Slow Estonians

Maybe we are seen slow for we just have to take time to admire our great nature!

"Estonians are slow" was one of the most common phrase I heard from Ukrainians. The best was the moment at Global Village when after I had presented Estonia two women came to me and said in a very surprised voice that they wouldn't have ever expected that an Estonian could speak so fast!

Actually it was me who felt that everybody is so slow and it was really painful sometimes. For example - once we came from the school after we hadn't eaten for at least four or five hours (and the breakfast had been also really slight) and I really felt that I have a hole in my stomach! It also may be that I'm quite sensitive about my eating schedule but still, I was hungry as hell and the others also said that they were really-really hungry. And what did we do... we were moving maximum 40 cm in one second - try to count seconds in your head and step 40 cm long steps.. It just drives you crazy! Especially when you're hungry, at least if I'm hungry I would just run towards the food!

One other time made me think that sometimes it's not so important or necessary to be on time, even if you usually would be in this situation in any case on time. - I was going to theater with my buddy. About half an hour before the beginning of the play we started to go from her place. I was a little worried if we really can make it on time but as she was so sure I didn't bother myself much. 10 minutes before the beginning we were still on our way and realized that we still probably won't make it... I was again quite upset as for me being late to the theater is something really unacceptable.

For the last minutes we were just running to be there on time and we managed to enter the theater house one minute before 6 o'clock. Although the play had to be started or starting we were a little confused when we saw that the vestibule was practically empty. And what came out - the play was cancelled as one of the main actors had died.. This was the moment that made me feel that I really should trust the moment more and that there is no need to hurry, even not to theater!  

P.S. The author of the picture is Sven Zacek who is one the most well-known nature photographer in Estonia. You can check for more pictures here! 

Estonian tragedy

Ushanka people

Yesterday I went from Tartu to Tallinn. This action is quite usual for me but I'm still writing about it as quite significant things happened.
I went on the bus where next to me sat a modern guy with very stylish clothes and big hipster glasses. As gentelman as he was I was asked if my coat could be put up on the shelf. Next to him, on the other side of the aisle was a different type of gentelman - he was wearing a Siberian type of hat, ushanka, and during the two and a half hours when we were on the bus he was enjoying half a litre of vodka. He was very unusually  stingy and didn't share any of it..

And then the action began. The gentelman with ushanka was probably very shy and was drinking just to be braver and make a move on the guy who was next to me. So, at one point he looked at the guy for a longer time and then took all of his self-confidence and placed his hand on the leg of the stylish guy. The guy stayed very calm but serious and said in a very low voice not to touch him. The little problem was that they spoke different languages, one Estonian and the other Russian and so the ushanka guy seemed to be flattered that the guy with big glasses gave him some attention. Somewhy the quy next to me still refused any contact with this other nice gentelman with vodka..

After when I took tram there was again this guy with his nice glasses and just next to him was sitting a man with not very smily face who was drinking some weird red drink. It really made me feel that this guy has some bad effect on all the middle-aged men as all of them around him are drinking.. What a nice coincidence at the time when our great former sportsman and nowadays politician asked everybody to avoid practicing homosexuals (this is exactly the wording he used).

When I went out the tram I saw a lady with huge fur-coat and maybe even more huge wounds on her face. And then I really felt that I must had taken a wrong bus that somehow went to Siberia and definitely not to our capital..

As they say, first seek to understand and then to be understood. My explanation could be that all those three people were mourning their youth love, historical moment or smth else like that they lost because of potato harvest. To understand the tragedy of this you should read "Eesti matus" or "Estonian Funeral" by Andrus Kivirähk. There is depicted a situation where two men at the age of fifty meet each other and start to recall their past life. One of them is known as the village drunkard, the other one is a desent farmer. The drunkard says to the other that he should know very well that their places should be changed. When they were 20 years old the drunkard got his father's farm and had to marry a girl in the village. But then the girl wanted to go traveling and asked him to join her, but he couldn't as he had to take care of the farm. So one other guy joined the girl and they became husband and wife after arriving back from the trip. The guy was the farmer now, the guy with the land at his 20 became a drunkard as he couldn't find any other girl to fall in love..


Similar situation was with the parents of a friend of mine. In 1989 people from all the three Baltic countries gathered to join into one huge chain - Baltic chain. My friend told me that her mother also wanted to go there but her boyfriend said that instead they need to go to his parents place and harvest the potatoes. Now, 24 years later, harvesting potatoes still has some bitter notion..

Wanna be my lover

Los Colorados

Music is something on a very important place in my life. And during the last weekend I met my new favourite band! Let me introduce you - Los Colorados from Ukraine.

From the first moment I heard their covers for western hits in their strong slavic voice, I could say I fell in love!

They are from Ternopil which was quite close to my city Franyk and where I was for few hours and met probably the most honest taxi-driver in the whole univers (about him you can read a little later). About the band it's maybe interesting to know that actually they don't speak nor English neither German (although they are singing in those languages)...
I was extremely glad to get their CD for my birthday and they were also the main band that performed during the party!

About awesome Ternopil and its awesome taxi-drivers - when we went from Franyk to Crimea to the international conference we had to change the transport in Ternopil, from bus station to railway station. As they were rather far from each other and me and the Egyptian guy were not too sure where to go we decided to take a cab. I approached one red car that seemed to be a taxi and asked the driver in my best Ukrainian how much it is to train station (Skilki do vokzal?). The driver answered me "Pjatnatsat". I know that it means fifteen but somehow I thought at that moment then that it means fifty (maybe because I hadn't been sleeping for around 30 hours). As I was told that I shouldn't pay more than 25 grivnas, I was quite displeased and tryed to answered in a voice that should show that I know very well what's the normal price "Shouldn't it be 20 or 30 grivnas?". Of course I did it in some weird Russian and the driver understood that I'm a foreigner.. So he continued in English. But for my very big surprise he said that "no, no, it's only fifteen". At least for me it was the first time whena taxi-driver had the chance to ask moe money but didn't do it! Vivent les taxi-driver en Ukraine!

From Franyk to Ternopil we went by bus. It started driving at half past six in the morning and we really had been on the bus maybe only half an hour when the bus driver stopped somewhere and told somthing in Ukrainian. After his announcment most of the people went off the bus. I was quite numb of not sleeping and didn't get very anxious as also most people who went out near the bus. So, at the beginning I just continued listening to my music but when the bus had already stayed there more than five minutes and even the bus driver abandoned the vechicel I started to worry a little as it started to seem that maybe something is wrong..

Next to us was sitting a man who looked very serious and who really made feel that if I would try to speak in English or even worse, in Russian, he would just yell at me and be very angry. So I just called to Bodya and told what has happened and gave my phone to the man to tell Bodya what had happened. Of course it came out that our bus was broken. The bus driver had said that we have to wait there to change the bus. So we could  just wait until the other one arrives and of course nowone knew when is this time... Fortunately for us, we had to wait only around 20 minutes and then we continued in bus with even less space - I really admire the Egyptian guy that he managed to fit his legs between those seats! At least I could put my ones on the backside of the seat ahead - previous bus driver hadn't let me done this..

Randomness in Kiev

Policeman is always on his duty

In Kiev you can find a lot of streetart. My favourite was a park on the top of a hill where was set up a kind of Alice's wonderland. Among other statues, there was rather huge slide. I was in the good mood and went up there to slide down. It was quite steep and long and so I was for some time just sitting up there and collecting my courage. All this time a man who was close by had had a look on me. It made me feel a little strange and I decided to slide down quickly. When I was on the half way the man approached the slide track and for a second I was already quite anxious. But when I started to stand up the man helped me and showed his certificate - he was from municipal police..

In the evening of my last day in Ukraine I was in Kiev with a Chinese girl and we went to Pinchuk gallery - a gallery for nowadays modern art. I was a little surprised but only in a positive way when I saw this side from Ukraine - until that time I hadn't have any contact with modern movements in Ukraine, the country had seemed to me rather conservative.

In this evening everything was quite random and spontaneous but that much more exciting! The queue to gallery was really long (it took at least half an hour to enter the gallery). We had stand in the queue max 2 minutes when one guy came to us and asked to make a deal - we stand first 15 minutes in the line and then they come and stand the last 15 minutes, meanwhile we can walk around. At the first place we where hesitating a little but as we wanted to see some places around before they were closed we agreed to collaborate.

The gallery was really interesting. My favourite was the room with African style wooden statues which depicted the McDonalds man. Plus Sky Cafe on the last floor - place where we could enjoy really nice modern interieur and even better view on the city. When talking to those two guys we had made the deal it came out that one of them was audioengineer. At least I hadn't heard before that there excsists something like this. When talking and talking this audioengineer came to the idea that he has to show us his friend's place. And so we spent our last evening with some very cool local people who we met really randomly.

One of the guys took us to the train station. Oh, I almost forgot - before we went to the shop and we were recommended the best Ukrainian black bread and cheese I've ever eaten! The wholes in the cheese were just magnificent!

At the railway station we wanted to take the skybus to the airport but we should have had to wait more than one hour. Then one other came to offer us his minibus for the ride. The guy who accompanied us to the railway station was a little suspicious and told the car driver that he wouldn't like us to go with him. The car driver got really angry and they really started to argue. Our friend told that he is from Eastern Ukraine and that's why he just has to be suspicious all the time.. But our car driver felt really-really insulted and expressed it in every way he could.. So we experienced that besides being very hospitable, Ukrainians are also very proud and this cannot be wounded!

Transport in Ukraine

Railway station in Lviv

The first time I was told my train from Kiev to Franyk takes 12 hours I was shocked and pleasantlty surprised at the same time. As I really love traveling by train and had dreamed about taking the train through whole Russia I felt I'm almost realizing it. Somehow it seems to me very romantic to drive through whole country, especially when the train is rather old and doesn't have all the modern conveniences.

On the other hand, 12 hours!!! In Estonia it takes 3 hours to get from nortern coast to southern boundary.. My longest flight has been around 16 hours and it was to Ethiopia which is really far away.. From Kiev to Franyk is around 600 km which means that the train goes at the average speed of 50 km/h.. How well would be, 12 hours went really fast as most of the time I managed to sleep in this clucking train.

Train tickets  in Ukraine are enormously cheap - from Kiev to Franyk 180 grivnas which means 18 euros, and let me remind you that the distance is 600 km. From Franyk to Lviv the ticket is 12 grivnas or 1.2 euros and the distance is 130 km. There are also buses but somehow they are more expensive although less comfortable - seems that Ukraine has reached the development level where people want to pay more to feel less convenient. I took the bus four times and all of them felt like I was in a blender - all the people in the bus would form a nice international humanshake.

As I'm still convinced that Ukrainian people are great I give you a new example. Me and one other foreign guy in the bus to Lviv, I had asked the bus driver in my poor Russian to tell me when and where we arrive in Lviv. He was unexpectedly forthcoming and said that will take us into the center wherever we want to. After four hours of driving we saw a huge hill and sky that was in a green glow. Supposedly we were in Lviv and so after some hesitations I went again to the bus driver but this time he refused to talk in Russian and kept speaking in Ukrainian. Although those languages are quite similar I didn't understand anything.. On the first seat were two younger people who said that they speak some English but unfortunately it was really so little that it was practically nothing.. So we were just sitting and waiting what's going to happen, without knowing when and where we should go off the bus.

Soon one girl who was sitting close to us said that she can help us and she said it in very clear English. It came out that this bus actually didn't go to the center at all but just stopped somewhere on the outskirts..  And of course exactly on the otherside of what we needed. Luckily for us we had met this girl who told us where to get out and what even better - she came with us. We took one bus to the city center and after she waited almost half an hour to get us on the right bus and even told the bus driver to tell us when to get off.

So, my experience says that in Ukraine you can get into some trouble but practically always there is somebody who can help you out - remember the lady with umbrella from the last post. Plus there will be some more similar stories.

The change in six weeks

Flamingos of language

Estonia and Ukraine. In general our countries are not considered to be similar - at least we Estonians don't think that we have much in common with Ukrainians. We see Ukrainian people rather as warm temperamented slavic people who are similar to Russians. However, the recent history has brought us more together.

I spent my  January and February in Ukraine, mostly in Ivano-Frankivsk but visited also some other areas. Ukrainian people I met were sometimes quite worried about me and some other foreigners as they found Ukraine to be much more dangerous than some other European countries. My experience says the opposite - I really met (I would even say extremely) friendly people and got a lot of help when needed!

For example: I was on the bus from Sevastopol to Simferopol on Crimea peninsula and in was raining outside; and also inside as the roof hatch was broken and couldn't be closed. And I sat exactly under the hatch... But I didn't have to suffer for a long time as a lady from the last srow gave me her umbrella and so I sat in the bus under umbrella. Now I'm only sad I didn't take a picture of this moment.

For me it was very unexpected to discover that Estonians and Ukrainians have so similar situation with the language. In my country we have 70% of Estonian-speaking and 30% of Russian-speaking people, in Ukraine it's exactly on the contrary. As a result, we are both afraid that our language is going to disappear. Before going to Ukraine I didn't know that they have so many Russian-speaking people and therefore it was  really surprise for me to discover that although our population is like small green pea and their's is like a huge watermelon, we have practically the same situation.

I also felt something interesting inside myself. Until now I had seen Estonian and Russian languages rather as symbols. I have nothing against Russian-speaking people in Estonia but I still feel some patriotism inside me and feel that they should be able to speak Estonian as they live here. But during those six weeks in Ukraine, I felt that Russian language (and whatever other language) is just a tool, a tool to communicate with people. So I got a lot of motivation and decided to grind my Russian to come out from the closet saying proudly "My dear family and friends, I can speak Russian!". To achieve my goal I found a girl through a language course to talk in Russian and started to learn typing on Russian keyboard (it really makes me feel that my brain is going to explode but I like this feeling how my brain is enlarging).