I Am in Receipt of a Package

I come back from a class that, frankly, crushed my soul, and I find a package slip. I head up to my room to drop off my bag and I think that I'm a bit peckish, and the package could probably wait until tomorrow. But then, as I'm responding to a message, I think that the box probably has snacks in it.

So I head in the direction that the slip says the post office is. I walk up the hill, I see this church. I've been walking for a while, and the numbers of the buildings are making zero sense: 89, 98, 103, 115, 125. And the other side of the street: 92, 93, 124. It's utter madness. I turn around and head back to the dorm and ask for directions. 

 Turns out, it's just past that church. I was so close!! As I've been walking, I'm reading over the slip and I see 7,2kg. I whip out my handy-dandy converter and I'm thinking, "15 pounds! You've got to be kidding me! How am I going to carry this thing?" While the customs form says it weighs 15.14lbs, it was more awkwardly square than heavy. And speaking of heavy things, Mama & Papa, let's not mail things that heavy... they're expensive to mail. 

But here's my box, home in all it's glory! I pop it open and what do I find? Dust. It seems one of the mashed potato packages was a bit crushed. Guess I'm having mashed potatoes with my taco salad tonight! Then I proceeded to cram almost an entire peanut butter granola bar in my mouth. Prepackaged food, how I've missed you! Not that I haven't loved learning how to cook and feeling super adult-like and self-sufficient, but sometimes a girl just needs a granola bar.

In summary: I finally got the package that was mailed September 4th, the post office is a bit of a walk away, I'm having mashed potatoes and taco salad for dinner, and my parents love me.

And I love them, too. Aitäh!

Library Haul

The bookshelves here are full of really old & really beautiful
copies. It's exactly what you'd want in a library.

Today, I went to two libraries and actually picked up a few books, instead of just wandering around like I did yesterday. Still not sure how they've organized things, but I did find most of what I was looking for. Asked for help in locating a specific item, but it seems the system is "if you can't find it yourself, fill out a form and we'll get to it in the next hour." This was only at the main university library. Each department, or faculty, has their own library, as well, and the librarians in my faculty's library were nice and helpful.

"It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

So, here's what I picked up:

My haul

The European Union: A Very Short Introduction by John Pinder and Simon Usherwood. I'm currently taking a class on the EU in International Politics. It's the first class on the EU I've taken, my knowledge on the subject was pretty limited to start with, and it's a Master's course. Hopefully, this will give me some much needed background information.
Theogony & Works and Days by Hesiod & Daphnis and Chloe by Longus. A booktuber I recently discovered reminded me that while I read and am familiar with many classics, there are writings even more classical. Looking to expand my horizons; I like the Greek material I've already read, so these should be a good escape from my homework readings.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Another book I found on booktube (huzzah!) and one that I've been looking foward to reading since I heard about it. Found it in the library by accident; just browsing through shelves when its Estonian version caught my eye (since I can translate that much; all the books in languages which use the Latin alphabet are intersperced). There were two copies in English... But for now one is mine! I might add this to my October Halloween themed reading list.
Geopolitics and Expertise by Merje Kuus & The European Union and Its Eastern Neighbours by Elena Korosteleva. Both of these are to help with a presentation I'm giving in my EU class on Thursday, the latter is a recommended reading suggestion from my instructor, and hopefully the former will help me grasp one of my presentation topics that is just not clicking.

Books and artistic dinner shot.

This should definitely fill some time while I await my laptop's return from the shop (which should be tomorrow; I can last that long without it, right?). I've already gone through a couple books on marketing for social media, and several chapters of a book on world domination, and another on cooking.
And now that my laptop is back, here are the pictures!

Me & Oscar Wilde! From the monument to 2 Wildes. There's
one in Tartu, and another in Galway.

From my reading of Daphnis and Chloe: "when she did not know
the way, music had shown her the way."

An Autummer Thursday Walk

I've been meaning to do this for a while and remembered on my way to class Thursday. Here's a video of my walk to/from class on Thursdays; didn't remember whether it's technically fall yet, thus the name "Autummer."

A quick preface: filmed on two different cameras, so there will be some difference in film quality and shakiness, and people kept looking at me strangely (which I understand), so there's definitely plenty of floor shots.

As a postscript, since I'm sure everyone's going to be asking me about the classroom that kills people. The ventilation system in this room is broken, and so when the windows are closed, it sucks all of the air out of the room. No matter how noisy it gets outside, we make sure the windows are appropriately propped open so we don't all die. Since this room tries to kill people. If you have any other questions for me, about anything in this video or my exchange, feel free to ask!

Hopefully, I'll make a winter edition of this, because I'm sure the snow will look awesome. Until then!

The Times we had: Tallinn

Saturday morning, early (but not necessarily bright), an American, an Italian, a Pole, two Germans, a Spaniard, a Frenchman, and I headed out of our dorms toward the train station, bound for a weekend in Estonia's capital city with no real plan other than a rough idea of the train schedule, tickets to the ballet, and the name of a hostel. None of us had been to the train station before, but I knew roughly where it was do to a drive-by the day before. Luckily, the Tartu train station looks exactly like a train station.

 Seriously, movie style. This is the back side from the platform, but as soon as we saw the front we knew we were there. We arrived minutes before our train did. Points for timing.
  Tallinn is 2ish hours away by train, so we had plenty of time to do other things. There was some sleeping, some studying, and some reading done by the collective group.

Tallinn train station

As it was early on a Saturday, the city was still more-or-less asleep. The only people up this early are tourists (yay us!). We managed the entire weekend nearly mapless, so we just headed off in a direction. We found ourselves in Old Town, and at the top there are a series of buildings: some of worship, some of government, some of the tourist souvenir variety.
     This is the Church of Nikolai the Miracle Worker, and it sits fairly prominently on the Old Town hill, and can be seen from almost anywhere, which made it a pretty great rendezvous point when we broke off into groups. It's a Russian Orthodox church built 1822-1827, and as you can see, currently under construction. There has been a Russian Orthodox church on this site since the 15th century. This one was the first dome building in Tallinn.
     Going inside, it's very different from the other churches/cathedrals I've visited in Europe. It's not stone on the outside and carved and embellished on the inside, but almost the opposite. The outside is completely bedecked in craftsmanship of a number of types. It has four entrances, each with it's own impressive archway and religious iconography. The inside is painted in much the way you would expect it to be carved. It has intricate gold working near the altar, but other than that, all the walls and ceilings are very 2D. It was beautiful, especially filled with people using it for the purpose for which it has been built, just different from the other buildings of a similar nature I've experienced.
    This is Tallinn Town Hall, and it sits in the town square, another super easy place to meet up with people. It's the only remaining gothic town hall in Northern Europe; construction was completed in 1404. The tower was destroyed in the bombing raid on March 9th, 1944, but was restored in 1952. Today it is used as a representational building to hold ceremonies and concerts, and houses a display on the original 1530 weathervane. This is where we met up with an old school friend of Phillippe's who took us to lunch. Unfortunately, Saturday at noon is when everyone's eating lunch, so it took a few stops to find somewhere. The pub we ate in was empty, which was great for a group as big as ours. It was the oldest pub in Tallinn and pretty much all of us had burgers. My first Estonian burger, and it was pretty good; they put a spice on the fries that made them especially tasty.
    After lunch we wandered a bit more, and attempted to locate our hostel. We had news that they lost our reservation, and hoped they still had space for all of us. After twisting and turning through Old and New Tallinn, we found it, and they had room, which was fantastic. By this point, we'd been go-go-go for so long that I was ready for a nap. Most of the group went to the beach, but a few of us stayed back to try to at least curb the drowsiness so we would last through the ballet that evening.

The adorable gate for parking at the opera/ballet building.

     We saw "Medea", as performed by the Estonian National Ballet & Estonian National Symphony. I don't know that I've ever been to a ballet before, especially not one like this. It was different from what I'd imagined; completely tutu-less, nearly pointe-shoe less, seemingly chaotic movements that only made sense some of the time (i.e. Medea's decent into madness). But it was still well done.


And of course even the building was beautiful. The ceiling had a huge chandelier, and a gorgeous depiction of theatre goers of many different eras. There were busts of famous dancers/musicians in the hallways, and costumes from great performances on display.
     But of course, after the ballet, we were hungry. Once again, we split into groups, and ours headed for burgers, ending up at Hesburger. After ice cream, burgers, and Estonian TV with people speaking with Russian & French accents, we were off to bed.
    Sunday was the Tallinn Marathon, so lots of streets were closed, or partially closed, and crazy people were running everywhere. Not just the preset marathon course, but everywhere. It was like an entire city of Martins. There were people from the various gym franchises passing out flyers, a line of shops full of work out gear, and general "there are lots of people here" chaos. There were runners from all over Estonia, two teams from Great Britain, people from Poland and Finland, and even a man from Ethiopia. Who races an Ethiopian?!

    First on the list of things to do was walk on the wall of the city. It's a steep climb up, but you come to this little room which has benches and windows and this suspicious box in the centre. Turns out, the box covers a hole in the floor, from which one could drop things on unsuspecting passersby in the tower below.

There's a room above this one labeled "Room for Wage War", full of arrow notches and a door with a spectacular view of Tallinn. Below, you can see the wall of the city from above, as well as the walk we took on the city wall.

View from the war room

     I'll admit to not having eaten out much in Tartu (and by not much, I mean 3 times) but what we don't have is Mexican food. As much as I like Taco Bell, I'm willing to accept other "Mexican" restaurants as well, but we just don't have any. Tallinn, on the other hand, does have Mexican food. And it therefore became necessary to stop by...

Never before has so little made one so happy. I had pork tacos that were SO GOOD! I was tempted to get one of everything, but reality took hold. Those tacos lit up my whole world... I was so happy. Clearly, it doesn't take much. *sigh* I miss it already.

     Our little group didn't all eat Mexican, so we headed toward this "pancake house" that we kept hearing about. We'd stopped by the day before, but this place is pretty popular, and was packed. Luckily, there was a free table. What came out of the kitchen wasn't so much a pancake, in the North 

American sense, as a thicker crepe. This sparked a discussion, and at some point we're all going to get together to make international pancakes. I ended up getting an apple, vanilla, and cinnamon pancake, which meant that was lunch #2 for the day, since these things are big, on a Waffle Co. vs. Eggo scale. All of our pancakes were really good, and I totally understand why this place is so popular. 

    We still had a few hours after lunch before our train headed back to Tartu, and after wandering around the Old Town a bit more and stopping by the viewpoint, with the "The Times we had." sign, Anna decided we should head toward the ocean, and that's what we did. 

    Nowhere does the ocean smell quite like it does at home. Does Alaskan water have a high saline content or something? Because neither the Baltic Sea or the English Channel smell salty or ocean-y at all. And we saw exactly two seagulls, though we weren't watching very carefully and they could have been the same bird. Either way, there was sun and an ocean breeze. We were only there about 20 minutes-half an hour, but it was so quiet and calm. On the way back, we learned that Germans consider a bird pooping on your head good luck, and we were completely willing to let Katja go on believing that. 

    All in all, it was a pretty fun weekend. I got to see some things, eat some things, and hang out with people I haven't before. It did make me excited for the other travel opportunities open to me around Europe, but I need to make sure my residence permit goes through first. After that, Europe is my oyster!

Tartu: Week 1

I've officially been in Tartu for a week and a day now. I've had only one class so far (classes started yesterday), but it should be interesting.

Orientation was in the Zoology building, about a 20 minute walk away. Not too bad, but it's uphill, and my legs kind of hated me those three days. As it turns out, the building where I'll have most of my classes is also uphill. Fantastic. But, as I headed to that first day of orientation with my roommate, I saw interesting pieces of art, lots of parks, and this cool decal:

In case you're not a fan of Top Gear, that's the Stig "inside" this "reasonable priced car."
     Orientation covered a lot of different things, and I technically have another session tomorrow specifically to get us all ready for applying for residence permits, an extremely involved process from what I gather. Last Friday was the last day of all-day sessions.






It was also the first day in more than a year that I wore blue-jeans on a weekday. I felt the need to document. It was that big a realization. I didn't do much this weekend; a lot of reading mostly. I've done more reading in the last week than I've done in a long time, mainly due to the lack of wifi in my dorm. It's been nice, actually, though I feel I probably should have been doing something else. My roommate and I nearly spent all of Sunday in the room, except for the hour that I ducked out to grab some wifi by the river. So close... I've had plans nearly every day to go get my library card so that I could use the wifi indoors and stop worrying about the spiders and bugs I keep finding on myself here in the park, but it's also uphill and across the town centre, and not near where I have my classes. Close, but apparently not close enough that I'm willing to get up and go do that. I'm out and about tomorrow anyway, so we'll see.

The view from a pier in the park near my dorm,
where I get wifi. The bridge changes colour, too.

     Last night was the Rector's welcome for international students. We had the reception in a ruined cathedral that now partially serves as the University museum. (I have pictures of the outside I'll insert here later).

White Hall, inside the Cathedral.

I went with my roommate and she met up with her tutor (each of the international students is assigned an Estonian student to help us figure out the University and life in Estonia. They act as mentors and translators, etc.). We had some sparkling beverage of undetermined flavour, some Estonian snacks and cakes, which we're pretty good once we got over the initial "I have absolutely no idea what this is or how to describe it's flavour." We talked with two professors who are, in part, from America, and one of the Student Council members who is also a medical student. Generally, a good time was had and good snacks were eaten.

From there, we went to a bar called the Gunpower Cellar, which used to actually hold gunpowder. Apparently, it has one of the tallest ceilings of gunpowder cellars anywhere. My roommate and her tutor are both in the Computer Science/IT department, and their Faculty (that's what they call departments here) have a tradition to meet at this bar on the first day of classes each year. So I joined them. Monday nights are also karaoke night at the Gunpowder Cellar, and we were keen to hear some international students sing in languages they don't understand, while intoxicated. There were songs in Estonian, German, and several 80s American pop songs.

This was the first song that was sung (part of the chorus). That's what I've gotten myself into by attempting to learn Estonian. If Google Translate is to even be partially believed, this portion of the song is about some crazy shenanigans during a shindig.
     And now I'm going to acquire some type of comestible, start the wifi gaining process, and read some no-doubt interesting articles on Russian Foreign Policy.
    Later taters!