The Dust Settles

If you blow this picture up to its full size, you can see that it is hailing, and that’s the movement the neighbor’s cat across the way is watching with such interest. Yep, we’re back in Scotland, land of spitting sleet. After dealing with above 100° degree temperatures in California, we were done with summer anyway.

Mostly.

Though California has lovely fresh produce, we read with increasing dismay that it also has more and more brush fires. What an awful dry year for home. We vote that Scotland shares some of its water and green moistness with you. Hope the smoke clears soon.

The summer is half over, and we still haven’t had any of the much-anticipated Scottish blackberries. Still, hope springs eternal, and we’ve been faithfully promised a trip to a U-Pick place sometime later this summer. Now that we’ve discovered that our sixth burner has a double ring of flame, we realize that we really can use our big canning kettle! We’ll be making jam for sure! That is, if any berries survive the random hailstorms! Meanwhile, it looks like we’ll spend the 4th of July in an unanticipated location. Since no one in the UK is celebrating American Independence anyway, we’re going to a former Soviet country, Estonia.

What most of us know about Estonia, or any Northern European, post-Soviet nation, could fit into a thimble, but since we’ve made an Estonian friend, we’ve tried to find out. One thing I now know and love about Estonians is that they sing. In 1988, a mass choir of 300K sang songs which were banned under Soviet rule — national anthems and the like — in a protest that they wanted their country back. Only a few years later, during what was called the Singing Revolution, they got it. Amazing. The protest songs of the American 60’s, which people now view as quaint and folksy bits of history, must have also held a power that people now just can’t understand.

Though it’s definitely a working holiday with D. in the office during the day (and T. in the hotel room will be banging away on her laptop), in the long bright evenings we look forward to exploring Tallinn’s Old Town, with its fourteen and fifteenth century medieval architecture, cobbled streets and cathedrals (apparently Toomkirik, the Lutheran cathedral, was founded in 1233) and enjoying all the forest-foraged mushrooms (*truffles!*) and fresh berries that make up part of the local cuisine. Also there’s apparently a Baltika folk festival held July 2nd that we might see, if we stay long enough. Even if we don’t, it’ll still be really interesting to be there, to catch up with our friend and experience her world.

We’re having to realize once again that the pace of life here is much, much, much slower. Though it feels like all we did when we were home was talk and eat (and our waistlines attest to the fact that there was way too much eating), people here seem to have time to have a ‘wee blether’ and a cuppa. People just stop and chat (to each other, not necessarily to us) at the store, in line at the post office, etc., much more often, even if they only do it out of politeness’ sake. The TSA agent asked D. what he was studying, and how his grades were this past year — with a ton of people behind us waiting to enter the country. That was… amusing. (Or nosy. We couldn’t decide.)

What has also been interesting is to see how many ‘landmarks’ and Glasgowisms we no longer find imposing and how many things we take for granted. Our brains automatically shifted into the twenty-four hour clock when we walked out of the airport. We took note of the myriad signs spelling out the penalties for spitting on or hassling airport personnel with only the slightest twinge of unease. Our ears heard — and blocked — the oppressive and constant **Johnny Cash. (!!!!!!! HOW can we hear more country music here than in the U.S.?? HOW?????) Passing through customs, we were greeted with blown-up pictures of museums and cathedrals we’ve walked to from our flat. Since we didn’t come in through customs the same way the first time we arrived in the country, this wing of the airport was new to us, but instead of lingering and ooh-ing and ahh-ing at all the photographs of the massive sandstone architecture like the other people entering the country from outside the EU, we turned to each other and said, “Huh. Think the museum is having a big do or something?” We shrugged and kept going.

It was funny to pretend we don’t go to the museum at least twice a month and ooh and ahh ourselves. We, the pseudo-locals…

Little by little the house is being unpacked, and everything is finding its proper place (even if that ‘place’ is “outside the house at Oxfam or the Salvation Army”). We bought a cheap toaster oven to replace the one that came with the flat — its faulty electronics set off the horrible shriek of the smoke alarm though we’d cleaned it thoroughly. We’ve finally figured out the boiler issues, and have heat in the house — just in time for more stormy weather. Though there are piles of books on the floor… and on the windowsills… and upstairs, things are beginning to look a bit more settled (though we will be glad when we can afford to zip over to Ikea and get some six foot tall shelves. D. has a friend whose family owns a B&B who would like some of T’s excess books, so if anyone is vacationing in Largs? At least you’ll have something to read…). With some bread raising on the radiator and some tea on the hob, it feels just a little bit like… winter, with more food choices!

Oh, wait. That wasn’t what we meant to say. What we meant say is that it kind of feels like… home.

– D & T

**Re: Johnny Cash: Look. Don’t start with us, all right? Okay. He’s fine. Country’s fine. Sometimes. But a daily diet? Not so much.

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