Life after Eesti: March 2006

Vabariigi aastapäev

For Vabariigi aastapäev (Estonian Independance day) back in February I went to visit Liisa for a long weekend. It was a really nice weekend (weatherwise and otherwise) and I thought I'd post some pictures from it. Next week I'm off to London again and then a week of vacation in the Crimean peninsula in the Ukraine.

The castle we went to was boarded up for the winter!

London Living

I've been going to London a fair bit more the past couple of months for work related stuff. Mostly I don't have time to sightsee at all and I've been limited to walking around a bit. Luckily my hotel is in the heart of the city, the one thing you quickly remember about London is how insanely expensive it is for everything.

Who knew this was America's most popular, on top of that I'm in London.

Lennart Meri 1929 - 2006

Today was Lennart Meri's funeral. Lennart was Estonia's first post-occupation president and the first president in Estonian history to die in Estonia and receive a state funeral. The funeral was carried live here on state television and his body was driven through the streets to the presedential palace with thousands of onlookers joining the procession. Regardless of what people think of his politics Meri was a pretty good first president to have after years of occupation (much better than our second president), he lived through being sent to Siberia to become a strong supporter of Estonia joining Europe. The service was very nice and included a nice eulogy written by estonian writer Jaan Kross, after a number speeches from various international digitaries the entire service was finished off with a touching rendition of "Mu isamaa on minu arm".

Friday Night Fun

A couple of Fridays ago I came home around 9 or 9:30pm after some dinner and drinks with colleagues. I was going to watch a bit of TV and head to bed when I thought I heard a knock on my front door. I went to have a look but no one was there, but while standing at my door I had remembered that I had had some problems with the deadbolt on my door awhile back (I only use it when I go out of town) and decided to see if I could figure out what was wrong with it.

As a little bit of backround, most doors here have deadbolts that require a key from the inside and outside to open. I tried the lock while the door was open and it worked fine, then I closed the door and locked it from the inside. As I tried to unlock the door they key stopped moving right in the middle. I tried turning it a number of time and used some stuff I had lying around to get some additional leverage, but this only led to me breaking the key (see pic above) in the door. So now I was locked INTO my apartment, a broken key in the door and no way to get out. I tried for about an hour to open it using a variety of homemade tools, none of which works. While I'm working on the door the funniest thing happened: my power went out. So here I am on a friday night, locked into my apartment with a broken key in the door and my power goes out because the construction next door cut power lines by accident.

So what did I do? Nothing actually, I decided that I might as well relax. I had my iPod and a bottle of wine sitting around so I opened that and simply did nothing which was honestly the most relaxing night I could have had. At somepoint a couple of hours later after I had gone to bed the power came back on and first thing in the morning I called a locksmith who sprung me out of my home made jail cell.

Wintering In Saaremaa

I finally got a cable for my camera and was able to upload pics that have been sitting on my camera since November. So here is the first set of pictures where Liisa and I went to her place on Saaremaa a couple of months ago. The weather was beautiful most of the weekend as you'll see.