Tappity-tap.

Snow will bring us together

I've noticed one thing in this beloved, oft-times frigid northern climate. Snow is the best means of integration and community. At least the first snowfall. Alas, this has melted off for now and the self-reassuring dreariness, fog and rain of the Baltic have extended their lease through the end of fall. Winter made a couple of advances a few weeks ago however, and it was fantastic to watch (and partake in) the aftermath. It seems that people drop their boundaries, at least temporarily, and catch sidelong glances and smiles of pure enjoyment at the odd tactile meteorological representation that lies about. People almost wrap themselves in it, and bring others into the fold. I went with Tuuliki to snatch some hõõgvein (the popular winter hot mulled wine) and head through upper vanalinn (Old Town) and my favorite park in the vicinity. Standing next to Pikk Hermann, I invented a contest throwing snowballs down onto the spotlights beaming up onto the ancient Danish fortress remains. A snowball fight which had earlier sputtered between us here and there came into full swing, and a few strays happened to bring a young Russian-Estonian couple into the cross-fire (well, 'stray' means that it wasn't exactly 'cross', but past Tuuliki or over her head and onto their apparel). I gave a short-breathed apology and they seemed jovial, so Tuuliki coaxed them into turning against myself. Our small three-on-one went on for a good five or ten minutes and provided me with some much-needed exercise darting and lurking behind trees (my usual mid-day exertion of energy is moving my leg from a crossed position to supporting my feet on the radiator and back, while the translations flood in).

It was a light, energetic experience that crossed out the awkwardness of language or deciding in which tongue to even communicate (I dropped some Estonian and shout some things in Russian at them while Tuuliki also seemed inadhered to a single linguistic array). The experience was short and mostly unspoken, but true and a demonstration of at least the possibility for such encounters. I plan to start further random wars with unknown passerbys through flinging objects at them that won't leave them wounded, unconscious or covered in any sort of unpleasant liquids. Summer will be the time for spontaneous pillow fights. Let it snow.

Living in a Soviet block is "boring" (bad pun).

So one thing that I have come to grips with living amongst crumbling stacks of concrete is that, regardless of how hopeless the buildings appear to be on the outside (and what you can assume to be the internal structure, which is quite an unnerving thought when you actually live there), someone is renovating. This word is used very loosely, as I highly doubt that the performance of the act dictates a real, formidable or even tactile outcome. Quite the opposite - 'remont' anywhere in the Soviet crack stacks really means drilling into any surviving bit of concrete to be found in the hopes of the entire building collapsing upon itself and the residents being sent to freshly constructed municipal housing. Panel construction means that the rusted rods which the remaining bits of concrete stick to resonate at every poke and prod from a drill, which on any given day someone will decide to implement in their endeavors. What I fail to understand and why I come to the conclusion that these home-repairers aren't actually doing anything is that I can't figure out exactly why they would find it necessary to incessantly make holes in the concrete. A few days ago this reached a new high - of course, during summer after moving to the apartment in 2008 I became accustomed to the fact that the screeching would reach its peak around eight or nine in the morning.. this time, however, it was at 10 in the morning, right as my daily stash of documents to be translated started to pour in, and this time seemingly just on the other side of the wall. Finding the source is tricky, though, and the ruckus happened to be coming from a man dangling from a rope attached somewhere on the roof, boring into the seams between the concrete slabs from the outside, one floor up and a few apartments across. Which made sense - the noise was using my eardrums as a timpani. I about quit work and ran out screaming after the first fifteen minutes. Luckily, it ended a bit later as they moved to the other side of the building to cave out more load-bearing material. The walls aren't the thickest or the most solid in the first place. There's an electrical socket next to our bed which seems to be fit into a hole opening up into the apartment next to ours. Were our neighbors extremely quiet or even head-banging trancers on ecstasy, it'd be one thing. However, the situation helps to make up for the fact that I disconnected the cable television a year ago - some crazywoman living there regularly decides to begin chanting, singing and generally werewolfing at three in the morning (six in the morning, two in the afternoon, seven at night.. there's not much of a pattern), shouting into the air (more like my electrical socket) for some long-lost relative to return so she can make her dinner - this is, naturally, accompanied by pot-banging from time to time and then the older man that lives there yelling at her to shut up and give it up already. I'm content with the fact that I extremely rarely run into either of them in our shared, empty hallway to the stairwell. There's been worse all in all and returning to the structural topic - I felt the entire building literally sway a few inches from side to side one day (the curtains moving helped me to figure out it wasn't just my body going into some sort of alcohol-relapse days after the actual drinking. It was probably just something collapsing in the limestone quarry across the road (further brilliant Soviet planning - build a massive residential district downwind of where tons and tons of dust are shot into the air from a large pipe 24 hours a day). No worries. It's Lasnamäe.

And with that, I announce plans to find a place in some wood-plank 1930's house in Kalamaja. I feel the urge to write about an adventure not involving the Migration Board. Curses on them; setting sights on the other end of the city and the shore of the sea.

Edasi, вперёд..