Language

Külm valik is a sign in the cafeteria at work. My ipod translator says valik is assorted. My translator has no ü with the 2 dots over it. So I typed kulm. Kulm (no dots) is eyebrow. How wonderful is that? Assorted eyebrows at the cafeteria! OK, külm (with the dots) is actually cold. But to me, it will always be assorted eyebrows.

Day to day

If I say everything is an ordeal it would be an exaggeration. On the other hand, almost everything takes three times as long as you expect. For example, a short trip to the grocery store is a "learning experience" in more ways than one. The sugar is not near the flour. Even though I know that chicken is kana, Estonian tends to mash words together so if the chicken is cooked (like in a deli) then it's a 16 letter word with kana in it somewhere. The Estonian - English dictionary isn't much use, because of all the variations (14 tenses also) in words.

Of course, it's -20C, so we have to add quite a bit of time for bundling up and unbundling. I don't know how it can feel damp at that far below freezing, but it is a really penetrating cold.

Finally, we walk or take the bus everywhere, so that adds time as well. We are used to jumping in a car and going where we want to go, filling the trunk and going to another store, and so on. Yesterday we bought sheets, towels, blankets and pillows. We each had a huge armload when we got on the bus. Luckily it wasn't a very crowded time of day, because each of us needed 2 seats.

Apartment hunting can be a bit frustrating. Real estate photography is not well developed (pun intended), If there are 10 photos, one will be the stairs up to the apartment, one the front of the building, 2 will be of toilets (just the stool), 2 will be looking in through doorways into obscure rooms that are mostly blocked from view, one might be from a different apartment, and 3 will show living room from more or less the same angle. So it is a guessing game.

Estonian food, first few hours in Estonia

We ate at Kompressor our first night in Tallinn. It's a place where you can get pancakes with chicken and feta (Polly had it), smoked cheese and bacon (me), just grilled chicken (both boys), or lots of other options. They come with a sour cream sauce. Really good, and pretty cheap eats. Lucas could barely stay awake, Nathan was a little better off, none of us had much energy after 24 hours traveling. by about 8 pm I think we were all asleep.

We made it

Thursday we packed like mad all day, until something like 1:30 am. Of course, when you are getting ready to go is when Nathan and Lucas's friends all show up and hang around, picking up interesting things that I had piled neatly to pack - "hey look, an adapter for European sockets" - and setting said things down in random places.

Friday, up at 6 a.m., left for the airport by 8:30. 12:30 flight to Newark, about 2.5 hours later (1 hour delay) we took off on a 7 hour flight bound for Stockholm. Arrived 8:30 a.m. Stockholm time (1:30 Rolla time). At 1:30 p.m. we took a one hour flight to Tallinn, losing another hour. Finally go to the hotel about 5:15 p.m. local time, or 9:15 am US Central time. Went out for pancakes, in bed about 7:30. Whew!

Stuff to pack

These are some thoughts before we go. Later I'll post what we ended up needing. Duffle bags. Sure, we have some, but not enough for all 4 of us to be gone for an extended period. We got some rollers and some plain duffles.

Warm: jackets, pants, boots, hats, gloves. Being from Michigan I have a pretty good idea what's warm. Outfitting the family is getting pricey though.

Inverter from 220v 50 Hz to 120v 60 Hz, we have to plug in a few things.

Laptops (2), the computer will be our phone (Skype), music source, movie source (iTunes), and oh incidentally used for work. Two is the bare minimum for us.

New Garmin GPS with a map of Europe - we'll get lost anyway I am sure, but this will help.

Zipped portfolio for all the documents we have to carry along to Estonia. Later it will help organize all the receipts we'll end up trying to keep track of for tax purposes. - Can you imagine how much fun it will be explaining rent in Kroon during an audit?

That's all for now. Less than 3 weeks until we depart.

Flying to Tallinn

We have to Fly America, and that's OK with me. It's a bit tricky though. If you use Expedia for example, you can get from St. Louis to Tallinn for ~$1,000, or maybe to Helsinki for $800 (the ferry is about $60 round trip). But that's on SAS or Lufthansa and I need an American flagged carrier. American, Delta, United all list fares of about $2,000 to Tallinn, or higher. Continental says $900 to Helsinki or Stockholm, but you can't get a fare all the way to Tallinn. SO, I bought 4 round trip tickets to Stockholm on Continental for $900 each. It's only $200 each for round trip airfare to Tallinn from Stockholm. So for the minor inconvenience of picking up our baggage and checking right back in on another airline, we save about $900 each. Since we go through customs in Stockholm anyway, it's not a big deal. Why is it so difficult to work out travel?