014: Estonian Summer Camp. Shortest WWOOF project ever. The city of Tartu. A hundred ways to die

From Tallinn I took the train towards Viljandi. I thought. After I bought the ticket and the train started moving, the lady checking the ticket very kindly informed me that the train would only go half way. After that, I was promised a bus. This turned out not to be too problematic, since it was very warm in the train, and the bus had air conditioning. I was lucky, I could even sit in the bus.

Because the bus was pretending to be a train, it stopped at all the train stations in between.  When we got close to Viljandi, I checked the times for the next local bus towards the part of the middle of nowhere where I wanted to go. I thought that I would have at least 15 minutes to catch the next bus. However, because the current bus was still pretending to be a train, it did not stop at the bus station, but in the centre of the city. Somewhere in the development of the Estonian nation, something went slightly wrong, and someone decided that it would be much more logical to hide the bus stations somewhere at the edge of the cities, so it takes you at least 15 minutes to walk there from the train station. I walked quickly, and I made it.

I was on my way to the CouchSurfing Estonian Summer Camp, located on a sheepfarm in the middle of Estonia. I would not have been aware of its existence, were it not for a very friendly couchsurfer from Tallinn who informed me about it.  The camp is organized every year in a different location in Estonia. This year there were about 50 people there from all over Europe. On Friday evening, we had a party. There was a campfire, friendly people, good talks, and a lot of alcohol. On Saturday evening as well.
In between, we visited Vijlandi, the nearby city. It has the huge ruins of a German fortress from the Teutonic times. And a beach. We went swimming.
After that, everyone could help out on the farm. I choose to help with the potato picking, because I think that if you eat potatoes regularly, you should be prepared for harvesting them as well. It was nice, I found a bucket full of them. I also found out that the farm we were on was part of the WWOOF program (organic farms on which you can volunteer. You work some hours per day on the farm, and in return you get a place to sleep and nice fresh farm food). I had been thinking of doing some WWOOFing, but I thought it only made sense if you stay somewhere for a couple of weeks. This was not correct, because this farm also took people for just a couple of days. I was offered to stay, because there was a lot of work to be done to prepare for autumn/winter. An Australian girl was also staying after the camp. Because I had already arranged a place to stay in Tartu, I could only stay for one night, but I still got to do some farm work and got a very nice meal in return. I stacked firewood for the winter.

I had planned to hitchhike the next day from the farm to the city of Tartu, about 80 km away. However, during the firewood stacking, I was informed that the boyfriend of one of the daughters of the farmer, who was there for a visit, would be driving to Tartu to go to his work the next morning, and that I was welcome to hitch a ride with him. He would, however, be leaving at 6 (!) o’clock in the morning. Because someone on the CS camp told me I should be more like Yes-Man, I said yes, and I arrived in Tartu at 7:30.

Tartu is the second Estonian city. It has the oldest university in the country, and is full of students. Universities are just starting up again after the summer holiday, so quite a lot of students are in town already. I was couch surfing with Kaisa, who lives in a nice apartment with her parrot, her dog, and several other family members who show up at random moments. Her mom was also around, and her goal seems to be to make sure I leave Tartu weighing at least 10 kilos more. The food is good, I’m not complaining.
Today Kaisa was at university, so I was walking around in the city on my own. I visited the old Anatomical Theatre, where they used to cut up corpses for educational purposes. I turned out to be an interesting museum. Besides the theatre with a black table in the middle (people used to avoid sitting in the first row because you would get splattered on), there were some rooms with lots of 200 year old herbs, instruments and experiments. And then there was a wing of the building with hundreds upon hundreds of jars with pieces of human in it, all with their own disease. I have never seen so many swollen livers, tumours, elephant balls, deformed embryos and hands with 6 fingers. Quite uplifting material. After seeing all that, it seems a miracle that most of the people out there are more or less healthy most of the time.

Last evening, we explored the nightlife. The great thing about student cities is that you can always have a party. Even on Monday evening. So we did. It was smashing. I needed most of the next day to recover. When I was more or less recovered, the dad of the family showed up, and his goal is to make sure I finish his bottle of Russian Vodka with him within the hour. Later on, Kaisa and myself are going into town again. I’m curious what tomorrow will look like, when I will try to hitchhike to Latvia.