Well the winter here has not been very cold (from my experience), but it has been long, and the ground has been more or less covered in thick, solid ice since November. I think I've developed weird new muscles from walking on it. Sometimes certain sidewalks are miraculously clear, and I was told that they take a blowtorch to it at night - apparently one of my course-mates saw a fire guy in action around 2 am. Anyway, I hear Spring is marvelous, with nonstop pagan-ish festivals throughout May and June. I can't wait, as I've been slogging through each slow day exhausted by my environment in all respects (physical, social, academic, etc). In the spirit of wanting to come home, I decided to make a list of the things that I miss.
1. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. It truly is the cheesiest.
2. Mexican food!
3. "Home people" - those friends and family with whom I don't have to think about how to say things/how they will interpret me. I'm tired of feeling self-consious and engaging reflexively, and I miss simply being.
4. Social laxity. Cultures this side of the Atlantic tend to have stricter rules (in varying forms and degrees) for how to be polite - or maybe just a higher value for politeness/etiquette than Americans. To give an example, social events generally flow in more specific ways for Russians, including what to offer and when, how long it should last, how to reciprocate the host and more importantly, accept someone's reciprocation, etc. I appreciate it and find it elegant and productive toward building relationships, but I also miss the ease of doing my own thing without the danger of offending someone (such as, telling a visitor that I'd like to be alone now without offering them tea and an hour of my time first). To turn the lens back toward America, we probably look selfish, crass, and/or superficial, but I miss the freedom that comes with this comparative lack of social etiquette.
5. Hardware stores. And more generally, stores that follow stricter paradigmatic organization, instead of products dispersed in seemingly random places.
6. Mountains/more diverse landscape! My heart aches every time I see Colorado friends post their outdoor adventure pictures.
7. Drinking fountains. I've never seen one here and stressed out about it for a few weeks before I grew comfortable using the sink to refill my water bottle.
8. Pizza that is not thin-crust with minimal sauce. To use my dad's description, who resorted to dousing his with ketchup after we failed to communicate to our waitress what we meant by more sauce, it tastes like cardboard. Even Little Caesar's sounds amazing right now.
9. Bathrooms in grocery stores. Doesn't happen here, though it is much easier to enter restaurants/cafes and use theirs without buying anything.
10. Brownies, and soft chocolate chip cookies. Soft any cookies. Things either crunch, crisp, flake, or crumble here, reminding me of my Dutch grandma's style of cookies that divided our family into crunchy vs. chewy lovers and created an ever-surfacing war over how long to bake the cookies. Dad vs. Mom style - symbolically, Europe vs. America.
11. Greater variety of grocery store ice cream. I particularly miss ice cream with candy in it, like snickers or oreos. I miss chocolate milkshakes too, and reeses peanut butter cups.
12. Good beer. Particularly IPA's! There are a couple here, but they are expensive.
13. That Colorado sun. It's out there all winter!
I know that when I return to America, there will be many things I will miss about Tartu, including the wealth of diversity it attracts through its ample academic opportunities. My roommate is Russian and I've been learning a lot about their habits, but she was born and raised in Riga, so she shows me Latvian traditions, too. Most of my friends are international. Wherever these things originate from, here are a few that I anticipate missing when I leave this special place:
1. Trashcans on every block. They are everywhere. If you want to litter, you have to try pretty hard.
2. Not feeling compelled to respond or engage with people. Silence can be liberating! So can chugging along alone.
3. Wifi everywhere, of course, including on the busses. It's the claim-to-fame here, along with the fact that Estonia invented Skype. :)
4. Believing that the food I'm eating is generally healthier and less processed. High fructose corn syrup is illegal here.
5. The clocktower bell music and generally happy atmosphere of the town square.
6. Cloak rooms in all the school buildings. The library rule of leaving your coat with the cloak-tender (might that be what they're called?).
7. The subtly beautiful skies, and sky dynamics - the long gray periods make the sunny days more awesome and glorious. Also, I started to notice variations in the grayness - degrees of translucence and consistency, different colors.
8. Tea time with friends/the more official social gatherings in which it is important for everyone to be at an equal level - where people don't divide into small groups but always sit in a congenial circle with equal access to everything. A positive aspect of the stricter social behavioral rules is the prevention of social hierarchies - for example, hazing/initiation, whether explicit or implicit in various social circles via differential treatment, is nonexistent here.
9. The ability to buy alcohol in any grocery store and lack of liquor stores - this is more relevant in comparison to Colorado than Indiana (having different liquor laws). It saves time and extra trips. A benefit of the dispersed products I complained about earlier.
10. Lots of different foods here, oh gosh - persimmons (has anyone from America tried this incredible fruit?), big amazing mandarin oranges (a major feature of Christmas in many traditions), prjaniki, much better quality chocolate (American chocolate just tastes waxy now and is totally ruined), the fresh-baked croissants/other flaky things in the grocery stores including pirukas (with sweet or savory fillings), pelmeenid (modeled off of Georgian dumplings with juicy meat inside), black pepper cookies (similar to gingerbread but better), these small chocolate-covered bars made out of some milk product tasting similar to cheesecake but not as sweet.. the list goes on.
11. Some WHO study announced recently that Estonia has the cleanest air, so my body will probably miss that. http://www.greenconduct.com/news/2011/09/28/cleanest-air-in-the-world-who-ranks-the-best-and-worst-places/
12. Those amazing old Estonian ladies who trudge onward through the bitter cold, not breaking their path for anything and looking like the toughest, most peaceful veterans of winter I've ever seen.
13. All the new concepts and ways of looking at the world that are produced by the self-conscious, reflexive intercultural/interpersonal interactions. The learning that happens when I'm exposed.
Well now that I've sort of illustrated my love-hate relationship with this experience, I think I'll call it a night.
sigh
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