“Ah, in America we have so many cigarettes…,” replies the American.
After a while the Russian takes out a bottle of vodka, offers it all around, and then throws the rest of the vodka out the window.
“What did you do that for?” ask the American and the Estonian.
“Oh, in Russia, we have so much vodka…,” replies the Russian.
Time goes by, and the Estonian sits in deep thought.
Finally he throws the Russian out the window.

After having dug to a depth of 100 meters last year, Scottish scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1000 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 1000 years ago. Not to be outdone by the Scots, in the weeks that followed, English scientists dug to a depth of 200 meters, and shortly after, headlines in the newspapers read, “English archaeologists have found traces of 2000 year old fibre-optic cable and have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech digital communications network a thousand years earlier than the Scots.” One week later, Estonian newspapers reported the following: “After digging as deep as 5000 meters in Narva, Estonian scientists have found absolutely nothing. They, therefore, have concluded that 5,000 years ago, Estonia's inhabitants were already using wireless technology.”

I have used only one criterion for choosing jokes for this book, and that is whether or not I thought they were funny. I admit this unabashedly, without apology. If any other person would have written a book on humor they would no doubt have chosen different jokes, for humor is highly personal. But my hope is that you will share at least some of my admittedly warped sense of humor and conclude that yes, once in a while, Estonians can be funny.

Aarne

KEEPING THE WITCHES AWAY

2008-04-30T23:29:00.003+03:00

Tonight is a scary night. The witches (nõiad) are out and about, and the only thing that keeps them away are bonfires. This evening there are thousands of bonfires all over the country, accompanied with good food, good cheer, and good beer.

Tomorrow is May the First, a holiday all over Estonia. There is no reason for this holiday except that the people got used to it during the years of the Soviet Union when it was one of the most important holidays of the year. May the First was the workers’ holiday, a day not unlike our Labor Day, except this day was in the spring instead of in the fall. The First of May in the Soviet Union used to mean big parades, and Moscow used to have the grand military parades with armies of soldiers and thousands of tanks and missiles. But since the demise of the Soviet Union, the First of May has taken on a far less militaristic tone. It is, in fact, the holiday that signals the start of summer, and this is how it is treated.

And yes, it is a night when bonfires keep the witches away. Amazingly enough, this trick has worked well, for there have been no witches in Estonia for a long time.

JUNTS

2008-04-27T21:09:00.006+03:00

I was sitting on the back deck, looking down at the yard, and suddenly thought of Junts. He is buried somewhere down there, under a cherry tree that is long gone, so I could never find his actual grave. But that is not important. I know his remains are there somewhere.

This is the only picture I have of Junts. My mother is in the foreground, and my grandmother is trying to explain something to Junts, or else is nagging him about something. My parents got Junts as a first anniversary present from some of their friends. He was a strong German Shepherd and rumor had it that he had killed sheep, but this might have been my mother’s typical exaggeration. He was certainly incredibly protective of my mother and me. When my mother went walking with me in the pram and someone would come up to us, Junts would run over and place himself between us and the visitor. He never did anything, but just stood there until the visitor, who got the message, left.

Junts was well known in the village of Pirita. After the war, when we were already in the United States, there had been no opportunity for communication and my mother and father did not know the fate of their own parents. During these Stalinist times just getting a letter from America was dangerous and put one under immediate threat from the secret police. We did not want to take this risk, and so my father addressed the first letter with the news that we were in America to "Junts, Pirita, Tallinn, Estonia" and it was deliverd to my grandparents! We then found out that my mother's parents were alive and well and living in the old house (the one pictured above) but that my father's father had drowned in 1947 while illegally fishing at night.

One day when I was about two years old, Junts was in the kitchen when my mother was cooking and he was rewarded with a juicy bone. Apparently my mother did not have an eye on me and I waddled up to Junts and took the bone out of his mouth and started to gnaw on it myself. Suddenly my mother saw what was happening and was certain that Junts would at least growl and take back his bone. Instead, this ferocious dog just lay down on the floor with a sad expression on his face and let me gnaw away.

When we left in 1944 Junts died of a broken heart. He stopped eating and eventually just gave up. He was buried in the back yard under a cherry tree that is no longer there.

EARLY SPRING

2008-04-26T10:58:00.012+03:00

It’s still too early for “anthro-flowers,” those human creations which, after countless generations of breeding, would not be able to survive in the wild. They are prisoners of the human need to recreate the world in the way we want it to be. So we have to wait a few more weeks before we can go to the garden stores and get our annual fix of perennials and annuals. But in the meantime the real flowers have the spring to themselves. They appear as volunteers all over the forest floor and in nooks and corners in our yards, uninvited, but gladly welcomed as harbingers of spring.

Wild birds also remain free of human meddling, although many have become adapted to living with humans. The seagulls during the past few days have been feasting on small fish caught in nets during a study of fish populations in the river.

The European crows – huge birds with real attitudes – are seldom referred to without pejorative adjectives. The “harakas” is the stuff of legend and folklore, and behaves like he knows of his own importance.

The little birds are quite happy to have us live in this house. They know that most of the time they can come to the bird feeder and find a few sunflower seeds. The European chickadees (“rasvatihane”) with quite a bit more yellow on their breasts, are just as funny and entertaining as their cousins across the Atlantic. Their Estonian name translates as “fat tit” as in the American “titmouse”, and our visitor is obviously interested in the suet ball I put out for him.

An interesting characteristic of humans is our need to name things. So the wild flowers are not just pretty wild flowers, but they are “sinilill” (“blue flower”) or “kuld täht” (“gold star”), and certainly the visitor to the bird feeder is not just a bird, but a “rasvatihane”. This need to name wild things is perhaps our desire to own the world. If we name something, we somehow believe that we own it.

I wonder what the “harakas” call us?

--Aarne

FLAG COLORS

2008-04-25T08:21:00.003+03:00

When Estonian weather is good, it’s very, very good. A bright, cloudless sky brings out colors, even whites, that decorate buildings. Consider this entry the first of several about color.

Dome Church (Toomkirik, also called Lutheran Cathedral of Blessed Virgin Mary) is my favorite church in Tallinn, because its story and contents tell much of Tallinn’s history from 1240 onwards. I took this photo last Saturday in morning sunlight, and when I got back to the house and looked at it, I realized I was seeing the Estonian flag colors. Now my opinion of Toomkirik is even higher.

--Libby

HAWAIIAN EXPRESS

2008-04-23T22:43:00.006+03:00

Where the Pirita River flows into the Baltic Sea begins a lovely sand beach that curves northward into a wide cove. Evergreen trees grow to the edge of the beach and buffer the sunbathers and beachcombers from suburban hustle.

My son Drew learned online that Pirita Beach is one of two beaches in Estonia used for kite-boarding. He and his brother Stephen are enthusiastic kite-boarders. Sure enough, the very first day we were here I saw a boarder’s kite high above the tree line along the shore. The next day we walked down to the beach and found the Hawaiian Express, a sales and rental center for windsurfing and kite-boarding.

Although I haven’t yet found a kite-boarder with my camera, I did take these photos of windsurfers. If you study these photos closely, you should be able to infer wind direction, obstacles, and air and water temperature. Yes, one obstacle could be the man on the jetty—Aarne. You will also be able to see how far Hawaii is from the Pirita Cloister. I hope these bleak photos will be useful to all of you interested in the martyrdom potential of Pirita Beach.

KULDSE NOTSU KÕRTS

2008-04-23T17:02:00.004+03:00

On our first day in Estonia we went into the city to get our Vana Linn (Old Town) fix. Here is the evidence of medieval Tallinn. Twelve years ago, before the big cruise ships had discovered Tallinn, Vana Linn is where I began to experience Estonia. For just a few dollars we could buy lunch, perhaps a few slices of homemade sausage, dark bread, and soup of cabbage and meat broth, potatoes, and Saku beer. The menus were written in Estonian, German, and Russian. Of course the food would be Estonian; we never questioned that. Aarne enjoyed recognizing dishes that his mother had continued to cook in the United States.

Two years ago, while having Nordic salad (smoked salmon on shredded lettuce) at a outdoor café table on the Town Square, we were amazed to see restaurants advertising Mexican, Chinese, Thai, and Irish food; on our walk into the square we had passed a sushi bar. This, we told ourselves, proved Estonia’s new prosperity and also perhaps a return to an international spirit, a looking outward to the rest of the world. After all, the shop signs—iron icons representing a baker, a blacksmith, a coffee cup—remind us of Tallinn’s place in the Hanseatic League. During those times, people speaking different languages walked these streets and depended on the sign code of the League.

So, the other day, when we spotted a shop with window boxes in the forms of elongated pigs, we concluded that this was a restaurant with a lot of pork on the menu. The shutters advertised “Estonian Restaurant.” Now that made me pause. We’ve spotted another restaurant, too, outside of Old Town that advertises “Genuine Estonian Food.” In the early 1990s, such advertising would have seemed irrelevant. Every restaurant then served Estonian food—what else? But apparently, with much more diversity of restaurants, a niche cuisine exists for “the real thing” and is often found literally underground in small cave-like cellars. That Kuldse Notsu Kõrts (The Little Piggy Inn) is part of a high-priced Tallinn hotel, albeit in the cellar, suggests distinctions between “downstairs food” and “upstairs food,” or in this case, old and new food, or country and city food. It’s comforting to know that, if we don’t relish the rustic setting or the Witches Stew, we need only find our way to higher levels of the building.

On the Little Piggy Inn menu, the Head Chef (Peakokk) recommends “Crisp Pork Knuckle with Sauerkraut, Baked Potatoes and Mustard.” Aarne was thrilled to find smoked Baltic herring, and I tried a potato porridge and salad of shredded lettuce and sweet peppers. To read the entire menu, visit www.notsu.ee.

The interior of Little Piggy is charming with colorful hand-woven wool table runners, hanging light fixtures made of wagon wheels and overturned baskets, and best of all, proverbs painted onto the walls. While waiting for our porridge, we pondered a quotation across the room: “A mouse never runs into a sleeping cat’s mouth.” All of this adds up to what a reviewer on Tallinn-Life.com called “nouveau rustic.”

The next day in the April 2008 City Paper I found this review of Little Piggy Inn: “Whether or not this is exactly what old Estonian inns looked like may be open to question. But in sheer comfort, good cheer and fine food, one would like to believe they were just like The Little Piggy Inn.”

A few evenings ago, when I described to a young Estonian friend our experiences at Little Piggy, he laughed and replied, “But there IS no Estonian cuisine.”

Among older ex-pats like Aarne, however, I hear a shared telling of a different story. It goes like this: one person says something like “klimbi soup,” and the other ex-pats groan in pleasure, their eyes misting over. “Frikadilli” evokes especially happy reactions, as does “pirukas” and kompott.” [Klimbi is a dumpling soup; frikadilli soup is meatballs in broth; pirukas is pastry filled with carrots or cabbage or meat; kompott is cold fruit soup such as gooseberry, currant, or pear.]

At least in memory, then, Estonian cuisine survives, and Little Piggy is one place to test these memories.

--Libby

THE ROUND BUS STATION

2008-04-22T09:13:00.003+03:00

Our memories from childhood must be windows to our personalities. What we choose to remember, and then keep current by periodic refreshment of the memories, must say a lot about us.

Take the Pirita bus station. It is one of my vivid memories as a 4-year-old, mainly because of the shape of the building. It has a round front, classic 1930’s architecture, and it is this round front that has stuck in my memory all these years. The building is just a short distance from our house, so as a small child I must have seen it often. It used to be a real bus station, but now it holds a wine seller, a dry cleaner, and a convenience store, and the big green buses stop there on their way to Tallinn. It is an unremarkable building, and the town of Pirita had intended to tear it down until there was a public outcry to save this homely place.

But why do I remember this building? I suspect that even when I was a little kid I enjoyed order, and appreciated straight lines and right angles, the stuff that keeps buildings and bridges from falling down. I was, perhaps, offended by this round shape intruding into my orderly world. I still believe that round buildings are silly. But in the case of the Pirita bus station, it is a kind of gentle, even handsome silly, isn’t it?

HOW THE HELL ARE YOU?

2008-04-18T18:00:00.002+03:00

The groceries were scanned and the price totaled. I paid using a debit card, and the receipt was placed on the glass tray. (Money and receipts never go hand to hand, but hand to tray to hand.) During the entire process the check-out lady at the food store had never looked at me, much less spoken to me. She now looked away and into the distance. I said, in Estonian, “Hello! How are you doing today?” She appeared surprised, and as she looked at me for the first time, her face softened. “Fine, thank you” she said, and smiled.

I was probably the first, and perhaps the only person who would have spoken to her that day. Friendly, chatty communication with strangers is just not done in Estonia. One only speaks to people one knows.

This is not unusual for Europe, where languages intermingle in impossibly complex patterns and one is never sure what language a stranger might speak. So the best policy, for most Europeans, is not to speak to anyone except friends and family. This is not true all over Europe, with the Danes being the most wonderful exception, but for the most part, spending time in international airports like Heathrow or Orly or Frankfut will let you hear snatches of many languages from small groups of people, but seldom will a stranger say anything to you.

Estonians seem to take this reticence to an extreme level, however, and I began to wonder why this would be, for Estonians are not unfriendly people and the Estonian language is almost universally spoken here. Today one may still find Russian-Estonians who refuse to learn Estonian, but except for the old and uneducated, this number is rapidly dropping. Wherever you go, you can be fairly sure that the stranger you meet will be speaking Estonian (whereas just a few years ago, you could be fairly certain that everyone could speak Russian).

After regaining independence in 1991, the Estonians quickly de-Russified the country, removing Russian street signs, for example, and eliminating the need to learn Russian language in school. The desire to not speak Russian often made life harder, but the memory of its imposition on society was strong. Sometime in 1993 I was in Estonia and staying in a small hotel that had only a few years ago been a private house. One day I was in the lobby when a young couple came in and began the check-in process. This was not an easy task, since neither the youngsters nor the lady behind the check-in desk could speak English very well, and they were doing their best to communicate. After the couple went to their room, the check-in lady came over to me and told me that the youngsters were Latvians. “We would have got along very well in Russian,” she said, “but we just did not want to.”

Perhaps one reason for the reticence in speaking to strangers is that during the 50 years of Soviet occupation Estonians (and of course others in the USSR) had to be very careful about what they said. Even the smallest remark critical of the government could be costly. The father of my neighbor here in Pirita was sent to jail for 5 years for saying something like “Communism is a lousy economic system” and being overheard by a KGB informant. Small children were routinely questioned in school about what their parents might have been talking about at home, so even casual conversation in the home was guarded. And the most dangerous speech was with strangers who might be informants. So there is a history of not talking, and this can only be undone with generational turnover.

But there has to be more to the lack of communication. The signals are clear. For example, if you stop for a pedestrian on a crosswalk in the US (at least in New London NH) you will invariably receive a thank you wave. Not here. And people here will very seldom use blinkers when changing lanes. That small courtesy of driving communication is not commonly practiced. When you hold a door open for someone, there is no acknowledgement of the kind deed. It’s as if the presence of other people is an embarrassment.

I was born here, and yet I am very different from native Estonians when it comes to friendly incidental conversation. What was it about my own upbringing in America that changed me so much, and what kind of person might I have been if I had grown up in this part of the world? Would I have ignored the humanity of the check-out lady, just as other had?

FRIDAY NIGHT FERRY FROM HELSINKI

2008-04-14T15:15:00.000+03:00

On Friday we got up at 5:30 AM to catch the early morning car ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki. Our destination was IKEA; our list was long, everything from a high chair for little August Endy, who will be here in June, to a desk chair for Aarne. After four days of shopping in Tallinn, we longed for lower prices and familiar items, even if it meant putting chairs together with the notorious IKEA “screwdriver.”

The trip to Helsinki was sleepy, uneventful…business people staring at laptops, younger passengers sleeping in lounges. We had cups of hot tea and tried to memorize our shopping list.

IKEA was IKEA, this time with labels in Finnish. I enjoyed the designs and textiles. After two round trips through the store and then through the warehouse, we loaded the car and headed back to center city Helsinki. Our return reservation was for a 6:30 PM ferry, M.S. Galaxy, and we planned to have dinner on board. Judging from our morning crossing, we imagined that the trip back could be a restful ending to a busy day.

The drive from IKEA back to the pier in Helsinki was crazy. We drove one of many more cars than the lovely little streets of Helsinki can handle. Thanks to a taxi driver’s help, we found the correct terminal and got the car in line. We had been told that we could actually board the ferry at 5:00 PM and enjoy ourselves on the ship before departure at 6:30. But to our surprise, we waited two hours in the car line, from 4:00 to 6:00--plenty of time to study the ship’s exterior features.

The M. S. Galaxy is one of the Tallink Line’s large, slow ferries that take 3 ½ hours to cross the Gulf of Finland. (Just for comparison, consider that newer jet ferries make the trip in eighty minutes, but then they don’t carry vehicles.) After two hours in line, we began to talk affectionately about the Galaxy as “our ship.” It’s painted bright blue with white clouds, suggesting, I suppose, a galaxy. Here and there on the sides of the ship are painted life-size giraffes with necks entwined, suggesting something we are still trying to interpret. See what you think. If you are ever within a mile of Tallinn’s port, you will recognize Galaxy--the blue ferry with giraffes rising into white clouds. This will not be listed in your tour guide.

Well, we were about to learn that on Friday nights the slow ferries out of Helsinki to Tallinn function as both truck transports and party boats. Finns come on board to buy duty-free vodka and gin—cartons of it. They bring empty suitcases to Tallinn to buy more. They dance in the ship’s bar and have a great time. When we went out on deck and looked over the rail, Aarne exclaimed, “This ship is hardly moving.” I think the slow speed was what everyone else was eager to pay for.

On this Friday night, the Galaxy was completely full. First the crew loaded about twenty trucks--18-wheelers. Each truck was belted and hooked to the floor of the hold. Then the tour buses, having already delivered their passengers into the terminal, drove in. Finally we drove our little rented Toyota up the gangplank and through the huge gateway, walked around the trucks, and climbed up three flights of stairs to the middle level deck to search for some dinner. Truckers and bus drivers climbed up to the very top decks, where they had reserved cabins for sleeping. Several couples, laughing and singing, carried suitcases up to cabins, too. Maybe they know something about the giraffes?

On the ship’s map we located six restaurants—offering six classes of dinner service. The lowest class was “cafeteria.” Then came an all-you-can-eat buffet, then a pub and a grille, then a Russian restaurant, and finally the Galaxy Paradise. We got in line for the Grille, a sit-down restaurant with red and white tablecloths that reminded me of New Hampshire. However, when we got to the front of the line, we learned that reservations were necessary. A tour guide, who had been pushing on our backs all through the line, smelled victory; she brushed us aside and waved a piece of paper to prove that her group had reservations. We had to squeeze our way back through the long line; for some reason I tend to slip into French for awkward situations, so it was “excusez moi, s’il vous plait” all the way through the crowd. We checked the map again and headed for the Galaxy Paradise. Thirst and hunger can overwhelm good judgment.

There it was: “Galaxy Paradise” in flowing silvery writing on glass doors. Through the doors we could see heavy white linen on formally set tables. All empty. In Estonian, and assuming that his question was just to be polite, Aarne asked if reservations were required. A woman in a Galaxy uniform ignored his question and announced that this was a “gourmet restaurant” and that we might prefer the Russian restaurant instead! Was it IKEA stardust that made such a first impression on her? Did we look Russian? When we hesitated, she directed us to look at the Paradise menu posted near the entrance. We looked at each other and laughed. We had already studied the menu. But the real question now was could we bear to eat under the supervision of this woman? And it goes without saying that Aarne would starve before eating in a Russian restaurant.

So we next came upon the cafeteria. Here a long line of patient people suggested good food. We found a wonderful table by a window facing the sunset—a feature not available in Paradise. Around the corner was a bar; Aarne brought two Saku beers back to our table, and we finally relaxed. We watched the sunset while we waited for the cafeteria line to clear, and then we bought the “plate of the day”—mashed potatoes with exactly eight meatballs, mixed vegetables, and for dessert, marzipan. An IKEA sort of dinner. At the horizon on the gulf the sun went down behind low clouds that turned lavender and pink and seemed to stretch from Finland to Estonia. Of course we all know that in real galaxies suns don’t set. But then neither do giraffes float.

Gradually the ship’s decks, halls, and restaurants filled with a long promenade. In both directions, passengers strolled from one end of the Galaxy to the other. Sitting at our table, we watched this world go by twice. Single women, in cocktail dresses or jeans, walked in pairs, while eager young men followed. Giraffes?

After the sun had set, we climbed one more deck up to a piano bar. In club chairs beside a big porthole we hummed along to Tea for Two, Maple Leaf Rag, I Get a Kick Out of You, and songs from West Side Story and Phantom of the Opera. Two young Finnish women sitting near us knew all the words and sang along.

All too soon, through the porthole appeared the first Estonian island and then a spit of land. Almost everyone went out on deck, even some of the ship’s crew, to enjoy the Tallinn skyline. On our left, north of Tallinn, the Pirita Cloister shone in its spotlights. If you ever arrive in Tallinn by ship, look for the Cloister rising above the trees. The Vesilind house is a few yards from the Cloister.

Truckers and bus drivers, freshly shaven, came down from their Galaxy cabins and went with us into the gigantic hold. We climbed into the Toyota amid our IKEA treasures and drove down the gangplank and out of the Galaxy to head north along the coastline to Pirita.

FISHING

2008-04-13T14:12:00.000+03:00

April 8, 2008 Pirita

In New Hampshire, where I lived until seven days ago, we looked them up in our bird books and called them herons--the secretive gray birds that slide among tall grasses in our pond’s shallow edges and look for small perch and bass. It’s easy to believe that forever the herons have hunched over dark water, somehow seeing beyond the surface, even if only to imagine fish. When Aarne and I are lucky enough to notice a heron, we stalk it through our binoculars. Once, last year, while I was kayaking through tall grass, a heron and I surprised each other; he took off just in front of the kayak, leaving me wondering if I’d ever again be so close to elegance.

This morning I sit at a small glass table in the kitchen of my husband’s family house in Estonia. To my back are ruins of the Brigitta Cloister, the entire front and side stone walls rising above any treetops, and the entire silver-gray structure still glowing in spotlights left on all night. Even in the middle of the night, I can walk around the house by this light reflected from cloister walls.

On the opposite side of our house and straight ahead of me now, the yard slopes down to the Pirita River. Even in a cold early April, fishermen come on foot in the dark, at least as early as 5:00 AM—who really knows how early? They line the opposite riverbank, directly across from me. When the morning fog from the Baltic Sea finally slides away, I go to our front window to make sure that the fishermen are there each morning. And I look for them last thing at night. Strangely, this has become my first habit in Estonia, one thing to count on.

Dressed in heavy black winter jackets, high rubber boots, and layers of hats, they appear out of the hillside and walk slowly, heavily through a row of bare black trees to their spots along the riverbank. They arrive without cars or chairs or flashlights, each one carrying two or three long fishing poles, a bucket, and brown paper sacks—exactly enough.

So far I know these men only by shape and by their deliberate postures. They stand for hours, barely moving from one position except to shift their weight from one foot to the other. Sometimes they plant the handles of their fishing poles in the riverbank, stuff their hands into their pockets, and stare at the water. If they didn’t move at all, they would seem to be part of the landscape, so faceless are they to me from my distance across the river.

About 9:30 Bill and Amelia arrive to see how we are doing. Amelia is now fifteen months old, a perfect age for play, so she and I stay in the house while Bill and Aarne walk down to inspect work being done on the boathouse.

Half an hour later, as I hold Amelia on my lap by the front window, something across the river catches my eye. An orange van drives through the trees and close to the riverbank. Six or seven fishermen gather around. As I try to understand this intrusion, suddenly I notice a human body lying just above the water’s edge. What catches my attention is the white plastic sheet covering the head and chest. The trousers and boots suggest a fisherman.

Amelia wants down to explore the house, its kitchen drawers and long window shades. I lift her up; she’s still in the overalls of her snowsuit—warm and cuddly. “Apfel! Yummy!” She's already figured out to use English with me. I know enough to make a little party for us out of a sliced apple. When Amelia is delighted, her eyes sparkle.

Part of me has to look again out the window. Down in the yard, Aarne and Bill and two workmen stand still, also watching. Across the river, more official vehicles of different colors arrive. Men get out, conduct interviews, write notes on pads. The body lies on the riverbank. Nobody gets too close to it, not even the officials. But each fisherman slowly approaches within ten feet or so, hunches over, and then retreats from the officials and from the body—some to their fishing and others to small groups gathered stoically under the trees.

I pick up Amelia and dance with her in the kitchen. She grins. I can’t tell if my English surprises her or not. Her parents Anni and Bill speak both English and Estonian to her, so she is still sorting out the mystery of language. Her word “yummy” seems to work in both languages. I think how lucky she is to be growing up bilingual in a country with so much promise; I try to imagine her future.

What Aarne and Bill learn from the workers is that early yesterday this drowned body was spotted as it floated down toward the sea, past all the fishermen standing where they always stand. What must these fishermen have thought as they watched the poor thing drift past their lines? When the body drifted close enough to the riverbank, just opposite our house, somebody waded in, caught on to it, and pulled it up onto the bank.

Bill takes Amelia home, and Aarne and I go shopping for enough food for supper. When we return, the officials and cars and the body are gone. The fishermen have moved a little farther upstream, and the place across from us is empty.

Now, a day later, at 7:00 AM the cloister bells ring as always. I can picture the few Swedish nuns gliding to their prayers, kneeling, probably bending forward slightly in awe of what they can imagine about life after death or whatever else nuns can see that I can not.

I go to the window and look across the river at the spot where the body lay yesterday. A woman in a bright, shiny pink raincoat walks through the trees to the very spot, as if she knows more than I do. Pink. She bends over the grass, touches a large rock, searches the small area, then stands alone right where the body lay yesterday.

The temperature has fallen overnight to just above freezing. It begins to rain, and wind blows up the river. Crows scream into the trees. The woman, no longer searching the ground, has now stood in her place for more than an hour. She’s pulled the pink raincoat hood over her hair and has stuffed her hands in her pockets. Not even her head moves as she stares straight ahead into the river and perhaps across the river and beyond me to the cloister.

In the afternoon Aarne and I call out to our neighbor who’s working in her garden. Helgi tells us that the victim was a young woman who was seen walking into deep water upstream several weeks ago, apparently a suicide. Many people have been searching for her, and now she is found. Two days ago I did not know to look for her, but now I look for her even when I know she could not be there. As darkness falls, Bill turns on all the spotlights down by the river, just to push away the eerie feeling we all have.

Later in the evening, Estonian relatives arrive to welcome us for our stay here. Little Liisu, about two years old, plays and laughs as we all gather around our big window and stare across the river at the place where the young woman was pulled out. “Did you see anything?” We all retell our stories, putting together pieces of information, sharing sadness, and trying to make sense out of what happened. I imagine the fishermen across the river are doing the same thing. But we have Liisu with us, and her irresistible energy somehow buoys us. And we have purpose: we go out to dinner to celebrate the very energy of being again with Estonian family.

KLOOSTRI 12

2008-04-13T13:20:00.000+03:00

I was just five years old when we left this place. It was 1944 and the Russians were advancing on the eastern front. Estonians who remembered the Red Terror of 1940 when the Russians first invaded Estonia and were almost certain to be killed or deported, left the country for what they hoped were safer havens. They were convinced that they would return as soon as the war was over. The western powers would not let Russia occupy the Baltics, they argued. And even when Estonia was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, there was still hope of the “White Ship” coming. But the West was weary of war, and taking on the nuclear USSR was too great a risk. So the occupation lasted, for fifty long years.

What I remember from my childhood are snatches of memory. One of the most vivid is looking out the cellar window one night in 1943 when the Russian planes bombed Tallinn, that stately medieval city with no strategic value, and set most of it ablaze. We were lying on a large pile of potatoes, I recall. On the picture below you see the old house, and the cellar window is to the right, hidden behind the shrubbery.

With independence restored in 1990, the new old Republic of Estonia (they still count their days of independence from 1918, the original revolutionary war when they pushed the Russians out at the end of the First World War) decided to give back land that had been expropriated by the Soviets. My grandfather had been an astute businessman (the gene died with him, unfortunately) and had owned some land in Pirita, just outside of Tallinn, including the old house pictured above. My brother Priit and I (and my mother who was alive at the time) became the new owners. We decided to sell some of the land and with the money build a new house at the same location. By this time the old house had badly deteriorated and could not be saved (I will write more later about the old house). Fortunately, Bill Vesilind, Priit’s son, had decided to live in Estonia for a while, and he became the chief builder. His efforts were rewarded with the construction of the new house in which Libby and I are now living. Here is a picture of the new house, taken by my brother when he was here a few weeks ago.

A prominent feature on both pictures is the west wall of the old Brigitta convent or cloister, constructed originally at the end of the 13^th century. More on that later. In the meantime, Libby and I are enjoying the view from our living room, overlooking a peaceful river, grateful to all those who made it possible for me to return to the house at Kloostri (cloister) Street 12.

EI SOBI MULLE

2008-04-12T23:24:00.000+03:00

There is an interesting Estonian phrase, “Ei sobi mulle”, which has a number of meanings depending on the context. “Ei” means “no”, or a negative, while “mulle” is “to me”. The interesting word is “sobi” which does not seem to have a direct translation. Let me try to explain how this phrase is used.

Suppose you are shopping, and you try on a coat, and find that it is too small. You would say “ei sobi mulle” meaning that it does not fit you. If you try on the coat, and it fit, but you do not like the color, you could also say “ei sobi mulle” and mean that the color just does not go with you. That is, you are not compatible with the color because it makes you look too fat, or too short, or something. The coat could be the right size and the right color, but it might be too expensive, and you would again say “ei sobi mulle” meaning that it does not go with your budget. There are probably several other meanings, but you get the picture.

I was thinking of this phrase when we were furniture shopping. A piece of furniture would have to have numerous attributes, all of which would have to answer to the “sobi” if it is to be bought. It has to be the right type, color, and price, and it has to go with other pieces of furniture or rugs (real and imagined). It has to appeal to the purchaser on some subliminal level, working deep in the subconscious to dredge up childhood memories. Colors and patterns that brought happy moments long ago would come bubbling subconsciously to the surface and cause you to make decisions. Similarly, unhappy memories (for example the dentist office or something you did not like about your childhood home) will cause you to say that something does not “sobi”.

Now if three different people are trying to buy one piece of furniture, there is a good chance that in every case, with every decision, at least one of the persons will conclude that the item simply does not “sobi”. The statistical probability then of actually buying anything diminishes exponentially. Suppose the chance of one person buying one of ten available chairs is 10%, or one in ten. The chance of two people coming to the same conclusion is 0.1 x 0.1 = 0.01, or one in a hundred. When you add the third person, there is a one in a thousand chance (0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1) of consummating the purchase. On average, therefore, this trio of purchasers will have to look at a thousand chairs before buying anything.

I am pleased to report that Bill, Libby, and I have now looked at 853 chairs and 792 couches. We are well on our way, and should conclude our shopping before Christmas.

SHOPPING

2008-04-12T23:19:00.000+03:00

There are two fundamentally different ways of shopping, practiced by two fundamentally different types of shoppers. They can be categorized in a way that is analogous to the great divide in normative ethics – deontological shoppers and consequentialist shoppers.’

Deontological shoppers concentrate on the process. They believe that it is their duty to practice the art of shopping in a correct way, and they are convinced that if they do, then they are shopping in a manner that they can recommend to others. All shoppers, they believe, should follow these rules, and in so doing, the world will be a better place.

A deontological shopper does not rush. Time and contemplation are important if shopping is to be done correctly. The deonotolgoical shopper first spots the item she would like to purchase, but instead of doing so, she immediately starts looking around to see what else there is that might be cheaper, or better, or more attractive. She circles the desired object, usually in concentric counterclockwise circles, first moving outward, and then moving in steadily diminishing circles until she comes back to it the prey, having convinced herself that there are no better alternatives. At this point the consultation takes place with the shopkeeper or sales clerk. Questions are asked about price and availability and safety, and considerations given as to how the item is to be carried or delivered back to the shopper’s home. If all of these questions are satisfactorily settled, then the sale is made. The deontological shopper leaves the store convinced that the process is the right way to shop. Observing a store full of deontological shoppers would give the impression of Brownian motion, random movement with not discernable direction or purpose.

The consequentialist shopper, on the other hand, is not at all concerned with the process, and does not believe that it is his duty to shop in any prescribed way. The final outcome is what is important, and how one gets there is immaterial. The consequentialist shopper values not only the item purchased, but also seeks to minimize the time and aggravation of the shopping process. It is this balancing of the happiness of the purchase and the unhappiness of the shopping that drives the consequentialist shopper.

The consequentialis shopper enters the store with a predetermined idea of what he wants to buy. Once seeing such an item, he makes a calculation of how valuable the item is to him versus the necessity of continued shopping. If the item fits the needs and the price is right, then the net sum of pleasure is positive and the consequentialist shopper buys the item. He leaves the store confident and pleased that he has increased his own happiness by minimizing the shopping process. A store frequented by consequentialist shoppers would be fairly empty because the shoppers travel in straight lines to the intended purchase, pay, and leave following the same path.

The categorization into deontological shoppers and consequentialist shoppers is important because sometimes these two types of shoppers make the mistake of going together into a store with the objective of buying some item they both believe they want. Typically, the consequentialist shopper will spot the item, ask if it is OK, and fully expects to leave the story in a short order. The deontological shopper will have none of that because the required shopping process has not been followed. She then starts the circling procedure, leaving the consequentialist shopper befuddled, then aggravated, and finally resigned to having the required process play out. The deontological shopper sees the consequentialist shopper being bored and fidgety, and does not understand why he is not grateful to her for approaching the purchase with such care. He, on the other hand, seeks to just get the item which seems to fit the predetermined requirements, and to get out of the store as fast as possible. Interpersonal conflict is sure to follow.

It is interesting that in most cases the consequentialist and deontological shopper, given the opportunity to shop in their own way, would have reached the same conclusion – they would have purchased the same item – but the procedure they used to get there would have varied markedly in its theoretical approach. Most importantly, intelligent people will recognize the timeless conflict between these two modes of shopping and choose their shopping companions accordingly.

Greetings fom Estonia

2008-04-10T09:48:00.000+03:00

We have set up this blog to communicate with you (both ways) and we hope you will catch up with us often. Our plan is to post occasional post cards/letters and pictures of our time here, with glimpses of the country and the people, and sometimes of ourselves as we negotiate setting up housekeeping in the Vesilind family house.

Perhaps some background for some of you who might not be familiar with the situation might be in order. After regaining independence in 1991, the goverment of Estonia decided to give back land that had been exproriated by the Soviet state, and my brother and I got back some land that used to belong to our grandfather. We decided to sell some of the land and with this money re-build the family house where both of us had lived when we were toddlers. The building of the house could not have occurred without the presence of Bill Vesilind, Priit's son, who decided to set up residence in Estonia and to oversee the construction. Bill is now married to an Estonian woman, Anni, and they have a lovely daughter, Amelia. The house that Bill built is the house where Libby and I are now living. It belongs to the extended Vesilind family and we hope that it will be used frequently by everyone.

Aarne