In Memoriam - Lotu - 2003 (2004) - 27.07.2017

With a bleeding heart I have to tell, that my beloved dog, Lotu, passed away yesterday after a stroke and massive seizures that forced us to call in a vet to help him go to dogs' paradise. It came like a very bad lightning strike, because, even though he had been relatively week for the past couple of months, he started getting better every day when I was in Estonia on a visit just now. And then, one day after I had left, Lotu had a stroke. And I wasn't there for him! Somehow I knew, that he won't be long among us, when I said good-bye to him when going back to Austria on the 25th. But I still hoped that he would continue getting better. Which he actually did, until the stroke. Well, at least it seemed he didn't have much pain.
It was hard for me though, because I couldn't cancel my work, even though I tried to- so I had to say good-bye to him through the phone in a shopping center (luckily I had another colleague with me, who could look after my client for the last 10 minutes of Lotu's life). I wish no one would have to go through such  a thing.
Today my family buried him on the edge of the forest next to our home, his head facing towards our home so that he can keep an eye on us even in his endless sleep. He has some rays of sun peeking through birch leaves so that he won't be too cold and too hot either. He has a nice wooden sign on his grave and flowers and a candle burning for him. My great aunt also planted an apple tree next to his grave. He is in a better place now, in a world full of sausages, storks, ladies, where he can walk himself as much as he wants to. But I will always remember Lotu for all his weird perks and behaviours and mostly his deep faithfulness and devotion towards me and my family.

I got Lotu (and named him actually Danny) on a relatively sunny autumn day in October 2014. We heard from some hunters that a very poor person has a dog at his place, who came to him, but he doesn't have any money to feed him. IThe dog had run away from his owner and no one knew where he came from. At that time Lotu seemed to be a bit less than a year old so we estimate that he lived altogether almost 14 years (more than German Shepherds usually do).
So, as we hadn't had a dog for a while, we decided to go and look at it and fell in love with him straightaway. As he didn't have anything else to eat besides apples, we gave him some sausage and then took him home. I can still remember running around with him in our garden being the happiest person in this world.  He would play with us and you can't believe how proud I felt to be able to go for a walk with a dog. I named Lotu actually Danny, but as he sometimes behaved a bit stupid (even though he was very intelligent), my father gave him the nickname Lotu (which is a sweet word for someone who is a bit stupid, but in a cute way) and it stayed with him for the rest of his life.

Lotu had this weird behaviour from his time in the wilderness, that when he got on a field, he actively had to look and dig for mice, rats etc. He would sometimes dig 50cm deep holes into our fields, dig not only with paws, but bite the toughest pieces of soil and grass off with his teeth. He would then sniff around in the whole he dug and make funny snoring noises and then sometimes suddenly jump to a random direction to try to catch a mouse. Sometimes this would last for hours. Our fields would be like a minefield of holes where one could break their leg. Lotu caught many mice, never ate them though. He preferred to throw them in the air and then catch them. I tried to rescue the mice from him, but when I tried it, he ate them.
During our walks he also had the tendency to try to run all the time and pull so much on the collar that he had no breath. Not that this would've stopped him. He would then sometimes jump in random directions without a warning. In the  beginning the walking lead was also short, so wherever he jumped, I fell after. Once I ended up in a half-frozen river. The other time he dragged me couple of meters behind him in a very muddy field. Oh the joy! What would I do, to be even dragged behind in mud by him?
During our walks in the forest we sometimes encountered deers and rabbits. Somehow I always noticed them before Lotu (well he was too busy sniffing everything and made too much noise to hear anything besides himself). Once he noticed them, he tried to run after them and barked and howled so that dogs in 10km radius could hear him.
Once at home, there was a lynx near our garden. Lotu dug himself out and went after it. We were sure, that we would lose him that day, but he beat that lynx and came home basically uninjured. That's how tough of a dog he was.
Often, when Lotu dedided that he wasn't walked enough by us, he did it by himself. No idea, what kind of rounds he did or how far he went, but sometimes he would go away for hours and then come back wagging his tail. He learned pretty soon that this resulted him being in a chain for couple of hours as a punishment, so he started to return from his rounds happily and then going straight to the chain waiting to be locked up happily. As the punishment didn't stop him, we had to barricade our fence with cement blocks in the places he dug himself our from. Well, it became an everyday activity and we needed many cement blocks. Then he started also bending the fence down and going over it..... That's when we gave up. He always got his chain-punishment though. I wonder how many puppies he made during his rounds in the village. He was, after all,  a man of the village. :) He did his walking rounds even when he could barely walk in the end. That's how tough of a dog he was.

As my father is a hunter, Lotu also decided to be a hunter at some point. Once my father had shot a deer near our house and as it was dark, he went looking for it with Lotu. Lotu of course found it and then obvously claimed it, so it was difficult for my father to clean the deer. After that, every time my father wanted to go hunting, Lotu also wanted to go. Of course, he wasn't taken. So once then, while my parents were in the sauna, he brought home a raccoon and showed it to my family and kept it half-alive with him, not letting anyone near it. But he was very proud of it, showed it off and everything. He did that once more. A proper wannabe hunting dog- when you won't take me, I will go and hunt myself!


Lotu also loved running after storks. As there was a nest of them near our house, it became his past-time hobby. The storks found it also funny and flew over our garden relatively low, Lotu barking like mad and running after them. The problem was always, that he didn't look where he ran. So he often ended up running into a wall with a big bang. Sometimes the storks would sit on our roof for may minutes and Lotu would bark the whole time and run around like mad.
It was the same with smaller birds. They liked to tease him- sit on the lowest branch of the tree, where Lotu couldn't reach them and then enjoy the show. And Lotu didn't give up either. It could go on for hours.
Lotu also liked eating bees that annoyed him. Sometimes he would look like out of a dental surgery- his mouth would get so swollen from all the stings from the bees and wasps he ate. He never learned not to do it though.....
Lotu also loved to play. I had a big stick for him, around which he would lock his teeth and try to pull it off of me. Sometimes we would both spin around (him in the air), because I tried to get him off the stick by turning around my axis. He wouldn't let go and in the end I always had to surrender the stick to him.
He also had his own basketball, which he ended up making a whole into so we played football with a half-filled basketball. He didn't understand the rules of football though, it was hard to get the ball back from him. He chewed through couple of such balls.
With lots of good food Lotu got a bit overweight and also got a bit lazy, so whenever he was peeing and could support his leg on something, he did it. Once he did it on a tree, where the roots had been eaten by some animal and the tree fell over when he supported his leg on it....My mum, who saw it, told that you couldn't even describe Lotu's face, when it happened.... :)

What I regret the most, is that I couldn't spend a lot of time with Lotu, as I moved away from home 2 years after I got him. Every time I came for a visit, he would run 3 rounds around the house at the top speed out of joy. He wouldn't leave my side. He would show his love by wiping his  whole body and ass into my trousers while walking by (I'm still convinced he tried to take me down like this) and then afterwards sitting on my feet so that I couldn't move. When thinking back about it, he only wanted me to stay home. Unfortunately my visits home became more and more rare as I went to uni and then abroad. At least I know he had a very happy life with my family. It also seems that he waited until I came again to Estonia so that I could say properly good-bye to him. I will remember my last good bye to him for forever. It was the morning when I had to go back to Austria (two days before he died) and he would only look at me from his sleeping place. He had this sad look as if he already knew that I would be going again. And then, when I kissed him on his nose, he didn't even lift his head towards me. He only looked at me as if saying good bye. And then I got the feeling that this was our last good-bye. I just didn't know that he would be gone so quickly. Oh how I wish I had had more time with him.  How I wished that!

May you enjoy your well earned pension, wherever you are, my dear Lotu!!!

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Special Olympics World Winter Games 2017 in Austria, from the diary kept during the games

Special Olympics 14-25.03 2017; Delegation Assistant Liaison (DAL)

14.03

Arrival of the Estonian delegation

Went to Graz airport to pick up and welcome the Estonian delegation. Had to be in the airport around 1,5 hrs earlier. Met Marco (the other DAL for Estonia) over there, got the box with the accreditation and spoke to many people. At some point, the representatives from the host town Villach arrived. They are also very nice. Everybody were exited. We saw the plane with the Indian delegation arrive and they were greeted woth a loud applause. An hour later the plane with Estonian and couple of other delegations arrived. The exitement grew. As there were other delegations also on that plane, they came out in groups. Everything was so organized, that it worked like a machine - one group out, meet & greet, photos, on the bus, next group out etc. It took a while for the Estonians to come out - it turned out that 3 of their luggage items were damaged and they had to report it. Once they were out, Lill (the coach I knew) came and hugged me straightaway. There were also some photos with all of us taken. Soon after that we were led to the bus and after figuring out, how hungry the delegation is and letting them all one at a time enter the bus, we could start to drive to Villach.

The ride was calm, most of the people slept. I spoke to Lill and Tiina and Marco mostly. In the hostel, we got dinner (ral local food- frittatensuppe, schnitzel, apfelstrudel) and then most of the people wanted to go to their rooms. And then to the shop to buy sweets etc. Most of the athletes are under 18yrs old, so very young and of course they go for chocolate. I had to do the accreditation, which went fast and could then go out and take two Geocaches nearby. I am staying alone in a 6-person room. When I got there, the window was opened. It's pretty cold in the rooms. Luckily they have many blankets and I am gonna use them. The phones we got, have also got a charging problem, as the metal part ia wee bit too big. But the normal charger works with DAL-phones. Had to explain it to Tiina (Head of Delegation) as well. So far so good. Looking forward to tomorrow. Today we managed to succeed in our tasks. Marco dealt with the broken bags and ensurance as well. Our team works well. As I said, so far so good :)

15.03

The heating didn't work and the room was cold in the morning. Luckily, I had two blankets - I was warm. Before breakfast the whole team had short morning gymnastics and then breakfast and then we got into the bus and went to Villach. In Villach we had a short guided tour and I was introduced to the guide as the translator..... That continued for the whole day. The tour was nice, the guide came originally from Ireland. Villach is located next to the river Drau and you have a marvellous view from the main bridge towards the mountains and the city and the river itself. The athletes were a bit bored of the tour, but nothing too tragic. I guess the market was the most interesting part of the tour for them as they could see various local products and compare the prices to Estonian prices. The athletes think now that it's extremely expensive here.

After the tour we went to meet the major of Villach, who had put out some candies for us. The delegation ate them so fast. After a short meet & greet speech and gift exchange, we took pictures with the major and could then just chat to all the people there. It turns out that the major plays floor hockey a lot. Today's main topic was to explain everybody the difference between floorball (which the Estonian team was actually playing) and floor hockey (which every single person seemed to think that Estonians are doing).

After the meeing we went by bus to the mountain called Dobratsch. While driving up there, we heard many "ooh"'s and "aah"'s as the view only got better. Took many pictures during various stops that we made. Estonians were very interested in driving up there and how it all works with driving in curves etc. Once we were up, we had lunch in an Almhütte and were then supposed to go on a short hike. For our big surprise, there was also a girl, called Eva, with the rangers, and she is from Estonia!!! How random and cool is that?!?!?! :) Anyway, she joined us for the hike. The "hike" itself was short and you could see how fit some athletes were as they ran up the mountain in the snow very quickly while we were a lot slower next to them. But after only 20 minutes of walking, we got to the viewing platform and could enjoy the view towards the Alps in Italy, Slovenia and Austria and could also see Wörthersee from above. There was a lot of snow on the mountain so it looked great up there.

After a short break on the platform ,we went back to the hut. Over there we were supposed to get a "Kirchtag". As I didn't really know what it is, I thought we will get to enjoy a concert in a church or sth. Naja, I also told it to the delegation. Well, Kirchtag is actually a "village party" that people have after they go to church for an hour or so. So, once back in the hut, there was a band waiting for us and the hosts had put on Dirndl's. We were supposed to dance a lot and some guys from the floorball team took almost all the women to dance. They were so cool! I also danced with Marco and lots of other guys. Everybody enjoyed it more than we would have expected. We also sang "Õllepruulija" and Estonian anthem with the band. After the party we drove back down toVillach and had dinner in the hostel and then a team-meeting and a short meeting with just the heads and coaches. Now I'm quite tired, but happy. It was a day full of joy, constant laughter and many great emotions and experiences. I really like our team here :)

16.03

The day started with a confusing call from the host town people, who said that the people, who will drive to Graz today, will have to start straightaway instead of starting in the afternoon - so they couldn't go to the museum. We tried to reorganize that as the whole delegation was not expecting such a change of plans, but in the end we had to tell the delegation with almost no notice, that we are going to be divided sooner than expected. Such a shame! Anyway, my group continued to Granatium to learn about the stone "granat" and to mine it out of the wall ourselves. It was a nice visit, the stone itself is beautiful and I got to take home 4 of them.  Now I just have to figure out how to make them shine.

After the Granatium we drove to the hostel in Ramsau. In the same bus with us were also the British and Hungarian teams, who we dropped off before. In the hotel, one of the athletes dicovered that he forgot his tablet into the bus and I had to organize how to get it back somehow. I managed it quite well, because the bus driver dropped it off at a petrol station in Schladming from where I could pick it up when going to the Head of Delegation meeting. The meeting itself was after dinner and we drove to Ramsau and then to Schladming. Got lots of new information. Today was a long day, we got back at around 21:30 and then spoke to our coaches and made plans for the next couple of days.

My room is lush, a really cosy room in a farmhouse, with a double bed and a balcony. The whole house is actually a proper farm- under my window is a place for goats and chicken run around everywhere. Next to us are also some ski-lifts, but those cannot be used here any more as the snow was melting so fast, that there were rivers of melted snow running downhill.

Aja, got nice box of pralines from the host town women as a thank-you for translating. ;)

17.03

Today was the first day of divisioning. We luckily got to get up relatively late, had breakfast and then drove with the shuttle to the Competition Centre, where all the events were supposed to take place. It was clear to us all relatively quickly, that it will be hard to ski on the snow as we had a proper warm springday and the snow was melting everywhere. After a bit of searching we managed to find the rooms where we could put the skis and went after that to prepare the athletes for skiing training. Me and the Ahod (Assistant Head of Delegation) stayed in the tent and kept an eye on all the backpacks. During that time I got to look around for a bit and get to know various athletes and get used to the environment. It’s pretty vcool to see all the athletes from various nations all preparing together for their competitions. Later, when our team got back, there started a big thing about badges from various countries – everybody went around and tried to exchange the pin from their country to a pin from another country and then put it to their accreditation Laynards. Then it was time for lunch in a big hall, after which me and my Ahod had to go to Schladming to pick up some goggles for the athletes. It turned out we would get them only after the end of the games. So we returned to Ramsau just in time to see our athletes doing the 5km divisioning. They did well. After the divisioning the coaches left for their meeting and we went with all the athletes again to Schladming to check out the Olympic town. We didn’t have too much time, but still managed to get many pins from the Coca-Cola tent, where you could have pictures of you taken and put on those pins. For my surprise, almost all our athletes wanted to take a picture with me as well. The athletes also made some bracelets with their names and some hearts out of plastic beads. Of course, we also had to go to a food store. After that we returned to Ramsau and went to our hostel, where we had dinner and an evening meeting. Today went really well, I enjoyed getting to know how everything works. Also, the bus drivers and other DAL’s are friendly and greet us already from far away. :)

18.03

Only one of our athletes had to compete today, so the rest of us went down to Schladming to visit the Coke tent again. For our surprise, we could watch the Final Leg of the torch run, which was really emotional and sweet thing to see. I also got a pin for my Laynard which was made for the Final Leg. As the weather was relatively crap – cold, windy and rainy – we decided to drive back up to Ramsau to our hotels to relax before the opening ceremony. That’s what I’m doing right now. But soon we will have dinner and then start towards Schladming again. Let’s hope it won’t rain too much during the ceremony...

19.03

It rained through the whole ceremony! L But to the beginning: our bus picked us up earlier than expected and we were in the parking house early enough. We met the Graz part of the delegation already on the way to the parking house. They were very happy to see me and explained to me the whole evening, how their competitions have gone so far and what they have done. It was hard to listen to them all at once. But it was so sweet of them. One of them even brought me tea that everybody could get from special points in the garage. 

The waiting time to get to the arena was long. Estonian athletes were jumping around and it was very loud everywhere and every single person was extremely exited. It was overwhelming... Once the march towards the arena started, people were anxious to move on faster. After a little while we actually got to move out of the garage and to the arena. As we had a constant rush to walk through the  so called „catwalk“, our time in the limelight lasted for maybe 20-30 seconds. But it was cool to walk there and have all the people wheering for us. And it was so bright there. Agter getting through the arena, we had to quickly get to our places on the tribunes. It was raining hard, but luckily we got rain ponchos. I felt really sorry for the Villach Rotary ladies as they didn’t have anything rainproof. They left before the end of the ceremony.

On the tribunes we watched all the other nations do their catwalk and then the concert. Helene Fischer didn’t sing any of her own songs, but damn, she actually has a very good voice. There were also people dancing – that lasted for a bit too long and our guys got impatient and started to fool around. But once all the speeches were also done (ha, saw Van der Bellen), then the light for the Olympic Torch was brought down from the slope by skiers (100 of them or so). The lit torches formed a serpentine. The light was then passed on to some athletes, who, taking turns carrying it, took it to the place where the flame was lit. And then Jason Mraz and Grace VanderWaal sang „I’m yours“ and one other song. Jason’s voice was a bit louder then Grace’s, but that was the fault of the sound guys. They both sang well though. I enjoyed it a lot. After that the concert got a finale with huge fireworks and we got off the tribunes. It took a bit to find the right direction in the chaos and our Graz group had to go to another parking space (they arrived to the from parking area) and ours of course wanted to follow them. So, after marching for 5 minutes in the wrong direction, I managed to convince my group to turn around and go to our parking area. We were all basically frozen and wet. After the ride home we went straight to bed, but I didn’t sleep too well and was cold for a long time.

Today, soon after I got up, I got a message, that all the events for the day are cancelled due to bad weather conditions. So we had the whole morning off. At some point someone called me to tell that our ambassador is coming to visit us, so I told everybody to be prepared. At some point some guy from our social ministry came and 15 min before we wanted to leave, also our ambassador in Austria arrived. We all spoke shortly and then had to go for lunch in Ramsau by bus. After the lunch we decided to go to Schladming. As did many other delegations. While struggling to get on the bus, we saw the ambassador waving at us- the poor guy had come to see us for longer in Ramsau, but due to bad luck, we had to go again. I really felt sorry for him. While trying to get on the bus, some Belarussian lady tried to push herself in before us to the to the bus first, which I didn’t let her do, so she got really pissed at me. Never mind, her DAL saw me and said that she is always like that. Down in Schladming we visited some tents in the Olympic city again and met with Hannes Hermaküla – Estonian patron for Special Olympics. He made a short interview with some members of the team. After that we drove up to Ramsau and then to our hotel again. 

When the coaches got back from their meeting, we found out that we cannot go to the Healthy Athletes program on the 24th. So now we need to figure out how we could go there as most of our athletes are competing on the 24th. I have started to organize it, but will have to continue calling people tomorrow. We’ll see. Lots of stress tomorrow, as the day will be long I will have lots to organize.

20.03

Our first medal! But back to the beginning. The day started at 06:20 with the alarm clock ringing. At around 07:30 we already left the hotel. In Ramsau, the organizers had managed to make all the skiing tracks nice again and the team got to do even a warm-up round. Soon after that the divisioning for 1km started and it lasted for about 2 hrs. The weather was perfectly sunny and warm. Our patron also came and made some interviews with the athletes. After the divisioning I went down to Schladming with Birgit (the Finnisch DAL). We were supposed to get some sort of a present from the organizers as we had done such a good job until now. It turned out that Birgit had already gotten hers as it was a bag with some goodies and coupons in it. Well, the coupons are relatively pointless as they are valid only for the duration of the games and only in Ramsau-Dachstein area. I might get to use the Dachstein-Gondle though. 

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to organize a shuttle to Graz in the middle of the day as the microbuses don’t do that. That’s why we still decided to go to Dachstein. Anyway, in the afternoon were the finals for 5 km and I was supposed to take the photographs of it. Both of our athletes gave their best, but only one of them got a medal- a silver medal. The other one was unlucky enough to get into such a division, where he was the last one- 5th. He wasn’t exactly happy about it and stayed grumpy the whole evening. The award ceremony was great, the tent for it too smaal though and we didn’t fit all our athletes in it in the beginning. That made already tired athletes even more grumpy. There was lots of good music played during the ceremony, it was full of energy and joy. It was yet another good experience for me, too. After the ceremony we had to wait around 45 minutes for the bus. During that I got to speak with the DAL for United Arab Emirates. He has a tough job- it seems he had to rearrange the award ceremony for snowshoeing so that his whole delegation could come to see it. But he still keeps going with full energy after all that.  The DAL was a bit too friendly with me, was a bit awkward, but I hope he didn’t mean anything with his behaviour. He told even that we should drink coffee if we happen to have a free moment (ha, don’t believe there would be such a moment).  Told Hannes about it too.

21.03

Did not have a free moment to drink coffee. Not sad about it either. The day was busy enough. As soon as we got to the arena today, our athletes competed for the 1Km and that took about an hour or two. After that we had a quick lunch and then went to the award ceremony. Estonia won 1 golden, 1 silver and 1 bronze medal. It was as hot as in a greenhouse in the ceremony tent. It lasted long. After it was done, we went to shops and then straight back to the hotel. Oh yeah, I managed to take a picture of my Ahod with Timothy Shriver (the Special Olympics patron). In the hotel we had around 2 hours until dinner so I decided to go for a walk and take two Geocaches on the way. The caches were amazing – one was hidden into an insect hotel and the other one was hidden into self-made wooder figure of a sunflower with a bee on it. Those caches are definetely in my top 3 of the best caches I’ve ever seen and taken. After dinner I had lots of free time and just surfed the internet and now cannot really fall asleep. We’ll see, maybe it’ll work soon...

22.03

It was quite a lazy day. Our team had the race for 4x1km. We had two teams that competed and I shouted a lot for both of them.  Now every member of the skiing delegation has a medal to bring home! Great, ain’t it? J After the award ceremony I had time off and could go to Schladming. I tried to take one Geocache, but couldn’t find it., so I watched the awards ceremony for snowshoeing and then went to Congress Schladming to the Volunteers-evening. They had a proper reception for us with lots of food and even wine. I had managed to organize myself a lift back to the hotel with a guy, who’s staying in our hotel. So I could stay with the volunteers for a bit longer. Met the UAE guy right in the beginning as he was standing near the entrance and went then afterwards to sit with some other people I knew. There were many speeches, one even from a guy called Hans Knaus, who seems to be well-known around here. After dinner I went to pick up another glass of wine and ended up near the UAE guy again. My aquaintances were giggling aroung him like teenagers and he seems to attract females like bees for honey. From his behaviour he is really similar to Pavel (one of the EVS volunteers that I know from my previous work), actually. Anyway, the group got bigger in time and I had lots of fun talking to lots of people. In the end we were all a bit tipsy. At around half eleven I went home with the guy from our hotel (a really nice older man actually). Called still Hannes and then went to sleep.

23.3

Today started off with  mini-hangover but as soon as I got to Ramsau, it was all gone because I found out that our timetable for Friday is impossible. We couldn’t have managed to catch our buses in time so we organized for the buses to wait for us all after the competitions. Had to call to lots of places and then managed to get back to the delegation to pick up the athletes and go to Dachstein with them. We still managed to watch the race of one of our athletes, who then got bronze in 500m Freestyle. Then it was time to catch the bus. Alraedy during the drive up towards the Gondel the athletes were astonished by the views. We took the gondel really quickly and drove up to the glacier. What a view! It was amazing up there! Really really cold, but still amazing. The hanging bridge, the glass platform and ice palace all looked marvellous. I enjoyed every moment of it. The wind was very strong so the temperature felt even colder, but thanks to that, the air was completely clear and we could even see a bit of sunshine. We didn’t stay up on the glacier for too long though, because it was relatively late. We got off the bus in the crossing to our street and walked home from there. We had to still try to relax before the long day tomorrow. During the dinner I got a nice present from my delegation! So sweet of them! By now I am so used to everything here, that I really don’t want the games to end. But all good things always come to an end :(

24.3

The day started off in Ramsau centre again, wehere we had to go again with most of the athletes. I gave my phone away in the information desk and then we went with my Ahod and 1 athlete (who couldn’t go the previous day) to Dachstein. I had managed to organize myself another Coupon for the gondle, so the delegation (who were willing to pay my ticket) didn’t have to pay for it.  On the way up we met a DAL for Monaco, who said that her country didn’t give her even the pin from their country. Anyway, the lady joined us for the whole time we spent up on Dachstein, which was, by the way, a lot warmer than yesterday and there was also no wind. You could actually see even further than the day before. After around 1,5 hrs up there we drove down again. On the way down I had to stay on the phone with one of our coaches, because one of our athletes got disqualified, but unfortunately the coaches didn’t report his bad state from the divisioning which put him into slower group for the finals. That meant that his time was too good for his group and we he got disqualified and we couldn’t do anything about it any more. Once we were back in Ramsau, we had a quick lunch and could then watch the award ceremony. 2 bronzes and one silver! J The award ceremony was done faster than we could have expected so we had to wait actually for 30 mins for the bus to start. And then 30 mins drive and then only another half an hour to get ready to go to Graz. Didn’t sound too good. I tried to talk the bus driver into various options to get to the hotel faster, but it seemed pointless, because he had his instructions.  But then, he went and spoke to his boss and decided to take the shortest route to us (before we were the last ones on the route, now we got to be the first). Once the bus started, we were in the hotel within 5 minutes. 

After an hour we got into the Shuttle to Graz and the bus driver had no idea where to pick up the other guys from. Luckily I knew, so I showed him. On the way to Graz the bus driver trusted his GPS blindly and took in Schladming the smallest countryside roads. To get to the arena in Graz, he also took a very bad route and we were stuck in a traffic jam. The result? 20 minutes before the beginning of the ceremony we were still in the bus. Naja, luckily only about 500m away from the arena. So we decided to walk. On the way to the arena I also had to give my free tickets to Hannes and his best friend, Huck, who just didn’t ever seem to see me. Anyway, once I managed to get us all also into the arena to our places, I had to bring 2 of our guys to another place to carry the nation’s tag to the arena. And then I discovered that the guy from the Graz group was also not where he was supposed to be and went looking for him too. As soon as I managed to take him to join my two guys, I discovered that Marco (the DAL for the Graz group) was planning to run into the arena with all the other volunteers to do the volunteers dance, while being completely clueless why he wanted to go there and what he was going to go for. I grabbed him and we ran back to our sector to sit down exactly when the show was supposed to start. That all after 20 minutes of runnning around properly. 

The whole arena seemed so empty, there were lots of people, but the area was just so big. The show itself was unfortunately not a s great as I was expecting – you couldn’t see too much as the stage was so far away. Helene Fischer sang the same song again as during the opening ceremony, Gabalier also chose a very slow song. The major of Graz, Nagl, made a too long speech and thanks to all that the audience grew impatient. The best part of the whole show was Schwarzenegger’s speech J „I’ll be back!“ After the show I took our group as fast as possible to the bus in order to be able to start faster towards Ramsau again. It took a while for the Swiss delegation (who were also in the same bus) to arrive, so we started still late. And of course, the bus driver  - instead of driving straight to the motorway which started basically next to the arena, he drove to another part of the city. The DAL for Pakistan (they were also in the bus) then guided him the shortest way to the motorway, and after 15 minute toilet-break on the motorway-stop, we drove finally the normal way. Andreas, the DAL for Pakistan showerd the guy the best way to get to Ramsau again. On the way to Schladming and Ramsau, we already saw most of the buses driving back empty.  We got to our hotel at 1 a.m., most likely an hour later than many other delegations.

25.3

Didn’t sleep almost at all. At 4 a.m. our bus came, we loaded our things into the bus, had a small breakfast that our hotel-lady had prepared for us and then drove off. Picked up one more delegation on the way. In Graz airport I waited until the Graz group also arrived and then said my good-byes to everybody and then Marco took me to the city from where I went home to continue my day with Huck, who had stayed overnight at our place. I had had no sleep.

I didn’t get to rest too much for the next two days and was ill the whole week following the SOWWG 2017. But I got an invitation to go and join the Estonians again as a DAL in Abu Dhabi in 2019! Let’s hope it will work out and I can sign myself up for that! :)

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How is that possible that you live in Austria and have never gone mountain skiing?

Because it's madly expensive, that's why!

But when one has a chance, then one has to grab it.

That is exactly what happened after 3,5 years in Austria. I have made many great friends here, mostly couples. You know- Estonian girl, Austrian guy. The family of one of those guys, lets call him L, has a mountain hut near a skiing slope in the county of Carinthia and he invited us all to go and spend a weekend there.  Usually it is very costly to go such places so took the opportunity without hesitating.

On the last weekend of February 2017 we all drove to Corinthia. Our main aim was to have fun, go skiing and sauna (Estonian influence obviously, L had bough a sauna). We also wanted to celebrate Estonia's 99th birthday there.

Me, Hannes and an Estonian friend of ours, lets name her AS, had never gone mountain skiing. Hannes had only once tried nordic skiing, but that was it.
Some of us went to the hut already a day before. Hannes came one day later with some other friends who had to work a day longer.  The hut itself is lovely, has altogether 3 floors, on the basement-floor is the storage and sauna, ground floor has a living room, kitchen, shower and toilet and first floor 4 bedrooms. The hut has been built by L's grandfather, and the grandparents had made most of the decorations and as far as I understood, some furniture, by themselves. It looked like the cosiest mountain hut one can imagine.

Mountain skiing- I'm glad I know how to ski on nordic skis. As me and AS didn't have any skiing equipment, we had to borrow it from the resort. Getting the right boots was an effort. It turns out that with the boots you need to not only have the correct size, but also the right shape.
I got such bad boots in the beginning, that I couldn't basically move. I think my feet didn't get any blood in them. So, hoping that it was just my problem, I went and changed them for another pair. After that I felt that I could actually go skiing with them. But wait, you had to first get to the slope.
.
Putting on the boots took a while- they are so tight and rough that it hurts to even put them on. Then you need to use all your force to strap them as tight as possible. They go way above your ankles and you can not move your feet in them at all. Oh, and your legs are bent slightly forward as that is the position you need for skiing. After all you've heard, can you then imagine walking with them? I couldn't, but me and AS both tried. We were both looking like zombies from the Walking Dead while trying to balance ourselves and move couple of meters with those. Oh yeah, we also had our skis in our hands. I'm pretty sure we were a relatively amusing sight for others. Took us quite a while to get from the parking lot to the actual slope.

Now we were ready (or not) to put on the skis. Sounds simple, you say? Think again. The boots don't lock into the skis only from the front, but also from behind. After 5 minutes of trying we both finally managed to get on the skis with the assistance of L and A-L. They were very patient. The next challenge was to actually stay standing with the skis and not slide anywhere (not that easy in the beginning).  AS managed to slide backwards into a fence.....I'm not gonna say I was much better.  Took down no fences though.
Then we started learning how to actually move around. That's where nordic skiing came in handy. For our surprise we got the techique on how to make curves with the skis quickly and L and A-L decided that we are ready to go up the mountain. Only after 15mins. Great! Or not.....

Once we had bought our ski lift tickets, we had to face another challenge- to get on the lift. It was a plate-type lift which you have to quickly pull and put between your legs and then it starts to pull you up the mountain. Sounds easy? Only if you know how to actually stand while driving up. I was halfway squatting and by the time we were up, my legs were done. Before I had even started to ski down....

Obviously I fell, And not only once. Falling was easy, but getting up, well that is another topic. Took me a while to realize that I should put the skis so, that they are crossed with the slope. Every time I tried to get up in the beginning, I fell straightaway again because I started sliding withour any balance. And I mean, getting up with those boots is not comfortable- your ankles can not move, so you need to use your hands and sticks to get up. I obviously have weak hands.  Must have been a funny sight to see me getting up. But L, who was standing next to me for those THREE minutes, while I was doing god knows what while trying to get my ass off the ground, was very patient.  It was not the only time and place where I fell. AS managed to fall off from the plate-lift. She was supposed to start right after me but all I could see behind me was someone in the snow. One shouldn't laugh about others mistakes. Learned my lesson the next day when I fell down with Hannes from a T-shaped lift for two people.

After couple of times of trying on the lowest slope, we went higher. That was not for me, I fell too often and as I later realized, used many wrong muscles to drive down. So I was knackered too soon. A-L and L said that we had a bad-slope-day for learning as it was icy from the warm weather the day before. After a while it started to snow a lot and then the slope also got better. As we didn't want to take all the fun from A-L and L, we said with AS that they can go and drive some better and faster slopes and we can practice on our own. That's also what we did. After 45 mins of skiing I actually got the feeling on how to ski and started to enjoy it. Did altogether 3hrs of skiing that day. Was a good days' worth of learning for me. I have to say, the sauna had never felt better in the evening than it did on that day.

The next day we had beautiful weather- sunshine, cloudless sky, amazing view. In the beginning of the second day on the slope, my feet (and also AS's feet) were like jelly. She didn't do many rounds. I was luckier-  I did 3hrs of skiing with breaks in between. Downhill skiing is pretty bad for the knees and I could feel mine a lot.
 On that day Hannes also started to learn how to ski. For him it took longer because he had barely gone nordic skiing.  After 45 minutes learning and backwards sliding and falling also Hannes managed to start driving by himself, so we could go up the mountain and down together.  L was very patient with Hannes. I couldn't always wait until Hannes did 20m to continue skiing so I went down a lot faster.  It wasn't fair for L to only teach, so we sent him away so that he could enjoy it too and I stayed with Hannes. He didn't really want me to tell him what he is doing wrong (like not keeping the skis parallel etc) and told me to go faster. Win-win! For the last round he also wanted to try out the higher part of the slope, that me and AS had done the day before. That's when we both fell down from the lift. On the second try we managed to go all the way up.  The higher part of the slope was a lot steeper and Hannes didn't enjoy it too much. He was happier when he got back to the place where he practiced before.


On the third day, most of us decided to take a short walk near the hut with all the picturesque views as our legs were done from the skiing.   By the way, you could see the steepest slope from the hut and with good snow conditions also ski to the lift from the hut.

Even after all the pain and falling, I have to say, I enjoyed it a lot and would do it again. I wouldn't go on a proper skiing holiday though, as they are way too overpriced here. Maybe I go in South-Tyrol at some point.
I am also very grateful to our hosts, L and A-L as the weekend and the hut were brilliant and they were the most patient and calm teachers one could have. They deserve a medal!

Aaaaaand no one can say to me again that "How is that possible that you live in Austria and have never gone mountain skiing?".

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How does it feel to share a life between two (or actually even three) countries?

Last week, when a friend of mine, who is from Estonia, had her leaving party here, I started to think deeper about my life which is currently divided between three countries and two out of those countries have grown so close to me, that imagining leaving one of them for the other would be a very hard task. I don't know what it is, but amongst almost all my good Estonian friends come and go deep and painful longings for our fatherland.

One friend of mine had such a bad crisis just couple of months ago and as the result of that her boyfriend started to learn Estonian, although until then he had shown little or no interest in the language. She got over her crisis but we spoke about it a lot at the time. She has a good job here, where she can actually do something and change the lives of people, at the same time it's also a well paid job. In Estonia she wouldn't get such a job with the kind of a wage she has right now. Her occupation doesn't even exist in Estonia.
Another friend of mine still keeps her name in the list of an Estonian university, even though she has been living here for four years now. She has taken maternity leave, normal academic leave and soon that will be over as well. Still, she is not willing to give up that placement, although she is getting married here this year and has her whole life built here. There is always that small doubt... "what if?". What if things go wrong? She would at least have a backup plan then.

It is well known that the longer one person spends in another country, the less they start to miss their homeland. I can for sure confirm it. I've been living in Austria for almost three years now and it feels like home to me. Yet, when I go to Estonia, I feel the same way. It's nice to have two homes, isn't it? I would actually also have South-Tyrol as my home in the future, as my boyfriend comes from there, but my feelings towards that region are not that strong yet. Having two homes in two different countries is actually not that easy. The longer you live in one country, the more you get to know your way around, the local traditions and lifestyle. You just adapt to it. The circle of friends also grows bigger and bigger and the friends you make, will become closer and closer. I am really lucky to tell that I have also got really great friends in Estonia, with whom I will always remain as close to as I am now.  But I have also got such friends in Austria.

The leaving party I attended made me think that I will also have to have my leaving party one day here, in Austria,. That made me feel really sad. It also made me not want to leave here ever. Then again, I also want to go back to Estonia. The realisation that the longer I stay here, the harder leaving will be, made me freak out a lot. It would be way easier to go, had I not made so many good friends here. In order to be happy somewhere, one needs friends. From pillar to post (nokk kinni, saba lahti).
As I never really thought so much about all the feelings related to leaving Austria, I was quite surprised. Leaving England seems like a child's play now next to it.

So how does it feel to share a life between two countries? Crap, it feels really crap, because whatever you will decide to do in the end, you will hurt many people and will be deeply hurt yourself too. There simply are no good solutions.

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The perks of working with people with Autism

I had to do a bit different working shift today, where I had to take one guy home to the other end of the county from a social group he attends in Graz. It was an unexpected shift in thay sense that I found out about it two days before and had to change my work schedule for that. Was all worth it, because....  I got into a following situation:
I went to pick my client up and along with him came another autistic guy, claiming that he is all the time taken to a certain bus stop in Graz by the workers who take my client home. Alright, no need to doubt, my client also seemed to be used to it. We sat in the car, the new guy in the front and my client to the back. The new guy (seemed like a high-functioning autist or Asperger to me) asked me about my accent and as soon as he found out I'm from Estonia, he started telling me how fascinating he finds the Baltic States. My client was already starting to get nervous (obviously, me picking him up was out of his regular routine as I used to have him 2 years ago and he was still a bit insulted that I had to give work with him up unexpectedly and now I was talking to other guy actively) and I tried to calm him down while the new guy kept going on about the situation with the Russians in Estonia. Aaaaand then, he said something. I felt like being hit by a brick. I asked him to repeat it. "Kaks" (two in Estonian, it somehow fit into the current topic we had). And then he said he had been studying Estonian by himself at home and told that he finds Finno-Ugric languages interesting and told that "Yeah, Estonian and Finnish are really similar but Hungarian is completely different". It seemed to me that he knows more about why Hungarian belongs to this language group and all the details related to it but I didn't have time to ask him more. Unfortunately. Every now and then he would drop another Estonian word to me during our conversation and eventually, when I managed to ask him whether he has met any Estonians in his life, he said "No". He then added that he knows Eda-Ines Etti and our president and that he wanted to look more into the background of the new Austrian president (Van der Bellen) as he has Estonian roots. He also told that we changed our money recently and that our previous currency was  "Kroon". Pronounced as perfectly as one can expect a German speaker to say it (with the German "r"). He said the word in Estonian though.  I told him that I still have some Estonian money left at home and he said he collects money and asked me whether I could give him one of them (unfortunately I have them in Estonia, but now, when I think about it later I might try to organize something for him). He also asked for my phone number (which I didn't give, because you know, clients). When I dropped him off, he said "Nägemist" and "Aitähh" to me (Seeya, thanks). My client was by that time already on the edge of banging his head on the window and my attempts in trying to calm him down were not working too well until the other guy had left the car and he could have me only for him for talking).
To sum it up- I met a random probably Asperger guy who is so fascinated about Estonia that he learns the language by himself, knows probably a lot about my country and actually has no real contact to the country at all. I was the first real Estonian he had ever met. I must say, probably he spoke more Estonian than many foreign boyfriends of Estonian girls do. Now that is something extraordinary. And he should be one of the people I work with, one of my clients....
I most sincerely hope I get to meet this guy again and be able to talk to him a bit more.
This stuff just doesn't happen, except that it did today. I'm still shocked (but positively).
Aja, he said that he was motivated by Daniel Tammet (the author of "Born on a blue day", another random autistic guy who has learnt Estonian because he liked how is sounds). What is it with autistic people and Estonian language?? We must have a perfect language for autistic people (for some weird reason).

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Elfriede Ott a'la Austrian (or Croatian) neighbours

When we were living in our very first flat in Graz, we once watched an Austrian movie called "Elfriede Ott" with my German-speaking friends. It was supposed to be a comedy in the style of "Siin me oleme". The activities took place in Graz and the movie had the best Austrian actors and actresses playing in it, who meant nothing to me. The language of the movie was Austrian German with deep influences from the local Styria dialect. Which at that time was almost impossible for me to understand. The movie itself was supposed to describe Austrian neighbourhood in a humorous way. I didn't get it. Until....

...we moved to our next flat in the part of the city called Eggenberg. Eggenberg is a very multi-cultural region, with a colourful mixture of inhabitants. Mostly from South-East Europe (like Croatia, Turkey etc). Our new neighbours were from Chechenija, probably Turkey, some other nationalities that we never found out and there was a couple from Croatia. A very old couple. They were the only people in the house, who owned their flat and didn't rent it.
This couple made me understand the humour of that Elfriede Ott movie. The movie about neighbours, who have to know everything about everyone.
So, while we were moving in, they introduced themselves to us straightaway as the house-keepers (you know, when there is a problem, we should go to them). When we moved our stuff into the flat, they occasionally peeked through our opened door to see what was going on and sometimes even invited themselves into our flat. Ok, we were new and interesting. Couple of weeks after we had moved in, Hannes had his birthday. We were not loud or anything, but at 11 pm. our neighbours came to our door to tell us, that they cannot sleep (they lived above us). We didn't play any music, sometimes we might have laughed a bit loud, but that was it. A while later, before I was gonna have my birthday party, I went to tell them that we're gonna get visitors and brought them a package of waffles as an apology. They kept going on about how loud we are, how loud the other neighbours are and just spoke in a mannes which in Austria is called "jammern", the Estonian equivalent is probably "kiunumine" or "vingumine".  I asked them whether they have thought about the fact that, when they hear us, we hear them too. And I asked them about the war going on upstairs that we sometimes hear (you know, when someone runs or plays a ball). I said that we get oftern that feeling, that we would like to say something to them as well, but we are just too nice. Well, from that day on, they never told us anything about us being too loud.
But that's not how the story ends. Oh no, this is just the beginning.
You see, we had a communal garden, for everybody to use. Or, for everybody to use, but for those neighbours to control. There was a corner for bicycle storage- which we actively used as our flat was on the ground floor. One day our doorbell rang (soon after we had moved in) and we were explained by our lovely pissed off neighbours, that each flat was allowed to put only one bike there, due to the lack of space. Alright, we would've put our bikes to the bike storage in the basement, but that was full of stuff from exactly those neighbours. Which we also mentioned. Couple of curses in their mother tongue, and some days later the room looked a lot cleaner. Hallelujah!
As the laundry drying room in our basement was locked and our flat had already massive humidity problems, we used the garden to dry our clothes. It was allowed, but our neighbours didn't really like it, because the laundry was either way too close to their tomatoes or on the way of their garden-furniture (the "communal garden" itself was probably 20 square meters or less). So, often, when we put our laundry outside, it was a "hurricane-like windy" day so it fell over (the drying rack) or someone had reorganized our laundry on the rack or relocated the whole rack in to some shadowed corner in the garden or we found nut peels on our drying clothes (our neighbours had the balcony on the first floor straight towards the garden). The cute old couple also had to clean their carpets from their balcony right after we had put our freshly washed stuff outside or water their plants in a very extravagant manner, so it splashed everywhere (the muddy water of course). Once I caught the bitch  in the act- she had told we should put our stuff under their balcony because then it's not in their way - 20 minutes after I had put it there, she was watering the flowerd on her balcony and guess where all the extra water went. Oh how she could shout, when I confronted her about it. I guess you could've heard it even from a kilometre away. I left her alone to yell as I was not really bothered (after all I had said what I needed to say) and went inside. The cries of the deeply insulted and hurt woman lasted for another 30 minutes.
Once, one of my other neighbours, was training in the basement corridor. Nothing that would bother us. But the female part of the couple from hell, well she rang our doorbell and asked Hannes to go and look with her, what was going on. They went, she yelled at the poor guy in the basement for a good amount of time and thought that Hannes will support her. Hannes said, that he doesn't mind the guy exercising there and left. A week later there was a notice on the corridor wall from flat-owners association, saying that "For fire-safety reasons, it is not allowed for anyone to exercise in the basement.".
Sometimes those neighbours brought our laundry back into our flat, when they didn't like it being in the garden or they rang our doorbell for some other reasons or just complained to us about our neighbours from Chechenija or someone else who had done something they didn't like. At some point they put a sign on a window in the corridor with pictures of Jesus Christ and some holy text (most of the people in the house were muslims), which we then removed in the darkness of the night. We saw the couple often lurking behind the corners of the corridor or the stairs, trying to listen what is going on in various flats or who is talking to whom in the corridor. We sometimes caught them in the act and they then pretended to be doing something really important. But they always knew exactly what was going on where.
The case with our neighbours reached it's high point, when someone broke into our electricity-box in the corridor and by mistake switched off the electricity in all the flats on the ground floor. Except for one- the one where the Checheny neighbours lived. Probably it was them - they had their electricity turned off, I guess. But the lovely Croatian neighbours came to us, thinking we did it. We explained them the situation  (which was a hard task taking into account that they were constantly whining) and hoped they had understood it. We also called the police who recorded the incident with the electricity box. Couple of days later our flat had - once again -  no electricity. We are pretty sure that the old damn couple switched it off to annoy us as much as they could. We couldn't prove it though.
After one year of hearing them complain about everything I told the old lady to piss off and she never spoke to us or disturbed us again. I also might have threatened her with the police.....
All I know, is that we were probably the worst neighbours one could have in their opinion. I'm sure the new renters of our old flat will have heard of it by now. Maybe they have even topped us. Who knows.
But by the time we moved out, I understood everything that I had seen in the movie "Elfriede Ott".

Our problems with the previous flat still continue but that is a whole new and even longer story than this one....

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The birthplace of Terminator

Once in my language course in Austria, we were discussing about all the famous people that come from Austria. A few names were named: Fritzl (yeah, people tend to have heard of him a lot); You-Know-Who (at least we should not say his name out loud- he was a very very bad person, worse than Fritzl) also originates from here; Franz Ferdinand; Arnold Schwarzenegger. For some weird reason, no one in our group named Mozart. But this post is not gonna be about him anyway. Everyone should know he comes from Austria, I mean seriously, people?

I'm gonna briefly talk about my visit to the birthplace of the currently most famous Austrian - or as the locals tend to call him - Arnie.
After having lived here for almost three years, I decided it was time to visit the only existing museum about Arnold Schwarzenegger, located in his birthplace. I guess there will be more museums created, once he will be dead. But let's not think about that. Arnie comes from a tiny village called Thal in Thal valley near Graz. The whole area of Thal is full of symbols and signs related to Arnie. The local lake has a boat standing next to it, where he supposedly proposed to his wife. There is also a hiking trail with his name around the local lake (called Thalersee).
The locals in Graz asked me, after I had mentioned I want to go see the place, why I would do such a thing? They don't seem to be proud of their own Mr. Universe. They also say that there is nothing to see. I was gonna check it out myself.

So on a nice and sunny day I took my bike and cycled up to his museum (it's about 30min cycle with average speed to his museum from where I live). Right in the end, I had to cycle up a small mountain (to an Estonian it was actually a mountain). I got up and to my surprise, I was there. His birthplace is a not a spectacular-looking house with big signs on it. It was actually just a house with his statue in front. Alright, the locals were right, it seemed indeed to be a small museum. Still, as I didn't have to pay the entrance of 6 Euros, because of the Steiermark Card I have, I went inside.
As soon as I opened the door, some Christmas song started to play. It turned out to be some sort of a movement sensor to tell about the visitors arriving. Merry Christmas then! Later on, every time someone walked past the sensor, it played the damn song. The workers must have good nerves there - already I heard that tune at least 10 times.  The person setting off the sensor, was mostly me, though, as I was almost the only visitor. And I almost went mad with that. Anyway, as soon as I got in (and the workers got notified of my presence with a lovely Christmas tune), I was greeted by a very happy  woman, in my opinion even by a too cheerful woman considering that she works in a museum. She spoke a lot, offered me a soda to freshen up and allowed me to start my tour of the museum.

There were about 5 rooms to see- it is still a house museum. There was a room full of photographs of Arnie, just every photograph they couldn't fit into any other room. The room also had couple of pieces of furniture, which had belonged to the Family Schwarzenegger. The next room was dedicated to Arnie's time as a governor. Some medals, American money with his picture on it, more photos etc. The most interesting thing for me in this room was the wax figure of the man himself. After taking couple of photos, I moved to the first floor, where I could see the toilet, which Arnold's family used (yeah, an old-fashioned toilet, but still different as you could sense that Arnold, like any other normal person, needs to use such facilities), the kitchen, the room full of body-building machines he used to train with. In that room was also a figure of half-naked Arnie showing off every muscle in his body (well almost every muscle). All the walls of that room were covered with similar-styled images. Pornography for body builders, I guess. The last room was dedicated to his acting career and had some original costumes from the sets (about 2 costumes altogether- he was such a generous guy after all) and also another wax figure of the Terminator-Arnie and the robot (that one was only made out of metal). I took some pictures, and, after having been in the museum for about 30 minutes, I was done with it. Glad I didn't pay for the ticket, there was really not so much to see. Maybe we should still wait another 20 years or so, and then visit again. You know, when it would be a memorial musem. I guess they might have more stuff to show then.

In the end I wanted to buy a postcard from the museum to send it to my mum (I mean, how cool would it be to receive an Arnold Schwarzenegger museum postcard?). On every postcard there were only pictures of the house. I wanted the man himself on the picture, of course. Turns out, that Arnie hasn't allowed anyone to use any photographs of him to be put onto a postcard. Not even his own museum is allowed to do that. This is just ridiculous- we all know how he looks like anyway, we can print a picture out ourselves- what is the problem? The lady in the museum was also not happy about that rule. I also got a fridge magnet from there (to my surprise, they were allowed to put a picture of Arnie as a Terminator on it) for my mum. The most amusing things they sold in that musem were: wait for it- condoms! With Arnie's face and the the museum logo on the packaging. I guess when someone uses them, they might be protected by Arnie's special power. I couldn't think of a friend, who would need such a special condom, so I decided not to buy it. If I still want to get one and frame it, I can always go back and get it.

I also spoke to the lady in the museum a bit before leaving. She loved to talk, you could see that she doesn't have exactly a lot of interaction with other people during her work (with maybe ten visitors she gets per day?).  I told her I might be helping the Estonian Special-Olympic delegation next year (because Arnie had come to the opening ceremony of the last games that were held in Austria and I hope he will come there next year) and she was so exited about it - telling me, that I will be visiting her again next year as all the delegations will visit the museum! It turns out I had made a new best friend in that museum for about 10 minutes. When I left the museum, she wished me all the best and told "See you soon!". Probably going for the second time into that museum would make me a regular customer.

After a strangely amusing trim to see the birthplace of Terminator himself, I cycled back home, feeling way too satisfied, taking into account what I had just seen. One thing for sure, the locals were right about the museum.

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When I got home to find out there had been no electricity for couple of days.

I'm not gonna start off this post with the reason, why I'm absolutely (still) pissed, but will talk first of all about my week.
So, I had a mini-holiday from work and went to South-Tyrol. As usually, one needs a holiday to recover from a holiday :)
First of all- I managed to start my holiday off with hives on my legs, probably due to all the crap I've eaten in my Mcdonalds job. So, I was prescribed Kortisool as the treatment. Besides my legs feeling extremely blown up (they were swollen) and itching and hurting, I was also deadly tired. During my whole holiday. I still managed to meet all the grannys of Hannes and even see Judith and her parents, eat a lot of cake and get some sun. One of my holiday days, Hannes had to go back to Graz to take an exam, so I had a whole day for myself. Spent it in the Ötzi museum and in a cafe, talking to Hannes's brother. In the end of the day I crashed to Judith's place and stayed overnight there. Was a lovely week, full of nice people, dead ancient people and sun.
On Thursday, I drove back to Graz......


Got into my flat and discovered that we have no electricity. Tried everything, still nothing. Panic, all the stuff in the freezer had already melted up. Hannes, who still stayed in South-Tyrol for couple of days, called our electricity provider. They told that they switched everything off, because they have no information on who's living currently in the flat. Well, we sent the information to them nearly 2 months ago..... Seems that they weren't capable of organizing their papers. So, a really pissed of Maria found out that there will be no electricity until the next day at least. (Just to mention, we didnt get any warning before they switched our electricity off). What to do? There was a storm in Graz on that evening. Some quick phone calls and a bit of organizing, and Maria ended up in Annika's place with all the contents of her freezer. I managed to fit all the stuff into Annika's freezer and stayed overnight there. Was a really lovely evening and morning, too. Thank you, Annika, once more, for helping us so much- I'm really lucky to have Estonian friends here, like you :) (Astrid, thank you for the willingness of helping me, too, even though I didnt need it in the end).
So, on the next day, when I got home again, there was still no electricity. Hannes yelled at the guys from the provider a bit, and 2 hrs later, a guy came and switched us in again.

I managed to get a severe cough thanks to going through the city on a stormy evening with all my stuff. Hell, I was pissed. I still am.

So, we're gonna tell them that all the stuff in our freezer was defrozen and had to be used or otherwize it would've gone bad. Or it was already gone bad. As it's some pretty expensive stuff from Estonia (wild-board sausage etc), we will fuck them hard in the arse. Sorry for my expressions, but we're gonna ask for some money and refund for their idiocy. We're not gonna leave it like that.

Anyway, I still worked on Friday, had a coffee with Annika and Thomas (her son) and worked on Saturday. Then Hannes got back. On Sunday we went to Astrid's place to wash our clothes (hopefully for the last time in someone else's place) and play some 7 Wonders. The week full of curiosities and unbelievable happenings was over. With a nice ending (not for the electricity company, I guarantee it), though.

Oh, as the heating is turned off for the summer, our flat had 16 degrees in it, yesterday. Just to say.....

And here's a picture of how Ötzi is supposed to look like.

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Going to a public sauna in Austria

I've been wanting to write here about sauna-culture in Austria since three weeks but just havent had the time and motivation.
So, couple of weeks ago, an Estonian friend of mine (Annika) asked me and Hannes, whether we would be interested in checking out the biggest sauna complex in Graz, called Auster, which happens to be just 3min walk from our new flat. Me and Hannes decided to give it a go, as we both had been really stressed with moving and work in the past couple of weeks, so on a lovely Monday evening us three (me, Hannes and Annika) went to saunas. First of all- we knew that people go to public saunas and spa's naked, but thought that only some of them do it. As soon as we walked into the wellness park area, with our bikinis on (in the Estonian public-sauna style), we saw that no-one, absolutely no-one, was wearing anything that would remind of clothing. So, we turned around, went back to the changing area, and took our swimming clothes off. In the beginning it was really strange- all the people were walking around everywhere, completely naked. Some of them took a towel with them (mostly women) to cover them while walking from one place to another, but the main use for a towel was under bum in the sauna so that you wouldnt sweat on the benches.
Well, as the place looked somewhat like a paradise with all it's outdoors bubble baths and pools with lights at night and saunas indoors, it was a bit like Eden and there were many more Adams walking around, than Eva's. It was probably the biggest amount of naked people I've seen together in one day in one place (and I have to say I've seen quite a lot in my life already).
Ok, that about the being-naked part. Next thing- the saunas themselves. We decided to go to a salt sauna. So, we sat in, the sauna was normal room temperature. The walls were made out of salt and in the middle there was an "oven" (if you can call it that way) which had some salt-stone thingy inside and from where was coming salt-smoke like from the end of a cigarette. After sitting in that room for 15 mins, we decided that we are cold and decided to check out more realistic saunas. So, there was infra-red (too cold again), 60 degree, aroma, and 90-degree sauna (2x). So, we decided to sit in the hottest one. A bit weird, too dry for me and not the best sauna I've been to. But never mind, we got a bit warmer. So we decided to check out the bubble baths outdoors. Oh, those were nice, warm water, sunset, trees around you, relaxing in the water, slight wind blowing through your hair. Felt a bit like in a movie- you know, those ones where rich people go to spa's in St. Tropez or whatever.
Then, as a proper Austrian person does, we decided to use the relaxing areas. In Austria, there's a tradition, that people relax on bed- alike bags on the floor or beach chairs. Read books or just sleep. Yeah, exactly, saw people doing that, too. We also "relaxed" then outside in the air for a bit until it got too boring and/or chilly and we decided to try out some sauna procedures.
It turns out, that in Austrian spa's they have some weird procedures at certain times, where a sauna master does sth inside the sauna. For example puts water instead of you. Or whatever. On that evening there was only one time of "treatment" still left, so we went to check it out. We sat in the 90-degree sauna and waited patiently. The sauna started to fill itself up with people. In the end there was about 30 of us or maybe even more. You could only sit, not lay. Then the show began. The sauna master came, made a short introduction, cooled down the sauna by keeping the door for 5mins wide opened. And waving a bit with a towel to keep the air circulating. Then, he brought a bucket of water, a bucket of ice, some towels and some aroma oil and closed the door. No one was allowed to enter from that moment on, or leave either. Scary, right. So, the music was turned on and the sauna master put a little bit of ice, aroma oil and water on the stones in the kettle that was located in the middle of the sauna. Then, he took a towel and started waving around with it. Literally. He made wind. In the beginning it seemed like a joke and I thought that hmm, Austrians call that a hot sauna or what? Then, he repeated the whole procedure, but with some more water. I started to feel a bit warmer. he went around in the sauna, waving the towel once towards each person. Ok, I got it, it was supposed to get hot. And it did. After the third round, I was sweating like a pig. After the fourth round most of the people just ran out of the sauna- it got intolerable.But the guy made another round after 3/4 of the people had left.  It was similar to Estonians whipping each other in the sauna, but on the whole body, not just on the part that was whipped. Yeah, I was impressed. I jumped into the cold water and got really dizzy because that was a huge change of blood pressures. But never mind, relaxing area was waiting for us.  So, we went there, stayed there for a bit and then swam a bit and Hannes decided to check out the normal pool. Me and Annika decided to try another round with the sauna-master. This time, I decided to sit one step lower. Good idea. First time the guy used some mixture of oils, this time he went for a good strong mint. Oh damn lords, that was good. My whole body was breathing with the amounts of mint aroma caressing it. And my lips, it felt like I would never ever need a lip balm. The guy turned the music up (with the song "I'm happy" or whatever) and everybody were just half-dancing on their places  to the music, with the mad guy in front of them waving with a towel. The high peak of the treatment was when the master put half a bucket of water on the kettle and did his waving. After that the body felt like beaten, like there would be no bones left. Oh, that was so so good.
After a cold shower and relaxing (like a proper Austrian) again, we took a short swim and then decided to go all home. Hannes missed the orgasm-like sauna procedure, but he can try it again the next time :)
The sleep was not that good since a long time. (Even though I had a terrible headache afterwards- my blood pressure is not at it's best state at the moment due to all the stress and mcdonalds food).

Oh, but I will not be working in McDonald's starting from the first of June. Cutting out the stress of having two jobs and no free days. I will focus fully on my second job, which is working one-to-one with people with autism. Way better and I earn more money by making less hours. Seems like a good deal to me. :)

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My job

As many of you know, I have a job by now. It's been nearly a month now and I can tell you a bit more than only the fact that I work in McDonalds.
I work as a cleaner, which means that I have to make sure that in our lobby all the tables are clean for customers and that everything is nice and neat. I have to sort the garbage (mostly it's paper), clean the floors, empty the ashtrays and in the evening I have to wash the floors.
The beginning was painful. The first couple of weeks I came home with my feet killing me- you see, I have no time to sit except my 30min break which is fitted somewhere between 8,5hour working day. Besides my feet hurting, my hands were in a pretty bad state- we have to use chemicals and have no gloves. So when I have tiny wounds on my hands, then there's no possibility of them healing. So, at some point when my fingers started to swell up, I asked whether I could buy myself latex gloves and use them. I was allowed to do so, which means that my hands are all fine by now :)
My work is intense, I walk at least 5-10km per day because of my work. By now my feet have gotten used to it so I can actually come home and do sth else. I am starting to be more energetic on my free time, which is great!
I have often shifts that last until 24:00. That means I get home at about 20 past 12 at night. Going to sleep takes still some time, so I manage that usually by 02:00. My sleeping rhythm is a bit messed up because of my work and it affects Hannes as well. Not too happy about it. I now understand why in a normal country the shops close at 19:00 latest. The people want to go home as well! I would, at least.
As I work in the train station, there's a lot going on. We have to call police nearly every day for a guy who is probably homeless, comes into our place and falls asleep. He's not even drunk. He just doesn't get up any more. Every time he's taken away with ambulance. And couple of hours later, he's back.
I've met Estonians in our McDonalds- from the band Defrage. There was about 6 of them. When I met the first 3 of them, I managed to somewhat shock them- a random person in McDonalds starts to talk to them in Estonian, out of nowhere. You guys should have seen those faces! :) Besides, Estonians, I meet many interesting people and also annoying people. For my first two weeks there was a black guy coming to McDonalds every day- first day he asked my name and whether I am single. Then he started talking that he likes girls who don't look like anorexics and that have something to grab. I'm still not sure whether to take it as a compliment or not. Anyway, he started coming to me every day, just to watch me working. As it made me feel extremely uncomfortable, I told him I will call the security or police because he is harrassing me. He started apologizing and saying that he's a Christian and Maria is a sacred name blah blah. The result: he still comes sometimes, doesn't talk to me, just observes, sometimes says hello. I ignore him as much as possible.
Then I have interesting gypsy-style people who come and try to steal stuff from the trays (the things that are under the burgers). Once a whole bag of compost was gone. I guess someone had a really huge unhealthy meal...... I've seen once a Turkish guy trying to eat food out of my compost bin. As it's not allowed, I threatened again with security. That guy is in the station every day as well- I think he's got mental health problems, because he talks to himself, puts some weird gloves on his hands and off and does strange movements with his hands.
So in general, I see a lot of stuff at my work. And I eat a lot of burgers. At the moment I'm still a bit tight with money, so I use the discounts I can have at work and eat cheap (I have to pay 30% of the original price), usually with less than 1€- a cheeseburger, apple pie and fruit salad- 90 cents :) But as soon as I have more money, I will eat a bit more expensive, I think. Even though I run off all the burgers I eat, it's still not too healthy to have them every day.

Besides my work I've been busy with meeting people, cooking and christmas stuff. I gave Hannes a 50-minute massage as a christmas present and he already had it. And he loved it! He has a bad back because of office-work, so it helped him a bit. :) Yesterday I had the Bee-guy and Judith over at my place for a lovely christmas dinner with sauerkraut, black pudding and kotletid :) And mince pies and gingerbread. Nearly all of the stuff was made by me and Hannes. Delicious.
On the day before (Monday), we went to a christmas dinner at another Estonians' place, so we had 3 Estonian girls and 3 Austrian (sort of) guys. Was  a nice evening!  And the day before that we had lunch at one of Hannes's friends place. So indeed busy.

I went to donate plasma for the first time yesterday. I earned 25€ in one hour! The plasma donation centre gives money for each donation so it's a nice way to earn some (at the moment, as I'm a bit tight). You can donate max 50x per year. I don't think I'll manage to reach that limit but we'll see. Anyway, I had given my blood samples in the plasma center previously, to be tested. All was fine and yesterday, after going through the doctor's examination, I was put on a special bed and was connected to a needle. From the needle went the blood into a huge machine, which separated plasma and other blood cells and then pumped the blood cells back into my body. In the end it pumped nearly a liter of salt water also into my veins to make up the plasma I gave. The machine is really interesting, it's hard to describe, but it's cool. You can see your own blood being sorted to parts. Plasma itself is some yellowish-orange kind of liquid. Looks ugly to me. But what matters is the fact that I get to help people and earn money at the same time! Brilliant!

By now that's about it for the things I've been doing. Most of the time I've been too tired to do anything (because of work). I might get another job in January but as I have still no contract, it's not certain yet. It would be 1:1 work with children with autism- basically giving families free time from their children. I hope it will all work out and I can work more with that and have  a part-time job in McDonalds and part time with the autism-association.

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