On My Home Country. Welcome to Estonia!

Since February is the month of love AND it’s also Estonia’s birthday month (February 24th), I thought I’d share something about my home country with you on each Friday this month. Most of you know it’s in Europe, but I’m pretty sure that except for Jenny, who visited Tallinn last summer [her recap post], none of you have ever visited Estonia before.

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It’s one of the smallest countries in Europe as well in the world. We have only 1.3 million people, but there’s a saying that there’s an Estonian in every port in the world. Why? LOL. When you’re travelling and thinking that no one will understand what you’re saying and you can say whatever you want? Haha. That’s not exactly true, because there’s always an Estonian next to you asking: “Tere! Kas te olete Eestist?” which in translation means “Hello! Are you from Estonia?” Oh, no, I’m just practicing for an Estonian test I’m about to take tomorrow. Well, obviously we’re from Estonia lol. Oh, that reminds me, when you go to Egypt or even Gran Canaria aka Spain (true stories) then in every store you go to, the shopkeeper tells you “Tere, tere, vanakere” which means “Hello, hello, old body/person”. It’s an old saying in Estonian to greet one another like that though people rarely use it. The last time I did was when I was in kindergarten because I found the word vanakere to be extremely funny. *eyeroll*

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Estonian flag has 3 colours on it: blue (the sky, lakes and the sea), black (the soil) and white (symbol of trying to achieve happiness and all things made of light). I'm under that flag, btw! It was captured last year during the play-offs of European Championships 2015 in basketball (the um.. where you fight for a place on the ECs.) We got the place and it was literally one of the most incredible things I have ever witnessed. The way the people sang and cheered, it was pretty much amazing and being in the fan sector with my family was the best thing ever. (Our family is big on sports.)

Supposedly Estonian is the second most beautiful language in the world after Italian (based on some survey, but I don't remember where, it was years ago when I read the results). Estonian is very similar to Finnish. If you want to listen to it, you can listen to the song below which talks about how important it is to listen to wind, darkness, light, rainbows, silence, the earth, shadows, your heart and everything that is in the simple moments and tiny details. The guy singing is one of the most loved Estonian singers and he has a voice that really makes you listen. He also won the third (I think) season of Estonian Idol lol.

Estonians are considered to be very cold and reserved. I remember when we I spent 3 weeks with a host family in Torquay, England, there were 5 more girls with me: Austrian (2), Swedish (2) and one girl from Spain. When it was time to say goodbye and ride back to London, the Spanish girl cried like a baby. I basically didn't even know her, I spent my time with other people and she hugged me and sobbed like I was dying while I just stood there and gave an awkward hug back. It was plenty of weird for me. I didn't cry a single tear, but I was still sad. Though, you should see me when I'm reading Point of Retreat or watching Marley & Me, for instance. When we went to see M&M in a theatre with my friends, I laughed over the whole room, because I cried so much it was funny. I couldn't even see the screen lol. Cold and reserved? You betcha! Since I'm adding pictures to illustrate the post, here's me (at 16) that summer with two other Estonian girls and two of our teachers (it was a language camp basically) Phil and Phillip. (I'm the middle one. In case you didn't know.)

Um, what else? We have 4 seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter. Most of us aren’t religious at all. I think there was a survey carried out where Estonians were declares as the most pagan or atheistic people in the entire world. I’m not sure if that holds any water, but there are very few people I know who are even the tiniest bit religious. We do celebrate Christmas though—it’s more like a holiday to celebrate friends, family, love, closeness. Me and my family always spend it with our extended family: we are either at our house (like this year) or at my aunt’s house or my uncle’s place. I know that many countries have 3 Christmas holiday days, but we only have 2. Which reminds me that some say that Estonians are work people—we are supposedly always working. During Chrismas the Old Town looks like this:

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I happened to watch this um.. interview or something with people who had just came off a cruise ship, people from Canada, the States, UK, Denmark, Japan—everywhere actually, and they were asked different questions about Estonia. LOL. People thought that we lived in huts and basically didn’t have any technology whatsoever and were surprised by how modern Tallinn looks like. Well, you know, among the guys who invented/founded Skype were two Estonians and we did have the first e-elections in the world, so. LOL, one of my best friends was a tutor to foreign exchange students in her college last year and people e-mailed her asking if they should bring their own pillows because they didn’t know if we sold these here or not. You have no idea how hard I laughed when my friend told me that.

Ok, that’s it for now, because this post is getting very, very long. If you have any topics you want me to tackle or talk about, just leave them in the comments. I have something planned for Feb 14th, but not for the rest of the month, so anything you want to read about or ask or whatever, I’m basically down with everything. I may talk about local cuisines and people, some you might know or discover (like music artists etc), the Song- and Danceparties etc. I need to think about it, but yes, if you have any ideas, let me know! :)