Yesterday Nick and I woke up promptly at 0745h, got ready, and went downstairs to the hotel café for breakfast. Breakfast is simple here at the hotel, but good- bread and jam, scrambled eggs, bacon, even American cereal and milk is available. Oh, and plenty of lox for the people who actually like that kind of stuff. After breakfast we met up in the hotel lobby to be guided to our class location by Margot, but one of our students and a friend of mine, Andrew Hill, was nowhere to be found. We waited for him for a bit, and finally sent his roommate up to go check on him- apparently he was still completely asleep! What made it funny though, is that in his groggy reaction to his roommate Chase busting open the door and asking if he was ready, he responded that he thought we were all waiting on another student, Claire to show up. Claire Schmitt had her flight into Tallinn from somewhere else in Europe the previous night abruptly cancelled, and so had to take another one and get her own bus ride to Tartu. Funnily enough, after Chase came down and reported Andrew’s groggy blaming of sleeping in on Claire’s absence, Claire came strolling in the front door of the hotel, having just got off her bus! Anyway, we’ve all decided that it’s a brilliant idea to tease Andrew by “blaming” Claire for anything that goes wrong at all during the rest of the trip.
Margot led us through the city streets of Tartu, past several brand new shopping malls, across the river, and through medieval plazas to the school: the University of Tartu. It’s certainly a very pretty campus. We settled in upstairs in our class, with myself, Nick, and Patrick taking our seats right at the front. Shortly, our first class began, a lecture taught by Dr. Piret Ehin, who was a strikingly brilliant and beautiful Estonian woman with perfect English skills. Her lecture, titled “Russian-speaking minorities in Estonia 25 years after the collapse of the USSR” was absolutely fascinating, and also open to questions from the class, which Andrew, Nick, and myself provided plenty of. I think the whole class really learned a great deal about modern Estonian history, the relationship between ethnic Estonian and ethic Russian populations, and in particular about the Estonian perspective on international affairs. One thing of particular note is to know that Estonia originally gained its independence in 1918 from the Czarist Empire of Russia, but then during WWII it was overrun first by the Soviets, then by the NAZIs, and then by the Soviets again. Estonia particularly resistant to Soviet rule as a result of its longstanding history of connection with western neighbors- the Nordic countries, and particularly Germany; and eventually this culminated in Estonia reasserting its independence at the end of the Soviet era, precipitating the collapse of the Soviet Union as a whole. As such, Estonians consider the whole era of Soviet rule to be an illegal occupation, with Estonia having maintained a government-in-exile the whole while. As such, when independence was reasserted, any Soviet Union citizens who were not previously recognized as citizens of Estonia by the exiled government, lost their citizenship status; and while it’s a bit more complicated, it could be said that for a time (and perhaps even until today) they are stateless persons.
After Dr. Piret’s class we took a break for lunch, but not feeling very hungry, the Trio decided we’d go wander around town, eventually looking for some small items we needed. We walked along the riverfront, and eventually to the shopping malls where I bought a shaving razor in a supermarket, and Nick bought an electric socket adapter and a tablet stylus from an electronics store. We walked back to our class building and discovered an awesome jazz club/café in the bottom floor, where we ordered some yummy and inexpensive meatball soup (a bit like minestrone) and ate dark bread with garlic butter, and chatted with the cute server Angela (pronounced Ahn-ga-lah). She informed us that there were live performances and dancing in the evenings, and suggested that we come back not that day, but the next evening for a show, so we think we might try to do that.
Class started up again, this time a lecture on the economic history and policies of Estonia, taught by Dr. Viktor Trasberg. His lecture covered a lot of interesting material, and I think there was particular interest in his explanations of how Estonia transitioned its economy from Soviet style socialism to a vibrant and healthy free-market economy in such a short period of time. Frequently privatization programs don’t go well as they’re easily corrupted, but Estonia had the right combination of solid economic fundamentals, good neighbors in the Nordic countries and Germany, a peculiar situation with their real estate and agriculture markets, and finally just some plain old dumb luck that made the process work so well for them. Despite the interesting material, the combination of being post-lunch and his less confident English skills meant that it didn’t quite have the engagement from the class that the earlier lecture did.
After the second class Margot took us on a tour of the university campus, which culminated in our walking up the hill to the ancient Cathedral of Tartu, which became the university library for many centuries, and now has finally been converted into the university’s museum. We got a tour of the museum there from Palma, a smart and funny young woman who provided numerous humorous and fascinating anecdotes about the history of the University- ranging from teenage directors, vain bishops, secret dueling clubs, brave acts of rebellion against the Soviet overlords, and amazing feats of research and exploration done here at the university.
The tour ended and the Trio walked back to our hotel where we met up with Nicki for dinner at the café there- I got a delicious chicken and cheese pasta with caramelized onions and a very flavorful sauce. From there, Nick and I returned to our hotel room where we did traveler’s laundry- just washing our clothes in the sink, and then tying string back and forth across the bathroom to hang our clothes to dry. I had washed basically all of my clothes and was just hanging out in my swim trunks, while Nick had saved some clothes that were still good to wear, so he decided to catch up with Patrick and the other students to go get “one drink” and probably come back early.
While our clothes dried, I got caught up on social media, and then tried to do a small amount of journal writing but discovered that I was just bushed, and passed out on top of my covers with the lights still on. I woke up around 0200h and noticed that Nick still wasn’t back, which I thought was unusual since he’s normally a morning person and not a night owl, and is probably the most responsible of the three of us when it comes to crazy partying. I figured that they would probably be back soon though, so I managed to crawl under the covers (but not shut off the lights which were across the room) and went back to sleep. I woke up again around 0330h to the sound of other students returning to their rooms, but still no Nick, so I sent him a text message checking if everything was okay, but I didn’t hear back, and figuring that he probably had managed to hook up with some cute girl, I went back to sleep.
My sleep was suddenly interrupted at 0515h though, when Nick and Patrick came stumbling through the door quite noisily. It turns out that they had quite the adventurous night, including several near misses of getting into fights with local off-duty Estonian soldiers in some of the bars. I still don’t know all the details, but it seems like I missed out on an exciting time- although maybe that’s for the best? Patrick eventually wandered off to his room, and Nick fell asleep as soon as he left, but I couldn’t sleep so I finally just got out of bed to write this entry. It’s now 0705h and the sun isn’t up yet, but I’m looking forward to another day of exploring this cool country!