I had a good weekend, last night I went to a birthday party for a mate of mine Taavi who comes from a small town in the central north of Estonia called Lehtse. It was a good night, Taavi brews a mean home made beer, went into his authentic wood sauna and then ran around in the snow after it. It truly is very invigorating!
I met some new people at the party and at one stage a guy comes up to me and says
"hey, I watch this Australian TV show… ummm pizza hut… or pizza shop… "
"errr you mean "Fat Pizza?"
"yeah thats the one! paulie is the man!"
HAHA, fantastic, I thought that noone outside of Australia would ever get to watch Fat Pizza let alone understand the jokes! God knows how he found out about it originally.
Then after the sauna and snow I was walking around in my "Kevin 07" shirt, yeah Im a dork who still wears it 100 days after the election. Again another guy speaks up out of nowhere
"HEY!! Kevin 07! Chasers War on Everything! I love those guys! I saw the billboard in Tallinn and downloaded some shows. Johnny Howard was a jerk!"
HAHA, even better, hes seen the billboard they put up in Tallinn to advertise the second series, make all the jokes you want but their strategy seems to have worked. This guy was awesome, because he watched the show he knew all these things about Australia politics im sure half our own population doesnt know.
When I meet Estonians these days the first question is inevitably, "WHY ARE YOU LIVING HERE?" (usually said with the emphasis) and the second one is they are amazed anyone would manage to learn things about the culture here. I guess that seems obvious, small country, off to the left of europe, probably still a bunch of russians, you know the stereotypes. However it really dawned on me that the inner working of my own country can be as equally mysterious to outsiders and indeed, I find myself similarly impressed that someone took the time to learn something about where I come from.
Tomorrow morning im off to Wien for 5 days… and you know what that means….
Oh sweet swet Schnitzel, how did I ever live without you in my life? You are truly the manifestation of everything good and pure in this world.