Final details for my holiday arrived today. So, here’s the gist…
You will be involved in a variety of activities. These may include:
- Building nature trails
- Cutting and collectng brushwood (junipers)
- Fencing and dry stone walling
- Clearing a swamping pool or amphibians
Located on a remote peninsula on the south coast of Saaremaa, approximately 30 minutes’ drive from the accommodation. The area comprises coastal meadows and pine/juniper woodland, which as been enclosed to create grazing meadows for native Estonian horses belonging to local people. The area has public access and is being used as a nature reserve, witha local woman, Sirje, acting as volunteer warden. Local people are campaigning to have the site designated as a national park. The Estonian government provides a maintenance grang of several hundred pounds per annum. Estonian volunteers had cleared some areas of encroaching juniper last year. The area is notable for the presence of dry stone walls, which act a field and road boundaries.
…it goes on, so lets cut to the accommodation…
You will be housed in a large wooden farmhouse belonging to the local church. The accommodation is in a remote location, close to the village of Laimjala. There are several dormitories with beds, plus a wooden outhouse that can sleep 4. The rooms will be, with 2 shared bathrooms. there are good dining and communal areas, a modern kitchen, it is all to a clean and comfortable standard. Please note that at timesthe water supply for showers can be limited, however hot water is available from the boiler of an adjacent sauna. A sauna onsite canbe used at any time.
…hrmm, sauna, could be fun – never tried a sauna before, but what’s to eat…
For the morning the food will be prepared by self prepared by the volunteers and it follows a traditional style – porridges (oatmeal, buckwheat and other) with jam or butter, sandwiches, tea and coffee.
Lunch includes sup, vegetables and meat, sour cream on the top. Although usually Estonians have three courses for the lunch, in the summer time it is hot and thus it is preferred to eat less.
Dinner consists of a bigger meal – there are usually boiled potatoes covered with different sauces, cooked or baked meat (pork, beef) and often served with a side salad. Various sweet courses will follow including cookies, “kissell” etc…
…and for leisure…
There will be many opportunities to get to know the local area. These will be organised by your hosts according to the volunteers interest, but may include a trip round the island, a boat tour, a remote campfire in the meadow, riding the native horses and getting to know the islands capital. the annual Sea Festival also takes place whilst I’m there…
Yay! Sounds cool.
Sounds amazing
I have always been fascinated by the Baltic countries since I was looking through an old set of encyclopedias as a teenager and found a section about them.
When I asked my parents about it they told me they no longer existed as they were “taken over by Russia” (not a direct quote, but the kind of thing they said; this was the mid-80’s after all).
So to me it’s totally fantastic that they even exist again, let alone that you have the chance to visit there and help in the conservation of the place.
Re: Sounds amazing
I managed to find a teach yourself Estonian CD-ROM from here, to try and get some smattering of the language. I’ll try, but there’s this from the Lonely Planet guide…
The local [language is] Estonian. Basic English is widely spoken in hotels and shops, but in general only the best educated and those at higher levels in tourism have conersational English.
The one language that nearly everyone understands throughout the regiion is Russian. But Estonians […] have little fondness for the tongue of their former imperial rulers and can be touchy about being addressed in Russian. If you do know some Russian it’s advisable to make the attempt to communicate in some other language first – try English, and if that doesn’t work then say you don’t speak Estonian and ask if the other person understands Russian.
…and then later…
Estonian belongs to the Baltic-Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. It’s closely related to Finnish and, distantly, to Hungarian. The complex grammar of Estonian make it a difficult languageto learn – try your luck with 14 cases, declining adjectives and no future tense. Added to this is a vocabulary with no link to any other language outside its own group, save recent borrowings.
[…]
You’re unlikely to pick up more than a smattering of Estonian in a short visit, but knowing a few basic words and phrases will go down well with the people you meet. For trivia buffs, Estonia boasts the word with the most consecutively repeated vowel: jäääär, which means ‘edge of ice’.
“There are several dormitories with beds, plus a wooden outhouse that can sleep 4.”
You gonna opt for the dorm or the outhouse?
Anyway, I never realized how lucky I am until I read this. I don’t have to go on vacation to work my butt off and live in substandard conditions.
Seriously, I hope you have a great time.
Sounds really intriguing. Hope you have an excellent trip, with plenty of stories to tell upon your return!
I’ll be keeping a diary/journal of my adventures and publishing it online in much same way as my Iceland adventures…