The United States of Europe

One of my biggest pet peeves when discussing the United States with Europeans is the tendency some have to think we are all the same. I think if you know ONE thing about American politics, it would be how polarized it is. And despite this view some have of us being gun-toting, Republican-voting cowboys, they all want to go to New York, which is NOTHING like that. When I was studying in France at the height of the Bush administration, I learned quickly that people will be MUCH nicer to you if you identify yourself as being from California instead of saying you're from the United States.

Amidst the British budget cuts and the French protests-turned-riots, I've started to notice that Americans are just as guilty when it comes to Europe. I've read a lot of smug commentary about the "European system" is failing- and most of these articles have nothing to do with the EU. Look in American newspapers, and you'll find talk about entitled Europeans who would riot when the government tries to raise the low retirement age. Yes, this happened in France and Greece... but where are the riots in the rest of Europe? We talk about how the European social welfare system is a failure, and how the tax rates destroys their economy. This is a strange assessment considering that one of the few countries that can be smug during this recession is Germany. Real Clear Politics just published this article about how Americans have a stronger work ethic than Europeans, and I find myself wanting to ask the author if he has ever been to Estonia or Germany? (Just to single out two countries I've lived in where I've found the locals to be very hard-working.)

Lumping California and Texas together in terms of culture and governance because they are both American states is ridiculous. Los Angeles and New York are NOT the same city. Even Los Angeles and San Francisco have very different cultures. The United States and Mexico differ in several respects despite being neighbors. So why are Americans so comfortable thinking that France represents the whole of Europe?

Did they teach you that in medical school?

After a twenty minute tram ride, and another twenty minutes trying to find an office that's only three minutes from the tram stop, I arrived at my most recent medical appointment. The nurse calls me in, tells me where to put my coat and shoes, then asks me to "Go inside, lay down, and open your stomach. The doctor will come looking for it shortly."

I sort of wanted to just point to my belly and say, "Oh, don't worry, here it is."

Uks kohv, palun

"One coffee, please," may well be my most-used phrase in Estonian after "hello" and "thank you."

One aspect of Estonia that I've absolutely fallen in love with is the strong, lively cafe culture here. Not a Starbucks in sight, I have had to try the various cafes one by one in order to find the one to call my own. It's an on-going process- I'll probably still be trying out new cafes as I am packing my bags to leave next summer: but here are a few contenders for "favorite."

Kehr Wieder
One of my cardinal travel rules is to avoid the cafes with terraces on a big tourist location: it will normally be twice as expensive, not as good, and the locals won't go near it. Luckily, when my friends and I discovered this gem- located on the Town Hall Square- on a trip to Tallinn in 2008, we found the side entrance and didn't know we were about to break our own rule. It is one of the more expensive cafes I frequent, but it is just as good, and there are always several locals. To tell you the influence Kehr Wieder has on the local cafe scene: its website is www.kohvik.ee, which would be the equivalent of www.cafe.com in the US.

The cafe is slightly below ground, lit mostly by the candles on the tables, and is full of comfy chairs and sofas. I've found the melted chocolate reminiscent of Madrid's Chocolateria San Gines and Angelina's in Paris. Take a bar of very rich, expensive chocolate, melt it, and dip pastry in it, and you have an idea of how good this is. Heavenly. :) My favorite drink here is "meekohv," a latte made with lots of honey and cinnamon. A coffee or tea is 32 EEK, a meekohv is 55 EEK. (1 USD is about 11.25 EEK.)

Kohvik Kompott
This bright cafe is about 60 seconds away from my apartment, so I find myself here just about every time I don't want to cook. I've written several blog posts, including this one, here. My favorite part of the cafe is its unique decorations: I'm sitting at an old sewing table. The lightbulbs on the wall above me are covered by cheese graters, and the lights which hang from the ceiling are in jars full of colored lightbulbs. My favorite item on the (very inexpensive!) menu is the potato and smoked cheese soup, which they serve with rye bread and garlic butter. Before my student discount, the soup is 39 EEK.


Gourmet Coffee
As the name suggests, this is the coffee-lover's cafe in Tallinn: They must have at least twenty types of coffee beans to pick from. If you're not busy, the very helpful staff will help you pick the right blend. However, what's much more fun is to just get the "thermos coffee." Each day, they have one or two brews out, and you can get a mug for 25 EEK, and fill it as many times as you want. Sitting in this cafe feels rather like sipping coffee in the living room of your (very wealthy) grandmother. No wonder a local film crew showed up to shoot a movie scene here during my last visit.

Chocolaterie la Pierre
I took these two photos on my first visit. I don't think I need to say more. :)

Why I love the EU

For Christmas, I am flying home on Air France with a layover in Paris. As a result, I'm watching the French strikes carefully. I was particularly worried about the following headline: "France asks airlines to cut flights ahead of strikes." Do I need to buy travel insurance to come home? If my flight gets cancelled, what are my rights? As it turns out, the EU requires that flights cancelled due to strikes have to either be rebooked or fully refunded- customer's choice.

I must admit, I have issues with the French method of striking- it's impossible to NOT be affected as an innocent bystander, even if you entirely disagree with the strike to begin with. After my semester in France, I was often asked if I would ever live there. The frequency of strikes and protests that disrupted the entire city (and with which I happened to never agree) was not a small reason why my answer was always a quick "No."

Rudeness

I'm taking a course called "Intercultural Studies." It consist mainly of Estonians and Erasmus students comparing thoughts on whichever topic was given to us. Last week, we talked about what is rude. We were given a list of several things- smoking next to a person, talking loudly, eye contact, eating in public, now forming a proper line, being late. One amusing observation about lateness was that pretty much everyone could agree that it was rude, but no one could agree what constituted "late" to begin with.

So my homework this week was to conduct my own little social experiments. Do something I might consider to be rude and see what happens; alternately, go out of my way to be polite, and see if anybody says thank you.

I was deeply uncomfortable with the first half of the assignment and have put it off. I don't want to jump a line. I am NOT going to take up smoking just to see how people react. And I don't want to speak too loudly since I simply don't want to paint "foreigner" on my forehead in a public place- even though, as I have assured my mother several times, Tallinn is a perfectly safe place. I've tried leaving out "please" and "thank you," but I don't think anybody notices. I could leave out the pleasantries with the shopkeepers, but this isn't a place where you really make conversations with strangers anyways. How do you be rude in a society when you don't really know what constitutes rudeness? My only idea is to try speaking Russian to an ethnic Estonian...

The second one is a lot easier- if you continue to hold a door open, people will continue to walk through it, but no one will look at you, much less say anything. As it turns out, excessive eye contact is considered rude here, which explains why I've found so many shopkeepers to be rather shifty-eyed. Maybe my insistence on eye-contact with those with whom I was speaking... was I unwittingly completing the "be rude" portion of my assignment?

Have I Gone Native?

This last week, I think, was the first week of the permanently cold months. It's dropped ten degrees (again, Fahrenheit), and the highs hover between the high 30s and the mid 40s. We even had our first snow this weekend.

So yesterday, I was walking to the migrations bureau to pick up my residency permit (which they were kind enough to only give me for a single semester... but I digress). It was about 46°F out. I was wearing a long sleeve shirt, peacoat, and jeans tucked into boots.

"Hmm... This is actually a bit uncomfortable," I thought, as I took the jacket off.

What is happening to me??

On a side note, I also learned the word "sleet" this weekend. This is a word you never need to know when you grew up in an environment where the most common weather forecast is "mostly sunshine." I still maintain that "It's slushing" has a nicer ring to it.

Keila Falls

Keila Falls, close to Tallinn in northern Estonia, is where newlyweds go to bring luck to their marriage. They make a small ceremony of placing a lock representing their bond on the bridge and throwing the key into the water.





Check out more of my photos of Keila Falls here.

For Jillian (and Anyone Who Likes Mushrooms)

My lovely friend Jillian, after going through my photos of Estonia, told me Estonia looks "a heckuva lot like home in Washington... but with more mushrooms, it seems."

I can't really gauge the veracity of the Washington comparison, but Jills is absolutely right that if you get out of the city, there are a TON a mushrooms lying around. Since I don't really see them much in California, and those I do see all tend to look the same, I find them fascinating, and I've noticed I've taken a lot of photos of them. I was particularly excited by the red one with white spots- I honestly thought that was the sort of mushroom that the creators of Mario Brothers made up.

Tell me what YOU want to know.

I'm admittedly a self-conscious blogger. As I go about living my day-to-day life in another country, everything starts to seem normal (at least to me) pretty quickly, and normalcy doesn't always seem like something I'd want to bore my lovely readers with. So, tell me, do you have any burning questions? Something you want me to take pictures of? Write me a comment, and I'll try to get back to you. :)

Viljandi County, Estonia

The alternate title to this post is, "THIS is why I moved to Estonia."

Two weeks ago, fresh from another trip to the hospital but with doctor's permission to travel, I set off on an excursion to southwestern Estonia with several other international students. I didn't really know what was in store except that it was only about 50USD including lodging, transport, and some meals.

On Friday morning, I woke up, walked three minutes to the bus stop, climbed on the bus the Tallinn University International Club had chartered for us, and promptly fell asleep, just like everybody else. About two hours later, here we were:


This manor (MAYnor, if you ask an Estonian) is located... somewhere in Viljandi County. We spent about 45 minutes here, walking along the pond, trying to get the horses to play with us, and watching the tractor race going on with American country music playing in the background (no joke). Afterwards, we climbed onto a bus for another twenty minutes.









We disembarked at the site of an old military battle. This is all that remains in memory of the castle that was destroyed here.

We stopped for a rather late lunch in the city of Viljandi, where castle ruins overlook a gorgeous lake. We walked around the ruins, probably collectively took over 1000 pictures, and played on an awesome giant swing. I thought we were staying here for the night, but it turns out the city has little tourist infrastructure, so we got back onto the bus and headed for a farm about 20 kilometers out.


We stayed that night at the Kopra Talu (Beaver's Farm). That night, I was introduced to a very Estonian tradition: the sauna party. At Kopru Talu was an old, traditional smoke-style sauna. The sauna itself is in a chimney-less room. One of the Estonian "tutors" lit a fire shortly after our arrival. We let it burn while we made dinner, ate dinner, and had a few drinks. (Well, at least those who weren't on antibiotics had a few drinks.) Finally, the tutors put the fire out, and we went in. Stephanie and I were the brave first two to join Karolin and Martin, two of our Estonian tutors. Karolin tried to explain to Stephanie and I why Estonians tend not to wear swimsuits in this sort of sauna.

"You're a bit like grilled chicken in there," she told us.

There is ash everywhere, and you might not be able to get the smell of smoke out of your clothes. Stephanie and I were still a bit reticent, so we went in with swimsuits and slapped each others' back with wet birch branches to stimulate circulation. Eventually the sauna grew popular, so we went out to fulfill the other part of an Estonian sauna party: jumping in the nearest body of water. Martin of course enjoyed a nice swim, Karolin took a minute-long swim, Stephanie jumped in and jumped out, and I just dangled my legs in the water. The water was absolutely freezing. "Why do they do this to themselves," I wondered as I decided against going all the way in. The answer came as I got out of the water: for all the hell the cold puts you through, you feel amazing as soon as you get out of the water. I did one more round of sauna and lake before calling it a night. My favorite quote about the experience came the following day.

"I was a little bit scared to go in the sauna- it was coed, and I knew about half the people had taken off their clothes. But it wasn't at all naughty, not even a little bit!"

More pictures are available on my website.

No Speak Americano

Recently, one of my roommates was poking fun at me.

"Aww," I said playfully. "You hurt my feelings."

"What does zees mean, 'urt feelings?"

I searched for a moment to see if I could say it in French before Christophe finally dismissed the incident saying, "I don't know what eet mean, zees feelings. It must be somezing only women 'ave."

I posted this conversation as my facebook status, and Ian, who stayed with me briefly this summer, responded right away.

"It must be my fate in life to have smartass roommates," I told him.

"It is also your fate in life to be perpetually cursed by hilarities in foreign language faux-pas," he replied.

Yes. This is definitely true. I spent a good eight hours over the last couple days doing Russian homework, I take six hours of Estonian lessons a week, and I try to speak with Christophe in French when I can, so my head is constantly swimming, and it's pretty common to catch me saying something pretty stupid. (I'd like to think, at least, that it's more common than when I'm speaking English, but I'll let you be the judge on that.)

The rector at Tallinn University is supposedly conversational in almost 20 languages. I really have to hand it to the man. I consider myself to be good with languages- the fact that I've always been a little bit high-strung about grammar in English helps me out a lot, and I think I can pick up an understanding of the language fairly quickly. More and more, however, I find myself at the point where I think I'm being counterproductive. When people speak to me, I may be able to understand them just fine, but when I go to respond, I have no idea what to say. I speak English because I've grown up in America. I speak French because I've studied it since I was a little girl. I picked up some Spanish hearing it all around me in high school and always reading the Spanish version of official documents when I'd finished reading the English one. I picked up some German because my EU program required it. I've been beating my brains trying to learn Russian for a little over a year now, and now I'm trying to learn Estonian because, like any good Fulbrighter, I want to make a good impression on the locals, and that involves saying please and thank you in their language. When someone speaks to me, and it's time for me to respond, I have to run through six languages, and it comes out in some really awkward potpourri of nonsense. My mom told me when I came back from Germany that even my English was suffering- I started sentences with a long "Uhhhhhh...." without even realizing it. I oftentimes think I was more articulate in high school.

I've reached the conclusion that I need to pick a language or two and stick with it. The remaining question, then, is which ones?


This song, which is played without fail in EVERY club in Eastern Europe, was playing in the back of my mind as I wrote this post. I'm not sure what the lyrics actually say, but the title, "We No Speak Americano," is definitely something to which I can relate.

Rest in Peace, Baby Basset

One day when I was eight years old, my parents took me to the local animal shelter. "We're just looking," they emphasized. The famous last words: "We are NOT taking a dog home with us today."

My brother, Brett, had recently decided he wanted a basset hound, and he asked if they had any. It turns out they had no purebreds, but they had one skittish fellow that was half basset, half German shepherd. When he was lying down, he looked like a German shepherd with finer hair and a rounder body, but when he stood up you noticed his legs were probably no more than eight inches long. Brett fell in love with him, Mom fell in love with another handsome and equally stubborn dog, and before you knew it, we had two mutts and three kids in the back seat.

I think my parents thought they'd made the wrong decision, at first. The basset, whom Mason named "Batdog," was more than likely abused by his previous owner, and peed whenever you raised your voice (even if not at him). Eventually, however, he grew to love us, and we grew to love him.

I loved him when his ears perked up every time he heard whistling sounds emanating from the TV during our morning cartoons. I loved him whenever he'd sit under the table, lay his head on my chair, and gaze up at me with soulful and entirely pathetic-looking eyes... and then he would move on to everyone else at the table. I loved him when he would get SO excited at the prospect of a walk that he would jump around so much it was damn near impossible to get the leash on his neck, and then he would insist on holding his own leash until we left our property. I loved him when he seemed to think that if he acted excited enough after I returned from walking his brothers, that I would magically forget that I already walked him just 20 minutes prior.

He started getting older as I went to college, but he was always there jumping and wagging his tail every time I came home. It broke my heart a little bit the time I came home and realized his knee was so arthritic I couldn't take him on walks anymore. It broke my heart a little bit more the first time I came home, and he didn't rush to meet me at the door when I called out to announce my arrival. Our baby was no longer a baby, and his always-troubled hearing finally had left him entirely. Of course, being the smart beast that he is, he learned to wake up for breakfast when my Dad switched the lights on and off.

When he was young, he waited at the laundry room until someone (usually me) felt guilty enough to grab his leash and take him out. He'd do this several times a day. Old age proved to be no different: he sat in front of his food dish, angling himself directly between my mother and the kitchen sink when she was trying to do dishes, and would not move until he got a treat. In the very end, he was getting two or three "desserts" a day.

I'm gonna miss this pup when I come home for Christmas.