Sunday, January 11, 2009

Week 2 Report

This was a week of (almost) totally mundane activities: teaching, mentoring a new student (cousin of a friend who is starting a Distance Learning program in Modern Farm Management), three treks into town for provisions and two to the nearer Star Centre Mall (It is the start of a new pay period and I had run out of everything!). Both of the week’s sterling events occurred on Wednesday.


The road marker that is half a kilometre from my home.


A reporter for our local newspaper, *Meie Maa (http://www.meiemaa.ee) found and read my Week 1 report and contacted me about doing an interview for the paper. ‘Why not!’ So in I went. The newspaper offices are housed in a 100++ year old building (1897 to be exact) possessed of twisty corridors, flights of stairs going every which way, and even a wooden bridge structure over the entrance to the courtyard connecting the two sides of the building; a style of building which seems to have been typical in Estonia at that time.


This is the the local Lutheran Church (kirik) which is now in the centre of Kuressaare.


After the interview I went round to my friend Bill’s CafĂ© Bruno for a degustation of breads and patisserie products. Already in January, clever hoteliers and restaurateurs hare starting to make plans for

the next season. It was fun but after two glasses of white wine and innumerable little tastes, I felt stuffed.


Thursday I was feeling tired and stiff and didn’t want to do any thing, much less walk into town. Nevertheless, I still had things to do. A leaden sky sneered down at me, so I was going to take the bus. However, as soon as I started to get ready, bright sunshine began to kick its way through to clouds. I set off on foot. Clearly the Sun God was pleased with this decision, expressing his approval by flooding the sky with light as I trudged along. Still, this being Saaremaa, the weather gods here have an evil sense of humour, if not outright irony. As soon as the bus passed me, cobalt and silver knives slashed across the sky, cutting up and dismantling all the lovely blue.


Some of our Weather Gods’ other work:


The start of the forest trail

The way into the forest

When the Friday morning sunshine edged its way into my consciousness I would fain have told it to bugger off. Alas I still had errands to run, so, once more into my walking clothes and into the breech. Actually I exaggerate. The day was lovely; hazy sunshine and a balmy breeze chasing away last of the snow leaving shallow puddles and wet sidewalks the were starting to freeze over as I struggled home with the last of the week’s shopping. I never made it into the woods this week, but I have a pile of beautiful snow pictures which I didn’t use last week, so……..

So many choices


A blue tree


*Meie Maa means Our Land, which probably tells you as much as you need to know about saarlased (Saaremaa islanders)


Into the Winter Cathedral

Some statistics

I walked four days and managed 8.9 / 14 kms .That means I have covered 21.9 miles so far and have 436 to go " The road rolls up and down"

8 comments:

Rachel Green said...

Fabulous, Martha.

Beautiful landscapes, but I can't imagine living there! I can't bear snow!

martha said...

Here we actually pray for snow. It's clean, white, crunches under your feet and reflects light. Everybody feels better when there's snow instead of gray gunk.

spacedlaw said...

Pretty snow. Precioussss.

martha said...

Thank you.IT was wonderful - while it lasted. Today I have to walk into town in universal grayness spitting rain - YUCK!!!

Femin Susan said...

Hi...

Absolutely fantastic post! Good job!
Great! Keep writing…….
Good week………

martha said...

Thanks Susan.
I'm already working on the next installment.

Kate said...

I love the photos here.. particularly "into the winter cathedral" I am snagging that one and saving it for my photo collection. Its just lovely!

martha said...

Hi!
I'm glad you liked the photos. I can e-mail you the original which would be a better quality if you like.