Tuesday, 26 July 2016

Immigrant at home... or abroad? Driving around..

“Right, drive on the right side,” I reminded myself loudly when I was driving out of the airport in a rental car in Estonia last evening and then banged my left hand onto the door while trying to change the gear. Today I even managed to indicate to the left instead of right, although that doesn’t make any sense at all, unless.. (actually I would have an explanation, but I won’t confuse you with this at the moment).
It’s not that simple in Estonia just to give a quick glimpse at the traffic, then follow the other cars so you could stay on the correct side, because there just might not be other cars. When you travel outside of the towns you could easily find yourself on your own in the middle of the fields and forests, passing a few derelict houses, and very likely no human beings wondering around there either. So last night when I was trying not to nod off while driving with two children at the back seat (it wouldn’t have been that late drive if it wasn’t for the flight that was delayed because they had to replace the seats that had been broken on a previous journey.. all the questions arisen by this slightly out of place fact about how seats could get broken so badly during the flight, are advised to be sent to the well-known SleazyJet), but coming back to me trying not to fall asleep with my incredibly itchy and tired eyes in the middle of the forests (but still on the road as we do have proper roads in Estonia… I’ve been asked that question before, if we do..), anyway, last night at the end of my trip during the very last hour, I was honestly more worried about bumping into a moose that might suddenly cross the road, rather than driving on the wrong side and cause a collision with another vehicle. Because what vehicle? Ok, there were cars passing by… let’s say about five. Oh, and the truth is that I have been in an accident in Estonia with a moose before, but not crashed into another car. Luckily I was on a bus during the 'moose incident' and got away with a little fright caused by a sudden stop and then the excitement about exiting the bus by jumping out of its window as the door was out of order.
I admit I ran over a few frogs (I'm really sorry, animal lovers!) but missed couple of hares (thanks to their speedy movements) last night. I think in general I have become quite a cautious driver with age and definitely after having children (as this should make you a relatively responsible person), but hopefully I’m not over-cautious. I used to be a bit silly driver when I was young and wild (haha! this even makes me laugh calling myself wild.. Maybe wild in the sense that being used to going to the naturally wild places, for example blueberry forests or meadows where wild flowers grow), anyway I used to like to drive fast, so that once everyone in a car was worried that the boat attached onto the roof might fly off and couldn’t really snooze despite of being exhausted as hadn’t slept a wink the night before. Believe me I’m not proud of this and now I’m quite pleased with the situation as the cars have become safer and rules more strict, rather than closing the doors with aloud bang to make certain that it IS closed, or having the car packed with no-one-knows-how-many-people on top of each other (but that can be fun as much as starting a car with a little push down the hill by anyone but the driver… although that reminds me of another story… sorry, going off course again..), so I am happy it’s a norm that I fasten my seatbelt before driving and I can put the child-lock on to the kids’ doors, because four-lane motorways in England are a different matter to the roads in Estonia.

A wild forest child


And additionally on the same note - to avoid any confusion which side to drive in Estonia, someone could write reminders on the roads for the drivers - keep to the right as their might be oncoming traffic from this side you’re at the moment, although this sentence might be a bit too long, especially if you tend to drive as fast as a young me. So maybe it should be kept short, like drive on the right side or just - stay right. As simple and well-thought as it’s in London when you are pedestrian and before crossing you can read on the ground whether to look left or right or both ways.

Tuesday, 19 July 2016

Party time!

It’s birthday time! No, not for me. At least not yet. I can still carry on with adding things to my wish list for months (oh, if you know me well enough, you would know that I actually don’t do lists, but it just sounded as an appropriate thing to say). At the moment we’re getting organised for the birthday of our youngest member of the family who’s big day is still way ahead in August, but as it’s the last week of school it’s really the only time when he and his best mates are all around.


I can’t remember celebrating my birthday when I was that young but I guess it happens when you start school (in the UK at the age of four) or maybe even earlier than that in the nursery and then you are more likely to have proper friends, just because you’re stuck with the same kids for days without your own choice, so you either make friends or enemies… But as I didn’t start school before I was six and neither did I attend a kindergarten before that, I didn’t have these, as I called them earlier - proper friends. My best pals were my brothers and kids on the streets, either neighbouring ones or the children living further afield (oh, I was quite an adventurer, playing in the streets that we weren’t even living!). 
As soon as I had to organise a party for my own kids here in the UK, I had to learn how to do it from the scratch. Yes, we do have some things in common, like the birthday cake and the party games, but not the same kind of cake (it might be nowadays though) and not all the same kind of games either. There are games that have same/similar rules, but their names are different, for example Chinese whispers is called in Estonia - telefonimäng (telephone game), Musical statues is basically like keerukuju - Twirling statues (just instead of dancing you have to twirl around until you’ve told to stop). What’s the time, Mr Wolf? has elements of the game Silgud ritta, üks, kaks, kolm (Line up herrings, one, two, three!), but Pass the parcel was new to me and also the fact that you have to give an award to the winner at the end of every game. When I was little we used to play these just because it was fun and weren’t competitive because of the packet of sweets. 
We had plenty to eat at the party, because also as another difference, we always ate our birthday cake at the table, not later at home after unwrapping the slice from the napkin, which was added to our goody bag at the end of the party. I guess it would have been a bit foolish to pack a really soft divinity cake into a paper serviette (if you haven’t had this cake before, it basically looks and feels like a cake covered in lots of shaving foam, but instead of getting your razor blade out to start shaving, you may actually eat it and it’s rather nice). The second cake option at my parties was a massive cake covered in thick butter cream made by my great aunt and if I remember correctly, because as it WAS so big, quite often we DID cut a slice for every guest to take home as well, after they’d had at least one piece at the party of course.
And when talking about food, Estonians lay quite different edibles on the table. It has changed over the years but when I was little my party food never consisted of sandwiches, cocktail sausages, crisps, cucumber and carrot sticks with dips, sausage rolls, biscuits like Jammy Dodgers and Party Rings. To be honest, I didn’t even know some of these things existed. In Estonia it is common to have bowls full of potato salad and obviously (black) rye bread to accompany almost any kind of food, additionally you could have pickled pumpkin salad and pickled/salted gherkins and… Sorry, can’t continue anymore as it makes me hungry and miss Estonian food.

But additionally on the same birthday note - what’s this thing here with leaving a few balloons at the door to let the guests know where the party is held? Why isn’t the house/flat number enough? Do people get forgetful or/and confused when there’s a party to attend?

Tuesday, 12 July 2016

Uniformed

I’ve been staring at the school uniform pictures online for the last half an hour. And it’s not the first time I’m doing it. My viewings have lasted at least a couple of weeks. Usually after a while I leave the page open to come back to it, then move on to do other things and at the end of the day convince myself (I don’t actually need that much convincing) that I’m too tired to decide on such an important matter. I admit it, I can be quite indecisive. Not that it should come as a surprise to anyone.
My daughter is moving schools and I can’t decide what and how many and I guess I still haven’t totally got used to the idea of being organised so early on. And also I haven’t really learnt my lesson during these years either for leaving it late as I’ve still managed so far. I do remember when A started school and Matt urged me to get a uniform for her, telling me how it’ll be sold out by the time autumn term begins. But it was still middle of a summer! I couldn’t possible trust him on this, despite of the fact that this being his home country and that’s where he went to school. I gave in slightly and got a couple of things (not enough!) after inspecting the uniform aisle for an immeasurable amount of time, pulling out a few polo shirts from its packets (yes, I’m the one who occasionally takes the clothes out of the packets to check the size, because every single shop seems to use different measurements, but believe me I do try my very best to put them back as they were.. In the same considerate way that I sometimes use when I notice someone’s left clothes lying on the shop floor, and I start to collect them and hang them nicely up again. That can be very time consuming I have to say).
I’ve never asked my parents though how easy it was to get a school uniform when we were little and Estonia was still part of the Soviet Union, because that’s when it was compulsory (among other things) to wear a uniform, but with Estonia becoming independent, we ditched our blue blouses and navy pinafores and skipped to school freely in our own choice of clothing. A lot of it in my case was second hand, shipped from abroad and donated to the church which passed these valuable items on to its members’ families.


When I moved to London and started my very first job there, I found myself almost like being back at Soviet school again. I stood by the locker getting dressed into the same blue long-sleeved blouse with the navy pleated skirt and waistcoat. The only thing I was missing was the Soviet Little Octobrist red star badge with young Lenin on it. No, I wasn’t actually missing (both: not owning and not longing for) it and to be honest I never really wanted to be an exemplary Octobrist or a Pioneer, whom luckily I never had to become.
But coming back to the previous matter of being organised early and/or on time, I think in general Estonians tend to make arrangements closer to the date and don’t plan that far ahead than people here in the UK. It could be just because Estonia is a small country with millions and millions fewer people to compete with and take into consideration (that does NOT imply that we are less considerate people though!).

And additionally to set your mind (truth should be told - my mind, not yours) at rest, I promise, I will order her uniform… soon enough.

Tuesday, 5 July 2016

Sorry!

Over the last ten years I’ve lived in the UK I have picked up couple of local habits with ease - being late and saying sorry. I guess the latter can be helpful with the first one. 
I still do remember my very first visit to a shop in London when I was a tourist in England. Living abroad felt foreign to me and something I couldn’t totally comprehend at the time, so basically when I was very young and naïve! So as soon as I was in there, the shop assistants approached me at speed asking if I needed any help. “For goodness sake, I JUST arrived here, not sure what you’re even selling! Oh, shoes! No, thanks! Can’t you tell I’m just wondering around in Oxford Street and doing some window shopping! Yeah, I know I should have stayed outside of the shop then, but oh well, happened to step in!” Ok, I didn’t actually say that and probably these thoughts didn’t even cross my mind. More likely I tried to think of an excuse and escape ASAP. Oh, sorry, I’m misleading you now. I don’t think I was trying to find an excuse, because being apologetic wasn’t something I was used to. To be honest I just answered with a simple ‘no’ to the querying shop assistants, who then said ‘sorry’ over and over again while I left in a hurry, gaze at the floor, cheeks burning of embarrassment.
Nowadays I’m saying sorry a lot, naturally even to the street posts I’m bumping into, AND obviously when I’m late. In Estonia it would be considered rude to be late. I guess Estonians are more similar to Germans in that sense and have adopted their punctuality. But as these last years I have lived in Britain (and not in Estonia or Germany) I’ve learnt that as long as you rely on the trains (or should I say public transport?) and not on your own feet to walk (hurriedly) the distance, and need to be somewhere on a certain time, always allow some extra time! 


When I went to volunteer at Sheffield Doc/Fest recently I allowed myself only one extra hour, but as it soon appeared it wasn’t enough. A frequent train-traveller, a psychology professor sat next to me (and was on his way to do some IQ testing) told me that I should always add minimum two hours to my journey. And this was exactly for how long my train was eventually delayed, with a bonus of changing the trains and standing last half an hour in front of the toilet, eating my home-made sandwich which I didn’t dare to eat while trying not to be too transparent about my (lack) of knowledge and intelligence level with the IQ-way-above-an-average-professor. During the standstill of the train he suggested he could test me to pass the time. I didn’t feel the need to show off in front of the carriage full of people and refused his kind offer. Later when he was leaving I apologised not being able to hold the conversation on aeroplane engines (that he had had with someone else with an IQ of 183, because that’s what you would do if you were so highly intelligent). Anyway when I finally got to my post at Doc/Fest, being late more than a standard 15 minutes, I turned on my repeat mode of saying ‘sorry’.
Time management aside I’m also trying to instil into my children to say sorry when necessary (it appears you can never run out of the possibilities for that). I have done it so much so the other night during the Euro matches one of them came to share the frustration: “It’s not really nice that footballers who hurt other players on the pitch do not say sorry to each other…”

And additionally on the same note - it all makes sense now when I think way back to the time when I was a little girl at school. One of the most important sentences that had to be learnt by heart in our English class and it’s still stuck with me, was: “Please excuse my coming late!”