Bus Stop/ Post Office

As we drove down the Sõrve peninsula, we noticed that each bus stop was different. We literally did not see a single bus stop that was the same as the next. After a few interesting designs, we spotted this one with lace curtains. We stopped the car and went to take some closer pictures.
Up close, we realized that it was not simply a bus stop, but a post office. Inside the house were a row of mailboxes for the surrounding houses, making it easier for the postman to come by with a delivery.
It was so sweet, the way the neighbors had gussied up the place. There were fresh flowers in a teeny vase and a small coffee table with reading materials next to the seats. It seems perfectly natural, yet perfectly delightful that they would want the spot visit daily, to get their mail and to catch their ride to work/school/etc, to be as comfortable and pleasant as possible.
After that, we decided to drive back to a few interesting looking bus stops we had passed to see if they, too, doubled as post centers. We had both remembered seeing a really colorful one some miles back and were glad to find it again.
I loved the big chunks of log used as seats. It wasn't as cute as the first, but just as unique. It's interesting to think about the different towns' personalities, judging by their decor choices.
As we moved closer to Kuressaare, the bus stops became more modern. Still, they were each different from one another. We were hoping to spot another bus stop/post office combo, but they all appeared to be bench/ceiling structures built solely for waiting.
As we drove passed this one, we noticed the mailboxes affixed to its right side. Definitely much more modern than the rest, but a bus stop/post office all the same! We had initially decided to drive around the Sõrve peninsula, because it was the site of some really bitterly-fought battles between the Soviets and the Germans during WWII. Apparently, most of the fighting happened at night, which means the two sides blindly fought at each other for hours. We had thought we may be able to get a good battlefield blog post out of it, but were so glad to have found, instead, this little piece of Saaremaa life that was completely endearing, unique, memorable, and outside of any guidebook reference.

The Kaali Craters

On a colorless, overcast day on the island of Saaremaa, we traveled up from Kuressaare to the tiny hamlet of Kaali. The town is unremarkable except for one feature - the Kaali meteorite craters. There are nine of them, in all, with one major crater in the center. It is one of the last - if not the last - major meteorite collisions in Earth's history and has inspired a number of legends and tales. The impact was comparable to the Hiroshima atomic bomb, and flattened the forest in a four mile radius around the blast. The Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, mentions the blast and the island - it became known as "the sun's grave." It is apparently a huge attraction, but when we visited we found an empty village and almost virgin snow surrounding the impact site. Walking up to the edge of the crater, it was obvious that less than a handful of people had been there in the past week or so. The picture above is of Rebecca scaling the crater's edge, through deep, powdery snow.

The exact moment of impact is a debatable fact - people believe that it occurred sometime between 7,500 and 4,000 years ago. Between 600 BC and 100 AD, a wall was constructed around the lake (part of which is shown above), and the remains of ritual sacrifices dating from that period were uncovered in the 1970's. The sacrifices apparently continued until the eighteenth century. The place has retained an important significance in local mythology up until the present.
The actual crater was smaller, perhaps, than we were expecting. It was such a dismal day, with so little color, that the patch of ice where the crater sits appeared to be little more than a stretch of treeless snow in the flat light. It was deserted and quiet.
After a while in the woods, we followed the simple track back to the village where our car was parked. Along the way we saw few people - though we did see an old lady on one of these push-sleighs, which is something like a pair of skis attached to a chair. One foot remains on the track while the other pushes. We've seen them a few times on Saaremaa, and they seem like a great way to get around.

The Ferry to Muhu

On our way from the pretty lake town of Viljandi out to the island of Saaremaa, we had to take a ferry from Virtsu, on the coast, to Muhu island.
The crossing took a little over half an hour - a straight shot out into the sea ice, across the channel. The land was difficult to distinguish on the horizon because it's so flat. The sea was dead calm and the ice lay still on the surface. Even behind us, in the wake of the boat, the water seemed barely disturbed, the floes sliding heavily into place around the stern.
We left the car on the lower deck and went up for a bite to eat in the cafe. Rebecca had a piece of bread adorned with these small, silvery fish that she believes are Estonian "räim," or Baltic dwarf herring. They were barely cured, without much salt, and she said that they were delicious.
I had this blood sausage wrapped in bacon, which was much heavier. I had intended to have just one of them, but the serving-lady put two on my plate alongside a huge pile of sauerkraut. They were good, but it was more food than I really wanted on our short crossing. Around us, passengers sat without talking and looked out the windows. Something about the blankness of the ocean space and the low sound of the engines made conversation seem frivolous. Being on a boat - even for a short amount of time - always seems to bring out a contemplative quietness in people.
After we ate, we went out onto the forward deck to watch the port drawing nearer. The ferries had tracked a path in the ice (which you can see in the photo). The air was surprisingly still, which was nice because the temperature was hovering around 10° fahrenheit.

The Last Days of the Kroon

It's easy to assume that, with the introduction of the euro banknote, Europe moved to one, homogenous currency. Far from it. In fact, only sixteen of the fifty countries that we'll be visiting currently use the Euro (though its use isn't uncommon elsewhere). We haven't been in the "Eurozone" since we left Germany, four countries ago, and we won't return to it until Italy, four countries hence. In Estonia, the currency is the kroon, or "crown - but this is an unusual time for the official note. On January 1st, Estonia will become the seventeenth country to use the euro. So, here we are, in the last days of the kroon.
It is a pretty money, with pictures of national figures and of nature. It is a uniform size - unlike the euro and other monies that range in size - but it does come in a variety of colors, which makes sorting easier. Estonia has been trying to meet the European central bank's guidelines for economic stability and strength for a while now, and is very excited to be joining its more southern Eurozone brethren. One person, however, has reservations: prime minister, Andrus Ansip said that he is regretful about the change because the Estonian "banknotes are more beautiful than euro banknotes."
It is an interesting time to be here, especially because of uncertainty regarding exchange rates and the changeover. The current rate is about 11.8 kroons to the dollar, (making the hundred kroon bill, above, worth about $8.50, and the five hundred about $42) but that is by no means steady. Officially, businesses are not supposed to accept euros yet, but people have been asking us if we'd like to pay that way. All prices are listed in both currencies, at the moment, and even our stamps have the value printed in euros and kroons (a philatelist's dream!).

I have to say that I'm sad when a currency gets phased out. It is something unique about a place, something that other nationalities don't share and may not even be able to name or recognize. Changing money and looking at new coins is one of the small pleasures of traveling. While it's certainly understandable that Estonia would want to join the Eurozone, I'm glad that we got here before it did.

Charmed, I'm Sure

Viljandi is one of those towns that makes you struggle to find a word other than "charming" to describe it. The word implies everything that it is: small, attractive, storybookish (of course, it seems to mean something entirely different when applied to princes). The snow had let up just long enough for us to go out with our cameras, something we haven't done in days. "Let's go be charmed!" we thought, though neither of us said it aloud, because that would have been weird. A charming church next to a charming row of houses greeted us at the edge of, charmingly named, Castle Park.
The park was one snowy hill after another and we could see sled tracks from a day's worth of playing. Now and then, we'd catch a glimpse of a plastic saucer with two stuffed snowsuits on top. At the top of the largest hill, we discovered a magnificent view of Lake Viljandi and the town on its edge. Lakes automatically double a place's charm.
We ran down the hill to keep up with our sliding feet and discovered an arts center. Two people walked out carrying a handmade birdhouse, so we went in to investigate. There were musical instruments made out of gumdrops and gingerbread and a few tables putting away their crafts for sale. The place was swarming with children and a Santa-looking man in a sweater vest taught a group of them how to hand-dip candles. It was both charming and warming and after we had defrosted a bit and purchased a few small Christmas gifts, we set back out.
What makes a charming European town different than a charming American town? A castle, of course. We walked up an even steeper hill to explore some remnants we saw poking up in the distance. The Viljandi Castle Ruins were breathtaking in the snow. We walked through and around them, feeling sort of miniature amongst the huge walls, giant trees and cascades of snow. It was completely silent. The absence of sound and stark white blanket covering everything made me feel like I was anywhere and nowhere all at once.
It's amazing to think about the castle that used to be here and that these walls have been snowed on for centuries, perched up high on a hill overlooking Viljandi and its lake. I wish I could convey just how high we were and how the waves of snow sort of resembled the massive sand dunes of the Curonian Spit, but white on white on white just doesn't provide much photographic perspective. We lingered for as long as we could, which meant as long as our appendages could stand the cold, then made our way down the other side of the hill.
As we descended cautiously, finding a set of stairs mostly obscured by the snow, we saw a strip of red that emerged into a suspension bridge. Over the two hundred year old red bridge we walked, looking down at the steep drop below us. We imagined ourselves tackling the slope on a sled and were amazed that more children weren't daring to. A few feet over the bridge, we saw tracks that suggested otherwise. I have no doubt that Viljandi is just as charming in the springtime or summer or fall, but I was glad to be here in winter, when a good heaping dose of charm really gives a jolt of much needed warmth.

Blizzard of '10

We have now had snow on eight consecutive days and on most days since Thanksgiving - a streak that has spanned two countries and seven cities and towns. We've had a lot of snow, but what to call it? The "blizzard of oh-ten" or the "blizzard of ten?" One sounds like a temporal mistake, the other sounds like a martial arts movie. I have pushed for the "blizzard of the second half of twenty-ten," which I think is both accurate and informative.
The largest snowfall was two nights ago, when we were in Tartu. The city was blanketed by about a foot and a half of snow. It's quite a bit, but the people here seemed prepared and unphased. The streets were plowed fairly well - though some vehicles were still having trouble - and nobody appeared to be getting all that worked up about it.
In contrast, the rest of Europe seems to be in crisis mode! Paris reported its largest single-day snowfall since 1987, flights have been canceled everywhere, Germany issued a statement encouraging people to hoard four days worth of food, Britain estimates that it is having the most severe winter in three decades (and may have to cancel Christmas!). Arles - Arles! - experienced power outages after 30 centimeters of snow - a foot of snow in Arles! - pulled down some power lines. This is a huge thing in Europe. It's lucky for us that we're in a place that shrugs it off and is prepared to deal with the after-effects of such wintery weather.
The city of Tartu deployed a number of front-end loaders to push the snow into piles in the pedestrian center of town. The kids loved them, and I was jealous of the fun they got to have. Backpacks were commonly used as sleds, which is a great idea.
The snow clears up every now and then, giving us a break. It hasn't been all blizzard for the past two weeks - we have had brief stretches of sun and blue sky - but it's been a pretty impressive run. We've found that it's important to get out when we can, even if it's cold and windy, because the darkness descends so quickly that it's easy to lose the opportunity.

This is our car after the worst of the snow. At least we have all-wheel drive and snow tires - there are a lot of struggling drivers on the roads, which is kind of scary. It's amazing to me that people wouldn't invest in a set of snow tires when they live in Estonia.

Toyland

We arrived in Tartu, Estonia after a two hour drive through snowy forests and across another barely marked border. It felt high time to visit another museum, so we checked in, parked and went to find the Tartu Mänguasjamuuseumis (Toy Museum). We found it in a frosted cookie of a house next door to a Puppet Theater. Aside from three little kids who ran around in the lobby, we were the only visitors there and got to walk around at our own slow, warmth-seeking pace.
What little information there was scattered about was translated into English, but this was definitely not a fact-heavy museum. It was more like an enormous collection, set up to look recently played with. One room lead into another and then another, each jam packed. It's nice, when you're traveling alongside someone else, to visit places like this that allow you to focus on the items that strike your individual fancy and spot things your companion may not have seen. As we walked through, there were a lot of Hey-Look-At-Thises and Come-Heres.
I loved the fact that there were old photographs of Estonian children with their toys hung throughout the museum. This one was in the "Outdoor Toys" room, showcasing a young Estonian and his wooden bicycle. For me, the photos gave the pieces and their corresponding time periods a bit of context. I can conjure up images of the early 1800s in America or England, but I have no idea what they looked like up here in Estonia. Plus, I really like laughing at the facial expressions children make when having their picture taken. This kid was obviously pretty tough.
The museum began with the "Toys of City Children," which, of course, were all porcelain dolls and tea sets. These were the "Country Children Toys." Aside from these sort of crude wooden figurines there were also faceless cloth dolls, a few of which had drawn on eyes and mouths that looked like the work of a marker wielding child. Being as there weren't markers centuries ago, I like to think that the dolls had been passed down and thoroughly played with for generations before being donated to the museum.
The only thing I like more than toys that look like they've really been used are toys I get to use. We didn't venture into the playroom on the second floor, but the Wooden Toys section gave us some puzzles and playthings to putz around with. With a push and a pull, one rooster would feed and then the other. Back and forth and back and forth. It made an excellent sound and was far easier to gain satisfaction from than the Gypsy Knot puzzles that sat alongside it. I think Merlin was a little disappointed he couldn't try out one of the teeny tiny wooden "Matchstick Ignited Guns." Another 'interactive' feature of the museum was a computer set up in the Wind Up Toy room. You could click on a picture of any exhibited toy and watch a short video of it moving all about. There were ducks climbing ladders, fishermen casting out their lines and some little people who just liked running around in circles.
This is a dollhouse kitchen accessory I've never seen before. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is a meat grinder. I bet there's a toy house somewhere out there in America with a teeny tiny Foreman Grill. The dollhouse room was my favorite. There was one that had been made by a man as he hid from the Soviets in a potato crate. He recreated his entire house from memory and then gave the completed set to his daughter when he came out of hiding. The house had been deconstructed and each floor was placed inside a drawer, which allowed you to get a good bird's eye view of the work one level at a time. Peaking through chests of drawers that didn't belong to me and finding little treasures made me feel absolutely childlike and, I thought, was an excellent way to convey the secrecy of his craftsmanship.
In almost every room, the mänguasjamuuseum mentioned the gender differences in toys, explaining that throughout time playthings have been used to prepare little boys and girls for their future roles in life. This was best illustrated in the older toy collections, where mock hunting and building tools were juxtaposed with miniature weaving looms and, of course, dolls. However, at a certain point in time, it seems weird that boys would still need to learn how to be knights or pirates, or that something like driving would be considered a male-specific life skill.
We've only been in Estonia for three days, but being as we've been in the Baltic region for a little over a month now, I can say that this is the most Baltic toy ever. Mittens knit in traditional patterns exactly like this one are in every souvenir shop, on every hand and in every outdoor market on a little table in front of the old woman who knit them. The only thing more omnipresent than this style of knitting is pork. So, there you have it. The Baltics as a toy. Seriously, how cute are those piglets?

The KGB Cells of Tartu

On a blizzardy day when all seemed bleak and cold, we visited the KGB cells museum in Tartu. It was a strange, disconcerting place that we didn't feel like lingering in.
The entrance to the museum was hidden in this inconspicuous block of storefronts, flanked by a vacuum cleaner shop and a cell-phone business. There were stairs down to the basement from the entryway and a small sign pointing to the cells.
There was, unfortunately, very little information in English. The museum focuses more on the general deportation and repression of the Estonian people during Soviet rule than it does on the history of this specific location. We were left to make our own interpretations of the menacing strap-chair and dark, solitary-confinement chambers. How much of the horror was imagined, though, and how much of it was left out of our English guides? The building itself was used as the South Estonian center of KGB operations, and is quite large and municipal-looking. There aren't many cells. While eerily-lit and painted, it was difficult to gauge exactly how awful a place this was.
The history of the occupation in Estonia is a dark one - tens of thousands of people were deported to Siberia or killed. In 1941, ten thousand were deported in a matter of days. In 1949, a second wave sent twenty thousand Estonians to central Russia - which was about two and half percent of the total population at the time. Many more were killed or disappeared under suspicious circumstances. In Tartu, people disappeared into the infamous KGB headquarters, referred to then as "the grey house." Somehow, despite being used until the 1980's, the cells have retained more of the previous era, an aura of a pre-cold war past that is more distant than recent. It is almost as though the museum was set up to evoke images of Stalin and to gloss over Chernenko and Gorbachev - which is strange, considering that the people of Estonia have such an intimate understanding of the occupation and the KGB as modern, recent parts of their life.

Traveling in these Baltic states as a foreigner has made me feel as though something is being hidden from me - history, maybe, or some sense of what begat the present era of prosperity and freedom. Estonia in particular has felt very Western European - by that i mean that they have large shopping malls and the roads are filled with recent Japanese car models. This is not a "developing country," however one would like to define that term, but rather a "modern," thriving democracy. Whatever traces of Soviet occupation that remain are hard to find and interpret - it's bewildering considering that the history is so recent. This is a region that has changed so much in my lifetime, but it also feels as though that change has been covered over and obscured. It is strange to find the need to question familiarity, to look for a history that is guessed at more than learned or experienced.

Together We Can Build...

Merlin: On another wintery, snowy day, we stayed close to home because of sickness (mine) and compassion (Rebecca's). Home, right now, is the shore of lake Aluksne, a couple kilometers outside of town. There is nobody around - the guesthouse people show up once a day to microwave breakfast for us - and we were getting a little lonely and cabin-crazy.

Rebecca: To make matters worse (?) I had "Winter Wonderland" stuck in my head. This has been the case for days, actually. It's proved to be useful because 1) I finally realized that my original interpretation of the lyrics, in which the snowman is hitting on the person who built him (a story for another day), was incorrect and 2) Merlin was prompted to suggest the following: "Do you think if we actually build a snowman you'll stop singing about it?"
Merlin: To give you an idea of how isolated we are, distant ice-fisherman have become our best buddies. This is about as close to them as we've gotten, because we don't want to scare the fish and falling through ice scares me. Also, I'm not sure what I would say if I did walk up to one of them.
Rebecca: Merlin was a little skeptical that it could work. The snow was fluffy and cold, not ideal for manbuilding. When I went upstairs to get gloves and looked out the window, I could see he was making excellent progress.

Merlin: I was skeptical, and my back isn't all that thankful for the extended bending and rolling. The going was painfully slow, but it was a satisfying process. There were setbacks, of course, and I wasn't as happy then as I am now, but it was worth it. Also, Rebecca was much quicker with the torso and the facial accoutrements than I was with the base and head, probably because she believed.
Merlin: Rebecca's hat, cattail stubs for eyes, a piece of detritus for the mouth, a bit of dry grass for the mustache... he's almost too human!

Rebecca: The snow Merlin stuck on to keep the moustache in place definitely resembled a nose. Eerily unintentional. We named the "Parson Brown" we had built "Lang Brown" (wink wink nudge nudge New Schoolers).
Merlin: We are now inside, sipping Bonaparte Brandy, a delicious Latvian spirit, and wishing that Lang could come join us. I do have to keep reminding Rebecca, though, that snowpeople don't like "warming up."

Rebecca: I hope tomorrow morning, the fisherman is super jealous of our new friend. We think that some suspect smelt from the local store was responsible for Merlin's sickness. Maybe that was fisherman's secret gift to us - leading us to build Lang. Our friends are the best.

(Merlin: p.s. The smelt only affected me because we realized that it was mixed up with pork lard. It felt pretty normal for me, this being Latvia, but deterred Rebecca from eating it.)

Happy Hanukkah!

So, no one in Latvia celebrates Hanukkah. I know, shocking. But it still struck me as sort of sad not to see any blue incorporated into town Christmas displays and not to see any electric menorahs or cardboard dreidels. Today, I noticed these cookies mixed in with ones shaped like bells and snowflakes at the supermarket. It was one of those pay-by-weight situations, so naturally, I picked through the mix to fill my bag solely with stars. It was my little way of celebrating.