1. Tartu's train station has plenty -- one might even say too many -- yellow square signs with numbers identifying the three tracks. This is good. For instance, track #1 is the first one behind the station building (where, you know, the tracks are,located), followed by #2 and #3, in that order. OK. But let's say you are a tourist who arrives at the station around 6pm, when all three tracks are occupied by trains going to Valga, Tallinn and Orava. Nowhere does it say which train stops on which track! You have to ask a fellow passenger (who may be wondering the same thing) or walk all the way to the front of the train to read the sign.
As it turns out, the train on track #1 is not the one to Tallinn, but to the smallest destination, Orava. Now walk back around the station house (it's closed indefinitely) go through the tunnel and try track #2 and #3.
2. Start a cafe somewhere near the train station (people may already be on this one). Why: because even if the train isn't an economic argument (and it isn't) I can't think of a 1 km square area in any Estonian town with this few places to eat. There's Sodiaak on Riia mnt, which is around a mile away (think weird Soviet-era formal, might as well have walked to Veerenni Selver), a hamburger place at the end of Vanemuine or Tiigi (but I'm not sure if it's working, anyway), and closer still the National Museum cafe (but no hot meals) and an R-Kiosk but none of these really fit the bill. Some German bicyclists who were travelling from Tallinn to Põlva and would have killed for food and water remarked upon this.
3. Not that either consumer centre would like it, perhaps, but a direct pedestrian crossing from Tasku to the new Kaubamaja, i.e., at Riia and Turu intersection? Hello? Not at Aleksandri and Riia tn?
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
It's called summer
Roads are melting in Estonia. Which is novel and interesting. Riding the Põlva-Värska road, or shall I say plying the road, my bicycle wheel makes the sound of an adhesive strip being ripped from skin. I look back to see if I leave a wake.
A memory of childhood summers in the US involves walking across blacktop parking lots (say, at the local swimming pool) in bare feet, an activity that lent itself well to competitions and demonstrations of manhood. I don't know what would happen if you tried to do this on local asphalt but it would probably not be pleasant. But while deep-black shiny slicks on roads can seem ominous, it's probably more a sign of shoddy road-building, not of the apocalypse.
In much the same way, I can get some pretty crazy readings by focusing sunlight on a thermometer through a magnifying glass, but unfortunately they don't meet the Weather Service's rigorous standards for temperature records (or in the case of the climatologists at IPCC, not so rigorous). But actually, it's never reached human body temperature (37 F, 98.6 F) in Estonia in recorded history, let alone 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and it probably won't this year. (In much the same way, some may be surprised to learn that the highest snow depth ever recorded here is under 1 meter.)
Just as I was surprised that a hardy Nordic people always seemed so cryophobic, with the older women for ever admonishing us to bundle up, I must admit some Estonians have a very low tolerance for summer. I'm not sure what the limit is, but it is reached awfully fast. (Naturally none of this applies to people who are ill or confined to their homes.)
Some might say to the complainers, think back to last winter. But I say think back to the lovely months of May and June. The lovely month of May, when the trees aren't even in leaf while the Continent enjoys floral displays and outdoor cafes. May, when there were more mosquitoes inside the Tartu bus station than people in the city. The lovely month of June, when the temperature struggled to reach the 60s by day and the mornings were chilly enough to make you want to defy nature's call, the path between the cabin and the outhouse a matrix of cold, beaded moisture, plants growing in a perpetual half-light like an giant soft bulb somewhere, mosquitoes possibly able to breed in the air.
Most of the world would call this early spring, but we call it midsummer and get together in the rain every June 23 and make fires and jump over them. Not to be faulted: I suppose it's making the best of it. The Setos on the other side of the River Slough have a better idea, whatever the drawbacks of the Julian calendar in a globalized world, by celebrating midsummer 15 days later, when the chance of sun is much higher and there is no need to mow twice a day.
I stayed on the Estonian side of the river on July 10 and missed the Seto song festival, which I hear took place on a particularly dry, golden, bugless evening, but I haven't missed the weather. So how warm is it? For a week or two on the River Slough, it's been around 26-29 C (79-84 F) with relative humidity of under 50% under the linden tree outside the cabin. No precipitation, except for little dried linden blossom bits falling on everything. But this does not qualify as heat. This is not some Texan speaking; I used to flee the haze of the Mid-Antlantic summer after summer to the dry mountain air in the upper Rockies.
Even in the cities, you can't walk 200 m in Estonia without striking foliage or a body of water, albeit possibly stagnant. If you can't find an outdoor university cafe with about a 200-year-old maple to sit under in a moderate breeze, as in Tartu right now, there are many options. The forests look fine, especially in Võroland, and there aren't many mosquitoes. Already saturated from winter snowpack, they have been replenished a couple times during the dry spell.
On the River Slough (the river itself still an icy 17 C/63 F as if fed by underground springs), berries are in full swing. The clearcut out back, with acres of wild strawberries, now has a second storey -- raspberry canes, bearing fruit for the first year. In the deeper forests, blueberries are peaking. There's still ditches of water in the forest, even in wheeltracks and fire roads. The plants in the garden are lush -- although the Mediterranean ones are happier and even some of the northern Italian beets are bolting from the warmth. As some bloggers would say about this, wimps.
A memory of childhood summers in the US involves walking across blacktop parking lots (say, at the local swimming pool) in bare feet, an activity that lent itself well to competitions and demonstrations of manhood. I don't know what would happen if you tried to do this on local asphalt but it would probably not be pleasant. But while deep-black shiny slicks on roads can seem ominous, it's probably more a sign of shoddy road-building, not of the apocalypse.
In much the same way, I can get some pretty crazy readings by focusing sunlight on a thermometer through a magnifying glass, but unfortunately they don't meet the Weather Service's rigorous standards for temperature records (or in the case of the climatologists at IPCC, not so rigorous). But actually, it's never reached human body temperature (37 F, 98.6 F) in Estonia in recorded history, let alone 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and it probably won't this year. (In much the same way, some may be surprised to learn that the highest snow depth ever recorded here is under 1 meter.)
Just as I was surprised that a hardy Nordic people always seemed so cryophobic, with the older women for ever admonishing us to bundle up, I must admit some Estonians have a very low tolerance for summer. I'm not sure what the limit is, but it is reached awfully fast. (Naturally none of this applies to people who are ill or confined to their homes.)
Some might say to the complainers, think back to last winter. But I say think back to the lovely months of May and June. The lovely month of May, when the trees aren't even in leaf while the Continent enjoys floral displays and outdoor cafes. May, when there were more mosquitoes inside the Tartu bus station than people in the city. The lovely month of June, when the temperature struggled to reach the 60s by day and the mornings were chilly enough to make you want to defy nature's call, the path between the cabin and the outhouse a matrix of cold, beaded moisture, plants growing in a perpetual half-light like an giant soft bulb somewhere, mosquitoes possibly able to breed in the air.
Most of the world would call this early spring, but we call it midsummer and get together in the rain every June 23 and make fires and jump over them. Not to be faulted: I suppose it's making the best of it. The Setos on the other side of the River Slough have a better idea, whatever the drawbacks of the Julian calendar in a globalized world, by celebrating midsummer 15 days later, when the chance of sun is much higher and there is no need to mow twice a day.
I stayed on the Estonian side of the river on July 10 and missed the Seto song festival, which I hear took place on a particularly dry, golden, bugless evening, but I haven't missed the weather. So how warm is it? For a week or two on the River Slough, it's been around 26-29 C (79-84 F) with relative humidity of under 50% under the linden tree outside the cabin. No precipitation, except for little dried linden blossom bits falling on everything. But this does not qualify as heat. This is not some Texan speaking; I used to flee the haze of the Mid-Antlantic summer after summer to the dry mountain air in the upper Rockies.
Even in the cities, you can't walk 200 m in Estonia without striking foliage or a body of water, albeit possibly stagnant. If you can't find an outdoor university cafe with about a 200-year-old maple to sit under in a moderate breeze, as in Tartu right now, there are many options. The forests look fine, especially in Võroland, and there aren't many mosquitoes. Already saturated from winter snowpack, they have been replenished a couple times during the dry spell.
On the River Slough (the river itself still an icy 17 C/63 F as if fed by underground springs), berries are in full swing. The clearcut out back, with acres of wild strawberries, now has a second storey -- raspberry canes, bearing fruit for the first year. In the deeper forests, blueberries are peaking. There's still ditches of water in the forest, even in wheeltracks and fire roads. The plants in the garden are lush -- although the Mediterranean ones are happier and even some of the northern Italian beets are bolting from the warmth. As some bloggers would say about this, wimps.
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