Porridge and Juniper Syrup

Traveling is often a game of same and different spotting.  We travel to see something new and different and then look for the familiar in the exotic.  Estonia was new to me in many ways--first Baltic country, first post -Soviet republic, first country visited in a working capacity in my new hybridized life as blue-passport resident in a red passport country.

It made me appreciate how much these past seven years I have been playing same and different at home. My American accent attracted a fair bit of attention In Estonia, which surprised me at first because I had got out of the habit of being different over here.  Folks here have stopped noticing and so I could more often slip into the comfort of sameness.

My hybrid life perhaps added an extra layer of same-different for me among the 6 of us in Estonia together.

I'm reflecting on Estonia this morning not only for the report I have to write to the organisation that sponsored the trip but also in the way of sorting things in my own mind.  I took the bottle of juniper syrup out of the cupboard where I had tucked it safely away and poured a bit of it on my morning porridge.  The flavour of juniper brought back good memories of a place and people that entered more completely into my consciousness in such a short exposure than others I have visited for much longer.  Long after the essay is filed and the articles written and even after the precious juniper syrup is gone, I'll carry some of that exotic into my new familiar.

"Latitude is destiny" Maarika, our guide, said.  One of the things I was curious to see was another country only slightly further north than we are up here on the edge of Scotland.  I had a post card map of Scotland that I pulled out of my pocket from time to time to point out where we all live.  My travelling companions from the south live in a different Scotland than we do. In many ways we in Caithness have more in common with Estonia than the central belt of Scotland.

As we struggle into another reluctant spring here in Caithness, I take consolation from the fact that we do not have ice roads across the firth nor temperatures of several degrees below zero throughout winter.  It gave a whole new appreciation of the carefully stacked wood piles we saw and admired for their precise geometry in Saarema.

This trip was organised and funded by:
Arch Network is a Scottish Non Government Organisation promoting learning and development in natural and cultural heritage between Scotland and other European countries..
Culture and Heritage Interpretation and Sustainable Tourism Program (CHIST

Uustla and Reinventing Home in Estonia

I have been in Estonia for nearly 6 days now, so I can hardly make any pronouncements about the country or the people from such limited exposure.  Conversely, you cannot help but notice even in that brief time the complex balancing act that defines Estonia as it reinvents itself in the wake of the latest overlord.  After nearly 50 years under soviet domination, Estonia sang its way back to the republic that it had fought to become.
 
A brief history of Estonia invariably lists the various foreign overlords and the conflicts and the tactical accommodation when the only choice is that of which overlord seems less onerous.  When the Teutonic Knights came into Estonia on their way to the crusades, they obliged Estonians to become Christian.  Later this German influence meant Estonians were Lutherans, at least nominally.  When Russians in the time of the czar offered land and education for those who became orthodox, the pragmatic Estonians accepted the hand they were dealt and got on with life as best they could.

Then came the Soviet era and the land given by the czar was taken by the state.  Small villages and their boundary walls were bulldozed into large collectives.  Villages that had existed since the 15th century were depopulated either by moving workers into centralized housing--grim apartment blocks now either mouldering into the ground like the ancient boundary fences--or sent to Siberia.  "Every family has someone who went to Siberia." the son of our guide explained to us matter of factly on our first night in Estonia.

Even for those who survived Siberia or collectivization the way home was not easy.  After 50 years, the land might have been given to someone else or the farm might be buried under a housing block.  Moreover, many of those who had been settled here chose to stay rather than to return a country that had never been home to them in fact.  Uustla is just one of the stories about making peace with all that disconnection.

The folks living in Uustla now are Estonians, but Uustla was not their home.  Under soviet rule, both husand and wife were sent where they were needed, which was far from here.  The husband of the couple was born near here, so Uustla is almost home.  For 25 years they have cherished it and it has flourished under their tender care.  They carefully preserved the original farm gatepost with the family sign on the crossing.  The gate itself was missing and they managed to find the exact model of the gate in the national library and carefully reproduced it.  The detail of the lock in the photo above is one of the many pieces found on the farm and carefully, respectfully put back into place--or the best guess they came make of the right place for it.

This trip was organised and funded by:
Arch Network is a Scottish Non Government Organisation promoting learning and development in natural and cultural heritage between Scotland and other European countries..
Culture and Heritage Interpretation and Sustainable Tourism Program (CHIST