The last week has been incredibly busy for me, with various deadlines for courses, presentations to give and trips with culture step! I am feeling tired but happy! Since I last posted an update I have been to three events with the culture steppers. The first event was a handbell concert and the Estonia concert hall. We gathered in the lobby before the performance, a few people came up to me to ask whether I had spare tickets (because I was holding the tickets for other culture steppers), so it was definitely a popular concert! The hand bell is apparently not a traditional Estonian instrument, but this group of musicians has made it pretty popular and travelled the world playing concerts! This was my first experience of going to a concert in Estonia, and I very much enjoyed it. I noticed that people dress up very nicely to go to concerts here, mostly in the UK we are more informal. Having walked past the concert hall a lot on my way to the old town, I was glad to finally see inside. The decor is very grand, but it doesn't feel overwhelmingly big, giving it a warmer atmosphere than some other concert halls I've been to. 'I went to a concert yesterday' was another must learn phrase from my Estonian language app, and it is obviously important to many Estonians! The next event was a trip to Tartu. We were there to visit the Estonian National Museum, which is a little bit outside of the centre, but luckily we had time for a quick stroll around the sights of the city. Lea was a student at Tartu university, so she was able to tell us a lot about the history! She said it's her favourite city in Estonia, and it's easy to see why it is so popular. There is a lot of green space, and the trees were beautiful and golden with the colours of autumn while we were there. We headed to the National Museum next, which is a uniquely designed modern building and I can see why it won a 'European museum of the year' award. The museum's permanent collection is an interactive timeline of Estonian history, and alongside the fascinating clothes, books and artefacts on display, there are a wide range of multi-sensory experiences for visitors to interact with. Exhibit captions are written in Estonian, but with a special card, visitors can tap the caption and change it to their own language, allowing people from many countries to learn from the collection, but not having to show huge amounts of text, which can be off-putting. This day at the museum was special because there was a festival to celebrate the Finno-Urgic peoples. These people include Estonians, Finns and Hungarians, who have their own states but also includes groups such as Sámi, who live in the north of the Nordic countries, and Mordvins, Udmuts, Maris, Komis and Karelians who are living in Russia. But there are others too! All of these groups have languages that share common root words which are usually the early words formed in a language (nature, body, numbers, animals etc.). There are also grammatical similarities between them, and they all lack gendered pronouns or articles (the Estonian for both he and she is 'ta'). We were able to attend a concert, in which groups of people from different Finno-Urgic nations wore traditional dress, played instruments, sang and danced. I think it is great that Estonia holds this Finno-Urgic festival to celebrate the connections that run between other cultures. The museum also has a second permanent exhibition called Echo of the Urals, which is devoted entirely to the history of the Finno-Urgic people. It was a wonderful experience to see that Estonia is treasuring these traditions and languages (related to, but different to their own). I think this understanding is a very important part of my journey of learning about Estonian culture. It shows that to really understand Estonain culture, we have to realise that there are multiple cultures that are relevant and related. It is important to preserve histories and cultural memory and I am so glad that Culture Step included this festival as a part of its programme. We also shared some food together and I finally tried kefir, which I've been scared to try because I do not like milk. It's a healthy fermented milk which is supposed to be very good for your gut. It was mixed with kama, which is a healthy mix of grains and peas made into a fine powder and luckily also sugar, so it tasted nice to me! Maybe I've said it before, but I think you can learn a lot about a culture from sharing food together! The whole day was fascinating and fun and we arrived back to Tallinn tired and ready for bed!
The next day we had another event to go to, it was the time of the month for another Estonishing Evening (I wrote about the last one on this blog). How has it been a whole month already? The topic of this month's event was Estonian and Russian relations, with the provocative title 'Can Estonia become a bi-ethnic success story?'. I had already been told that this can be a tense subject in Estonia. Additionally, with my placement being an integration project, this was right up my street. I really want to get my teeth into this subject and do it justice, so I think I will write a whole new post about it later. To log my hours, I have spent 16 hours at my placement events and classes and 3 hours on work at home since I last posted.
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LaurenI am an IMAESC student, English teacher and adult education researcher from the UK. Categories
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