Check out the new photos from the weekend
So, what is this midsummers holiday thing we dont have in Australia? See up here, the days get much looonger in the summer, not quite fully white but still quite nice even at middnight. That means also the days are much shorter in winter but never mind that. So the longest day of the year, thats a big event up north for all scandos and baltic nations as well. In Estonia its called Jaanipäev or "St Johns Day". You can also hear it referred to as "Victory Day", not missing a chance to beat their patriotic chest, this was almost the day they booted out the Germans in 1939 and started the first time of independance so WHY NOT stick them together. Ill drink a vodka to that.
So to celebrate this I REALLY wanted to be all traditional and go out into the countryside. So my lovely friends arranged for us to go down to their friends family country house which is right down in the south east of Estonia, so close you can smell the Latvians infact. So down to Tartu for the night to see Siggy off and then hop a ride about another 90km downwards again.
And it was a really lovely evening. It was myself, 2 Italian, 1 Spanish and the entire extended family of these Estonians, it was great. I introduced myself to the old people in Estonian but everyone else spoke really great English to us and then we cooked up heaps of BBQ and drank Albert Le. Coqs finest as we all chatted the night away.
There are lots of traditions around midsummer, one is that you have to jump over the fire, another is you have to find some special flowers or something in the forrest and when you put them under your pillow you will see the face of your love. However as it turns out by the time you go and look for these flowers in the forest you are already pretty drunk anyway so the only thing you find is that tree stump you just tripped over. but come on, its great times and its tops to be out in the country away from everything.
I will say this though, when we got back to tallinn the next day, it sure did feel like being back in civilisation however. So thats midsummers Estonian style, they do it with tradition and class out in the countryside, I dig it alot.
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