Playing catch up + Bob Marley?

The 14 posts that are after this one (meaning I already posted them) are in backwards order of how a blog usually works, but it's for one simple reason: I didn't suspect you wanted to read 8 pages of my Estonia+1 day in Italy trip all at once... so I broke it up for you, but I also didn't want it out of sequence so I wrote it all out during my 2 hour bus ride and then copy+paste'd it from the bottom up. Have fun! I should hopefully finish editing the wedding photos from KC tomorrow and then I'll move to Estonia and then get those posted. Ideally that will all happen tomorrow, which is quite possible due to the crappy weather we are having... which leads me to my next point.

My mood.

As you read through and get to this post, you will see the start of why I may possibly be in a bad mood. Plus, I was just notified we lost another one from the accident (my 9th grade student). I am also reading a book at the moment that I can't put down (except for now because I have my Kindle and it's now dark outside - I miss Estonia - and I didn't listen to my dad when he suggested the case with the light so I can't read right now) about Russia during WWII and HOLY COW it's intense and depressing, the weather is cold and crappy outside, only depressing songs were playing on my iTunes as I was editing wedding photos (which you'd think would make me happy, but it didn't) and no one is answering their phones right now to chat but I don't blame them... I'm not really in the mood either. So, with that being said, I had a bit of a hiatus from all of the above when I went to eat a rather perfect meal with my host family (fried zucchini with a garlic sauce and some goat cheese which was perfect after a rather late double-lunch due to my rather late 11am wake up so late breakfast). When I came back to my room I was notified of the 3rd death and just felt like doing nothing else after that. However, I'd received a text from one of my students notifying me that my internet should be working now which was a sigh of relief- and distraction. So I opened up my computer and started posting the 9 1/2 pages worth of text, and in doing so, I also opened up iTunes, hoping for something better.

The first song that played was "Everything's Gonna Be Alright" by Bob Marley. Perhaps my Mom was trying to do her part to help me out. After all, all her friends and family seemed to talk about when I was back home was her "Bahama Mama" parties. I guess now that I'm an adult (scary thought) I'm old enough to hear about the wild side of my Mom (awesome thought).

So, as a reminder to those of you who may also be suffering because of this crappy weather in Moldova: Don't worry about a thing. 'Cuz every little thing's... gonna be alright. This is my message to you-ou-ou."

First stop: Tallinn

Going to Estonia was a breath of fresh air: literally. I’ve come to realize that the company you are traveling with really can make or break and experience. The trip to Estonia was kind of a last minute “what the heck” decision… and totally worth it. You see, my friend Diana from Montreal (who I met when studying abroad in France and who also traveled with me in Florida and San Francisco) said she was going to be in Estonia and told me I should join her. Well, I didn’t really see the logistics of that since the dates she was going to be there overlapped with my trip in Kansas, so I said it just wasn’t going to work out. Well, then I was talking to my friend Chris (who is from Estonia and who I met when staying in Dublin while studying abroad) and I told him before I left Moldova I wanted to make it a point to come to Estonia. Well, as it turned out he was going to be arriving the day after Diana was supposed to leave with 3 of our other friends I’d met when I met him… from France and Italy. So with a little bit of convincing (it really wasn’t difficult) I got Diana and her brother to extend their trip in Estonia a couple of days so we could all hang out together. So, that is how it all worked out. One American, one Estonian, one Italian, two Canadians, and two French with one common language: English. Awesome.

I was the last to arrive in Tallinn, making it trip 3 for Chris to the airport in one day. We went to the pub to meet up with the rest of the group who had apparently just finished a HUGE dinner and were now wrapping up the evening with some drinks (sounds like a great time, if you ask me). However, I was a little behind and had some catching up to do, so I was thankful for the 2-for-1 mixed drink specials for the ladies. After some time there we made our way to a club that charged 1.30 euros for a glass of water- yes, you read that correctly. They CHARGED for WATER. In a GLASS. I couldn’t believe it, but I guess it could be worse, eh? (Oh no, the Canadians totally rubbed off on me). When we finally wore down and decided to head back to the apartment it was 3:30am. We went outside and get this- it was STILL light outside. If it wasn’t for all of us having phones that said 3:30am, I totally would have thought Armageddon had come and changed all of our clocks or something because it felt and looked like 6am… but of course it was much better that it wasn’t so we could still have an early start. Wait, a what?

At around 4:30 we finally hit the sack after indulging in everything that had been purchased for breakfast (a big meal only stays with you for so long). Next thing we knew, we got a wake up call from Chris (who had stayed elsewhere because there wasn’t room in the apartment) at 10am saying we needed to get our International booties moving because we had a tour at 11am of an underground city, and when he called and said he would be late they got mad and said, “that’s what reservations are for!!”… so we arrived just in time to catch the tail end of the rather silly (but probably quite informative) film about the history of the underground city.

Underground city

Because we missed the introductory video and the tour guide had just memorized the lines she was supposed to say (without putting emotions behind them), I didn’t get much more information about the history later on. But what I could figure out was in the 15^th or 16^th century these walls had been built around Tallinn, and tunnels underneath them, probably to hide and escape during battle. Then they were re-discovered in the 1800’s I believe, and again in the early 1900 s, and again in 1995 (why they kept getting discovered and re-discovered I’m not so sure, especially because they never went anywhere). So even though the tour was rather silly and corny (going back in the past, and then forward in the future to watch a video of what Tallinn might look like in 2219 by adding futuristic designs to the current buildings), it was really interesting to see the different ways that the tunnels were used: as a bomb shelter during the war, and even for homeless in the 1980’s and 90’s… and there were toilets that everyone gasped at and couldn’t believe they were used, but they looked surprisingly similar to the toilets at my school…

After this tour we headed to a pub to grab a bite to eat, which ended up being the type of place we always went to eat when we weren’t grilling meat (that will come later). The portions were once again huge, and Matteo ordered some lamb and got this HUGE leg of lamb… it was awesome. Believe it or not, he finished all of it. Must have been hungry!

Prison break

So to stick with tradition we were late to our neXt organized tour: a tour of a prison. I must say that this was possibly one of the coolest things I have ever seen, and I’m glad that I did because it is currently up for sale and will probably begin the process to be turned into a fancy schmancy hotel in the next 5 years. What made it so great was that it hadn’t been touched at all- in fact, some of the mattresses from the prisoners were still on the beds (ok, they were put there a couple of years ago because it was used to film a movie, but they were the actual mattresses from the storage area so it counts for something!).. There was still furniture there, and nothing had been repainted (except for the death row area in order to cover up the blood stains, although there weren’t many because… well, it’s too gruesome to explain). We saw the hanging room, and were taken to a holding room. When we were taken there, the guide (who was really awesome) had just finished telling us about the only ghost he has seen in the building (which actually came at an interesting time because just before he started talking about that I was going to ask him if the place is supposedly haunted). So when we went into the room, he slammed the huge metal door behind us and I think the other 3 girls and I just about wet our pants as we were screaming (it was REALLY loud). Once he finally opened the door back up (I guess he got a phone call or something just as he closed it), we were ready to move on. But he wasn’t! He showed us this pitchfork looking thing that seemed to be missing the center fork and said that was how they got the prisoners under control if they were acting out in the 1 ½-6 hours they were stuck in there, if not overnight. He asked for a volunteer and targeted Canadian Diana. He had her put her hands against the wall (it was very dirty she said and the paint stuck to her hands) and then he put the broken pitchfork around her to keep her in place. She then asked for another volunteer, and Canadian Nicholas was chosen. He then had to pat her down. After it was all over the guy said, “you missed your chance!” and then we responded (almost in unison), “he’s her brother!”. Haha. Maybe you had to be there.

The history of the prison goes pretty far back and even closer to the present. The last prisoner was taken out in 1995. It was primarily used as a transition spot, often having up to 1500 prisoners, which is well over the 700 person capacity. Some of the prisoners just committed petty crimes, others were political crimes, and others on death row. If they were on death row they got their own special room which honestly still smelled bad. Then when it was their time to go, they could either be hanged (we went to that room just to “hang out”, injected with poison, or shot. Eek.

It was all pretty intense being there, and it was amazing that prisoners still had to go through that. What was fascinating to me, though, was that my friends kept saying, “I can’t believe people were put through this in such bad conditions” but to me, it wasn’t really anything new because a lot of places in Moldova are still like this- the corruption and lack of money has kept it form moving forward.

In fact, I think that was the most fascinating part for me about Estonia… the fact that that is where Moldova could have been if they had been able to move forward instead of staying where they were a(or falling back) after they became independent. I could still see so much of Moldova within Estonia because it is also an ex-Soviet country that also became independent in 1991. There was similar architecture in the cities, and similar stories from the Estonians about what life used to be like. But the difference is where it is today. I cannot even being to explain how clean the country was. There were trash bins everywhere and you never even saw a cigarette butt in the street (but it was also pretty rare to see people smoking in general). The buildings had been restructured and taken care of, and people had moved forward. Ah, Estonia was so beautiful. Which takes me to the countryside…

Estonian country house

After a full day in the city, it was time to head to Chris’s country house for the solstice celebrations. The drive was about an hour and a half from Tallinn, but it wasn’t really that bad (ok, truth bomb: I slept most of it). Once we got to the actual country side (which included TONS of trees!!!), there were no longer signs pointing us in the right direction: you just had to know the streets (or the landmarks) in order to get where you wanted to go. Supposedly most Estonians have country houses and most have been passed on through the generations. In fact, their house comes from Chris’s grandmother. The area near them used to be blockaded during Soviet times as a training center for soldiers but also where the wealthy politicians and military leaders could go and escape because it was near the seaside. There used to be a blockade of guards that they had to go through in order to get to their summer house, which he said was always a hassle but obviously worth it in the end…. And as soon as we arrived at the house (where he’d spent ALL of his summers as a kid), I knew why. There were 3 houses on the property that, once his grandma died, had been passed on to his father and his father’s two siblings. They house they were in used to be a barn and his father (who is an incredibly craftsman) had reconstructed it to be a house… and a beautiful one at that. There was no running water (the water was collected from the stream), and the outhouse was like doing your business in luxury in comparison to what I use in Moldova--- which really isn’t bad at all. But, listen. This place had a Styrofoam seat, a rug, and a light. To me it was awesome and I didn’t notice the smell, but I guess I was out of my rocker because others disagreed. Guess they won’t be coming to visit me here! Lol. But they also had a sauna that we went to the traditional way (only males then only females… in our birthday suits). It was after the sauna that we also took advantage of a bucket bath which, even though other PCV’s have had to use one, I’ve been lucky enough to have a host family that has a shower- and I am very thankful for that… because the bucket bath wasn’t so fun. I mean, it was part of the experience so that was great and all, but if I did that every day I would totally have short hair because it is very difficult to get all of the soap out of it! Anyways… moving on. So I forgot to mention the mosquitos… which is totally crazy because they are a very crucial part to the vacation because they were pretty much part of the vacation. The second we got out of the van once we’d arrived, the mosquitos were EVERYWHERE. I’d never seen so many together in my entire life! There was no wind and it was cool so they just stuck around. We instantly covered ourselves in bug spray which helped but there were some little suckers (haha no pun intended) that decided to push their way past the smell and bite us. The weird thing, though, was that the bites itched like crazy as soon as they were noticed, but after that they didn’t itch, and unless you were Seb, the bumps didn’t stick around either. After the grand tour and the loading up of bug spray, was time for dinner. Chris’s mom had made her famous potato salad, there was a cheese spread, and tons and tons of meat (supposedly 600 tons of meat had been purchased and theoretically consumed over that holiday weekend). The meat became our nightly dinner, which totally made it worth the almost 7 pounds I gained on this trip.

Summer Solstice celebrations

After dinner it was time to grab our drinks and head to the fisherman’s village about a 30 minute walk form the house to celebrate the longest day of the year. It wasn’t as cool as the lighting of the fires in Austria that I went to a few years ago, but it was still a lot of fun. We all stood around the fire, music was playing, and there was an oversized swing we got to play on (once we kindly asked the kids to let us on). I tried to record Chris’s niece saying the time every so often to see the timeline of the “setting” sun, but around midnight she decided she’d had enough and it was time to go home… so that stopped. I believe it was 1:30 when it hit the darkest it was going to get, so we stuck around a little bit longer and then started our walk back to the house. Instead of cutting through the forest like we’d done on our way there, we went along the beach. It took probably about an hour but the view was beautiful and there weren’t too many mosquitos. We could see the sun coming back up and the moon at the same time (which I guess you can always see, but at 2am, it’s not expected). Once we were all back, it was time to crash- and crash we did- until 11am (which was the schedule for the rest of the vacation).

Canadian goodbyes and Country Manors

Once we got all ready to go it was time to take the Canadians to the airport so they could finish the last leg of their trip – Paris- before heading back to Canada (after almost 6 weeks of traveling). We loaded all of their stuff up and then headed to the airport to say our goodbyes. Of course it was difficult but knowing my past with Diana, I know we’ll be meeting up somewhere crazy and unexpected soon.

Once we they headed through the rather quick and easy security we headed to the car to begin an afternoon visiting different manors in the countryside. They used to be privately owned but are now open to visitors. Most of them are free of cost to walk around the grounds (you must pay to go into the house or the museum) but of course the first one we went to was one of the few that recently decided to charge to enter the grounds (which apparently has caused quite a stir from other Estonians).

No worries though, there were plenty more to see (we chose two).

When we got to the 3^rd manor we met up with Chris’s brother, sister in law, and niece and nephew. From there we headed to the beach to take it all in one last time before the rain came and we had to leave.