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..