This year’s scout camp is nearly here so we’ll get plenty of camping and outdoors activities soon. But Adrian still wanted to go camping with just us as well, and Ingrid came as well.

We’ve tented in Tyresta before, and Paradiset. Those two are my favourite nature reserves near Stockholm, beautiful and varied and easy to reach. This time I thought we’d try a new spot, so we aimed for a tenting spot next to lake Stensjön.

Somehow the preparations took me most of the day, even though I started just after breakfast. Getting all the gear, packing my own stuff, helping Adrian pack, shopping food, prepping food… by the time we were at the parking lot at Brakmaren, it was already six o’clock. We had a four-kilometre hike to the lake, and then there was a fire to build and light, and dinner to cook. (For dinner we had our traditional “hajkbomb” and then a delicious dessert of sauteed apples with chopped nuts and chocolate and cinnamon.)

Adrian went to sleep in the tent, while Ingrid and I went for a late night swim. There was a small island quite close to the shore – too far for the children to swim to on their own, but close enough for me and Ingrid. The weather was quite chilly so we didn’t stay on the island for more than just a moment. During our swim back, we had company of a bat that swooped by very close to us, just above the water.

When we got back, we found Adrian still awake, because the tent wasn’t like home, so we also went to bed to keep him company. Just as Ingrid went for a last pee in the dark, some animal rustled in the bushes right next to her. I joked about bears and elephants, but I wonder what it really was. Fox? (Those don’t make much noise, though, I believe…) Badger?

We have an inflatable pool that we bring out every summer, and both Ingrid and Adrian love it. On warm days, they are in and out the pool many, many times a day.

They love the pool as it is, but they also argued that a larger pool would be even better. Eric and I weren’t very convinced. But we agreed to pay half the cost of a larger one, if they saved up money for the other half. And they did. We got the new pool just before we left for Estonia. Eric unpacked it and set it up while we were gone, and now it’s up.

It’s huge. Over four metres in diameter, and over a metre deep – the water comes up to the top of Adrian’s chest. In fact we probably couldn’t have bought or used it last year, because it would have been too deep for him.

The only problem now is that the water is freezing cold! The temperature outside is around 12°C so the water isn’t much better.

Nevertheless Ingrid and Adrian wanted to try it out today. They didn’t stay in the water for long.

And just like that, our time in Estonia is over and it’s time to go home.

Ingrid and Adrian are both telling me that they wish we could stay longer, and so do our friends here. As for me, I’m quite happy to go home now. I’m looking forward to being with Eric again. I’m looking forward to being in my own home, rather than living in a suitcase. A proper kitchen, and a bedroom with blackout blinds, and a room of my own where I can be on my own. Being with friends is fun, but constantly being with other people is also quite exhausting.

During summer, the Tallinn-Stockholm ferry usually has some kind of entertainment for kids. Their conference centre gets no use this time of the year so they fill it with other activities. This year they have a bunch of “big wooden games”. There were games I’d seen before, and games that were totally new to me. There were all kinds: games of skill, of memory, of speed, of logic, and so on. We had a lot of fun here.

Sangaste castle has a newly opened exhibition about the last count of Sangaste, early in the last century, and the technologies of his era. Both things that have survived to this day such as the wireless radio and the telephone, but also more odd ones such as massage machines and grain sorting machines.

Alongside with the tech of those days there was a gallery of pictures of what the people of those days imagined future tech to be like. Some of it has come true, even though it doesn’t exactly look the way they imagined it back then: hearing the day’s news in your home instead of buying newspapers; robots cleaning the floor; machines imparting information to schoolchildren. Mail delivered by flying postmen might become reality one day. Underwater races seem unlikely.

There is a hiking trail at Kauksi. We walked the trail and we ate blueberries and had fun. But none of it could compare to the beach.

Empty and flat. Endless.

Even though the weather was cold, the children played for hours. There were shallows where the water barely covered the sand, and a lagoon with warmer water, both of which offered great conditions for digging – and for photography.

We only left because of the threatening thunderclouds that appeared in the early afternoon. A speedy hike back to the cars saved us just in the nick of time; the rain came pouring down while we were driving back.

After a visit to the aviation museum (with aircraft and helicopters of all sorts to look at and climb into) my father and his wife treated us all to a sushi making and eating session. I’ve only made temaki at home before; here they were rolling proper maki and nigiri pieces together with the kids.

Our annual visit to Otepää adventure park with a bunch of friends and kids. Ingrid on all five trails; Adrian on three; all three of us on the ziplines.

Rain seemed again to be imminent several times but never actually materialized.

Ingrid doing the “Tarzan leap”:

The skies continue to threaten us with rain so we looked for indoor activities today. We went to the Palamuse school museum with my father and his wife.

This museum is built in and around an old parish school, which is famous in Estonia because of a book & movie (“Kevade”) that takes place here. We started planning this visit with my (step)parents already some months ago. I read “Kevade” with Adrian in the spring so that he would understand all the references and know what the story is about.


We visited both the schoolroom with its benches and blackboard etc, and the rooms where the parish clerk / school headmaster lived – bedroom, kitchen, living room etc. In the schoolroom Ingrid practised writing with a nib pen and ink. Adrian tried writing on slate, and ringing the school bell. Meanwhile I browsed old schoolbooks. I loved the maths problems, very practically oriented!

The kitchen maid gets a salary of 96 rubles a year; after 8 months of service she left her job and got 29 rubles from her master. How much salary had she withdrawn during the year?

A farmer sold 8 chetverts of wheat and 12 chetverts of rye, for the wheat he got 72 rubles. How much did he get for the rye, if 9 chetverts of rye costs the same as 5 chetverts of wheat?

There was also a modern annex with an exhibition that has information about the book, schools in Estonia in the late 19th/early 20th century, the history of parish schools in Estonia, etc. Quite interesting and well-presented, I thought. The annex also had hands-on exhibits, based mostly on memorable scenes from the book. You can spin Toots’ red wooden globe and find all the landmarks on it, and dig through all the stuff in his pockets, and climb the pantry shelves to get to the “Lati pats” wine bottles.

In the afternoon we did a quick tour of Tartu’s latest and greatest graffiti paintings.

After barely two days at home, we’re off again, this time to Estonia. I had initially planned for more rest between the two trips, but due to hotel availability one of them had to be rescheduled, so there we are. If we want to squeeze three trips into a single summer vacation, there isn’t an awful lot of time left over for other things.

Tomorrow we’ll be attending the song festival, so instead of heading straight to Tartu as we usually do, we stay in Tallinn for the weekend. Today we strolled around Tallinn’s old town, which we haven’t done in many years. The town was was full of visitors for the song festival, and plenty of foreign tourists as well. Just like Prague, and Valldemossa. I wonder if central Stockholm is the same.



Tallinn is all about medieval cobbled streets, and churches and towers and walls. We sampled some of each, and even toured defensive tunnels under the walls.

Having been under the earth, we climbed up into Oleviste church tower, which – back in the 16th century – used to be the tallest building in Europe. Or maybe the whole world, I can’t remember for certain.



Lunch at Tallinn’s market hall was a nice surprise. The range of eateries was much wider and more varied than I had dared to hope, and so were the choices of vegetarian food.

After decades of a TV free life, we’ve bought one. We’ve been watching movies and playing games on a computer monitor until now. But for various reasons we needed to separate the movie-watching and game-playing from the computer. Hence, a TV.

The novelty of games on a large screen is mesmerizing.