When we left for Berlin, Estonia had been thawing for a few weeks already. The stairways that were once treacherous ice paths had turned into downhill flowing streams, and the sound of running water everywhere made the entire town of Tartu sound like it was coming to life. Since I arrived, I'd taken the mountains of snow in the town square as a part of the landscape. Suddenly, literally overnight, they were gone. Within a week the trees that had been the black contrast to the snow went from dead to bursting with all different shades of green. The park across from the main building that had looked like a snowy mountain was transformed into green, grassy hills with big leafy trees, and suddenly there were hundreds of Estonians!
We came back just in time for the beginning of the Estonian tradition of Student Days. We had been told, incorrectly, that the students were given the keys to the city and that they controlled the city government for that week. We were also told that the first thing they always did was cancel school. I had planned to go to Sweden with a friend for the whole week, but it was a great thing that the plans fell through, as we all had classes that week. The first night, I saw more Estonians than I had seen all semester. There was a song festival on the town square, where a mens chorus led the crowd in some traditional, and some less traditional, songs. From there the whole crowd started moving towards the base of Dome Hill, which is like a big bowl in the ground. This is where I sledded, made snow angels, and built a snow man for the first time only a month and a half before. Now it was a slightly damp, but very grassy basin. By this time it was dark outside, and the bowl started filling up quickly with students, children, and citizens of every age from the city. A band on a stage across the way led the crowd in traditional Estonian songs, and the crowd of what had to be thousands of people sang and danced and celebrated their country together. It was an incredible sight. Even though I couldn't understand the words, I could feel the pride these people had in their small, young country. I couldn't help feeling sad that Austin couldn't do things like this, but its a different culture, a different place, and a much smaller town.
All week long, the park that was now green was overflowing with students and stages and vans promoting different alcoholic beverages. The college students looked like they could be from any campus in the US, with groups representing all of the different cliques on campus, sitting on blankets, playing guitars, kicking around hackey sacks, and just having a good time with their friends.
I had always thought that Estonia was vastly different from what I was used to based on how Estonians acted out on the town square. It was always muted, there weren't very many people out, and the ones that were loud were normally drunk university students out late at night, or Estonians out late at the local pubs. Now, as the sun comes out more and more every day, the Estonians are coming out into the town. The entire town square is covered in decks that each match their restaurant, and on these decks appeared chairs, tables, and umbrellas. Some even have plants potted into their fences. These tables are always filled with patrons, and the once-silent town square is always filled with the sound of people talking. The kissing students fountain, which until now I had always thought of as a statue, was finally turned on last week. So now, along with the babble of voices, there is the rushing water and trickle of the fountain that Tartu is so famous for.
As I have tried to take in the changes happening to my new home, I realized that I am falling even deeply in love with this country. I explained it to a friend like this:
Say you meet someone who has just been in an accident, so they are slightly out of sorts. You fall in love with them anyway, and you love them just the way they are. Then, suddenly, they are healed, and they are even better than you need them to be. Its like your emotions overflow, because that person is now more incredible to you than you ever expected. That is how the sunshine, the green trees, and the blue sky of Estonia make me feel.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
The Trip to Norway that Wasn't
We left on the last wednesday in April, planning to catch a bus to Riga Latvia, a plane to Bremen Germany, and a plane to Haugesund Norway where we would check into our hotel, take pretty Norway pictures, and then the next morning catch a bus to Odda where we would embark on a grand hiking and canoeing adventure in the fjords. This was our big, big trip that we had been planning for months. We were all ridiculously excited. The guys bought HUGE backpacker's backpacks to hold all of our food for canoeing and hiking, and the night before we left we made 34 sandwiches to get us through traveling and the first day of canoeing (there was a lot of peanut butter in those backpacks. Peter's clothes smelled like peanut butter sandwiches the entire trip!). We also brought seven bueno bars, ten apples, two cans of pringles and three cans of peanuts.
We got on the bus from Tartu and got into Riga no problem, caught a tram to the airport, and made our way to the Ryanair wing to await our flight into Bremen. The thing about Ryanair is that it is a discount air carrier, so all of the students use it to get around, but it is only point to point. This means that they only guarantee to get you from point a to point b, and are not responsible if you miss a second plane, because they don't coordinate connecting flights. I knew this, we all knew this, but we didn't think it would be a problem. Then our plane into Bremen was delayed for an hour and a half, which meant that we would miss our flight into Norway. There are very few flights that go into Haugesund since it's such a little town, and we needed to get to Haugesund in the next 20 hours to catch the bus to Odda that only leaves at 9 AM on thursdays. It turned out, after hours in Bremen and Riga researching, that there was no way to get into Norway at the right time. Then we started researching options out of Bremen, and decided to just catch the tram to the train station, find tickets to somewhere, and to make the rest up as we went along.
Fast forward to the four of us separated into teams of two to find tickets that we can afford out of Bremen, and Kelsey and Peter run up to Colin and I and say, "We're going to Berlin. The train leaves in three minutes. Lets go." So we run off through the train station (or Hauptbahnhof as the Germans say)and grab the train literally seconds before it takes off, sit down, and try and figure out how these german trains actually work, and where we will sleep when we get to berlin at 2 AM. As we got the cheapest student tickets, we have to switch trains every hour or so, and the first transition went none too smoothly. We saw the name of the next city we were going to on a train that was at a different platform than we were supposed to be on, but we completely lost our minds and jumped on again right before it took off. After being assured by a kind german soul, we knew we would eventually get to the right city. Then when they came through the cars and asked for our ticket, we produced one that, it turned out, was not valid on the train we were on. We were told that no, we could not purchase tickets for the train we were on and we would simply have to get out at the next stop. It turned out that we had gotten on the super special express trains that get you between cities without any stops in the middle and at very high speeds, so we ended up getting to our next transition stop an hour before our train would. Best mistake ever, in my opinion, as it gave us time to eat something other than peanut butter, nutella, and banana sandwiches for dinner.
We did eventually make it into Berlin without taking any more wrong trains, and were planning on sleeping in the train station like all good college travelers do, but were met with tons of security wandering around the station. So, we went to the information services desk and found brochures that listed hostels with 24 hour reception, got bus instructions from the man at the desk (seriously LOVE germany) and made our way to the City Hotel Berlin. When we got there, we lucked out that there were four empty beds, headed upstairs, and crashed. Of course there were only free beds for one night, so we knew we'd have to wake up early the next morning to find a new hostel for the rest of the weekend.
At 11 AM, after I successfully ordered breakfast in German and we paid way too many euros for pastries and coffee, we started what has come to be lovingly known as the Hostel Tour 2009. We must have walked to four hostels before finding one that had free beds and that we found on accident down a side street called "The Easterner." They had two private double rooms, which in hostel terms meant that we could sleep in pairs in two rooms without any strangers. This was very exciting. We even (accidentally) bargained the price down to 20 euros a night, saving about fifteen dollars each. Sweet deal.
I cannot even describe the feeling of happiness that we all felt when we realized we had somewhere to sleep, but we quickly dropped off our stuff and headed off for our first day (half day) of sightseeing. We walked halfway across the city, or at least that's how it felt, to see the TV tower, churches, Marx and Engels platz, and the East Side Gallery, which is the longest section of Berlin wall still standing. It's been turned into a gallery of paintings by artists to commemorate the wall falling. My feet were in such pain by the time we made it back to the hostel, but it was worth it to see that.
The next day was also full of sightseeing. We started with Museum Island and saw all of the gorgeous old buildings, headed to Potsdam Platz and searched (unsuccessfully) for the ben and jerry's ice cream shop that was supposed to exist there. We did not find it. But, we did find a Sri Lankan protest group outside of the Reichstag, which is a gorgeous, gorgeous building. We didn't get to go inside because of the massive line, but we did get to walk through one of the most beautiful parks in the world, the Tiergarten. We laid in the incredibly green grass in the sun for so long that i got a sunburn and I didn't even care. We then went on to see a cathedral that survived the bombing of WW2.
We spend the next day traveling to and sightseeing in Bremen, a quaint little city that, after Berlin, was almost a let down except for the awesome buildings in Old Town. From there we went to Riga, where we spent a day sightseeing there at the old town in the capital of Latvia and ended our trip with a card game and Latvian beer on the old town square (which just happens to be a UNESCO recognized site).
All in all, it was no canoeing hiking fjord adventure, but it was still amazing. The four of us have discussed how we have all, over the course of our travels this semester and in our lives, been places where we really felt like we had found "our city." Mine, it turns out, is most definitely Berlin!
I'm planning on getting to Poland, Lithuania, and the UK in the last legs of this semester. Hopefully it won't take as long as this did to tell ya'll about those trips! Also, we came back from the gorgeous green beauty that is Germany to an Estonia without ice or snow, and with 70 degree weather and green trees. Best homecoming ever!
We got on the bus from Tartu and got into Riga no problem, caught a tram to the airport, and made our way to the Ryanair wing to await our flight into Bremen. The thing about Ryanair is that it is a discount air carrier, so all of the students use it to get around, but it is only point to point. This means that they only guarantee to get you from point a to point b, and are not responsible if you miss a second plane, because they don't coordinate connecting flights. I knew this, we all knew this, but we didn't think it would be a problem. Then our plane into Bremen was delayed for an hour and a half, which meant that we would miss our flight into Norway. There are very few flights that go into Haugesund since it's such a little town, and we needed to get to Haugesund in the next 20 hours to catch the bus to Odda that only leaves at 9 AM on thursdays. It turned out, after hours in Bremen and Riga researching, that there was no way to get into Norway at the right time. Then we started researching options out of Bremen, and decided to just catch the tram to the train station, find tickets to somewhere, and to make the rest up as we went along.
Fast forward to the four of us separated into teams of two to find tickets that we can afford out of Bremen, and Kelsey and Peter run up to Colin and I and say, "We're going to Berlin. The train leaves in three minutes. Lets go." So we run off through the train station (or Hauptbahnhof as the Germans say)and grab the train literally seconds before it takes off, sit down, and try and figure out how these german trains actually work, and where we will sleep when we get to berlin at 2 AM. As we got the cheapest student tickets, we have to switch trains every hour or so, and the first transition went none too smoothly. We saw the name of the next city we were going to on a train that was at a different platform than we were supposed to be on, but we completely lost our minds and jumped on again right before it took off. After being assured by a kind german soul, we knew we would eventually get to the right city. Then when they came through the cars and asked for our ticket, we produced one that, it turned out, was not valid on the train we were on. We were told that no, we could not purchase tickets for the train we were on and we would simply have to get out at the next stop. It turned out that we had gotten on the super special express trains that get you between cities without any stops in the middle and at very high speeds, so we ended up getting to our next transition stop an hour before our train would. Best mistake ever, in my opinion, as it gave us time to eat something other than peanut butter, nutella, and banana sandwiches for dinner.
We did eventually make it into Berlin without taking any more wrong trains, and were planning on sleeping in the train station like all good college travelers do, but were met with tons of security wandering around the station. So, we went to the information services desk and found brochures that listed hostels with 24 hour reception, got bus instructions from the man at the desk (seriously LOVE germany) and made our way to the City Hotel Berlin. When we got there, we lucked out that there were four empty beds, headed upstairs, and crashed. Of course there were only free beds for one night, so we knew we'd have to wake up early the next morning to find a new hostel for the rest of the weekend.
At 11 AM, after I successfully ordered breakfast in German and we paid way too many euros for pastries and coffee, we started what has come to be lovingly known as the Hostel Tour 2009. We must have walked to four hostels before finding one that had free beds and that we found on accident down a side street called "The Easterner." They had two private double rooms, which in hostel terms meant that we could sleep in pairs in two rooms without any strangers. This was very exciting. We even (accidentally) bargained the price down to 20 euros a night, saving about fifteen dollars each. Sweet deal.
I cannot even describe the feeling of happiness that we all felt when we realized we had somewhere to sleep, but we quickly dropped off our stuff and headed off for our first day (half day) of sightseeing. We walked halfway across the city, or at least that's how it felt, to see the TV tower, churches, Marx and Engels platz, and the East Side Gallery, which is the longest section of Berlin wall still standing. It's been turned into a gallery of paintings by artists to commemorate the wall falling. My feet were in such pain by the time we made it back to the hostel, but it was worth it to see that.
The next day was also full of sightseeing. We started with Museum Island and saw all of the gorgeous old buildings, headed to Potsdam Platz and searched (unsuccessfully) for the ben and jerry's ice cream shop that was supposed to exist there. We did not find it. But, we did find a Sri Lankan protest group outside of the Reichstag, which is a gorgeous, gorgeous building. We didn't get to go inside because of the massive line, but we did get to walk through one of the most beautiful parks in the world, the Tiergarten. We laid in the incredibly green grass in the sun for so long that i got a sunburn and I didn't even care. We then went on to see a cathedral that survived the bombing of WW2.
We spend the next day traveling to and sightseeing in Bremen, a quaint little city that, after Berlin, was almost a let down except for the awesome buildings in Old Town. From there we went to Riga, where we spent a day sightseeing there at the old town in the capital of Latvia and ended our trip with a card game and Latvian beer on the old town square (which just happens to be a UNESCO recognized site).
All in all, it was no canoeing hiking fjord adventure, but it was still amazing. The four of us have discussed how we have all, over the course of our travels this semester and in our lives, been places where we really felt like we had found "our city." Mine, it turns out, is most definitely Berlin!
I'm planning on getting to Poland, Lithuania, and the UK in the last legs of this semester. Hopefully it won't take as long as this did to tell ya'll about those trips! Also, we came back from the gorgeous green beauty that is Germany to an Estonia without ice or snow, and with 70 degree weather and green trees. Best homecoming ever!
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