On the ferry from Tallinn back to Stockholm, there was entertainment for the kids, including a lady who made balloon animals for the kids.

It’s not like this was the first time they saw one of those balloon dogs… but for some reason, this time Adrian really fell in love with those balloons and wanted to make his own. We bought balloons and a pump, and he went wild. Ingrid also made some, but Adrian was completely obsessed. He stayed up past sundown, twisting more and more balloons into all kinds of creations. Several dogs, but also many, many swords (which was the easiest model to make) and lots of free-form doodles and squiggles.

We’re heading home again.

We usually stop for a picnic lunch when we’re about two thirds of the way from Tartu to Tallinn. There is a real shortage of nice stopping places along that road. The roadside cafés we’ve tried have all been dingy and unpleasant. Sometimes I’ve simply turned into a random small road off the highway and then stopped as soon as we get some distance away from the highway. Beats having a picnic in a parking lot, but not by much…

The one nice place I’ve found is the churchyard of Anna church. There’s a small meadow in front of the church and a larger one behind the churchyard. They’re grassy and shady, and we have the pretty church and the wooded little graveyard to look at.

There is an old school cool water pump in the meadow behind the churchyard. Not made for Adrian-sized users.

We spent today in the countryside together with my father and stepmother.

Today was “Open farms day”. We first visited one farm that didn’t have much to show off apart from a corn field. The next farm was more of a fishery than a farm… They sold local fish in various forms, smoked and chilled and cooked into lunch. They had also invited the local fire and rescue service to entertain the kids (and adults too). We saw and petted water rescue dogs and police cars and a fire truck, and saw a demonstration of rescuing a drowning drunk.

After a very fish-oriented lunch we went bathing in Võrtsjärv. It has a very shallow beach so it’s hard to do any swimming but it suits Adrian well.

The weather is still intolerably hot so, even though it’s beautiful outside, we’re looking for indoor activities. Today we visited Tartu’s new “upside down house”. Which is simply a house that is upside down. You can visit it and walk around inside and look at how weird it all feels.

It isn’t exactly 180 degrees upside down but at a slight angle, which makes it feel even more weird.

The concept sounds cool but once inside I didn’t find it particularly impressive. Many of the rooms were rather sparsely furnished and decorated. They’d done the easy part – screwing chairs and tables to the ceiling – but not the extra touches that would have strengthened the illusion and made it feel real, like maybe plants or shower curtains etc.

I don’t know if it was because of that, or because the brain is hard to trick, but I never really got the feeling that I’m in an upside-down house: it simply felt like a house with furniture in the ceiling.

The entry fee was quite steep for the brief time we spent in the house. So even though this looks cool, I didn’t find it worth the money and wouldn’t recommend it.

We barely went outdoors today, but in the afternoon we were nevertheless wilting in the heat. At one point we forced ourselves to go out to buy ice cream to cool us. There is a pleasant, quiet, shady cemetery nearby, right next to the nearest supermarket, and we stopped there to eat our ice creams. The relief was, unfortunately, temporary.

This was the month when Adrian broke his front tooth.

Together with our Estonian friends, we went for a walk along the trail in Meenikunno bog and forest. It was abominably hot and at times during the bog section I almost regretted ever getting out of the house today. I was quite glad to get into the shade of the forest. Not cool, exactly, but definitely less hot. Plus there is that cool viewing tower there.

For a while there I could enjoy both the walking and the talking. And the blueberries. Unfortunately the last third or so of the trail was full of ants. Anthills everywhere in the forest and ants everywhere on the path, so instead of a leisurely walk we marched straight on, barely talking and rarely stopping, and were relieved to reach the end.

In the afternoon we drove to Värska for lunch and swimming/bathing. I don’t think I’ve ever been there, even though it’s very well known for its mineral waters and healthy mud and whatnot. The café at the sanatorium was so-so; the beach was small and grassy and not at all crowded even on a Saturday.

The water at Kiidjärv the other day was really warm; even I went in without wincing and took a long swim. Pühajärv yesterday was much larger and much chillier. Today’s swim was in a small bay of Estonia’s largest lake, and felt almost as warm as a bathtub.

We continue to visit our favourite places in Estonia. Today: Otepää adventure park.

Adrian, having grown in both height and weight since last year, could join us on the ziplines for the first time. Bot Adrian and I were almost (but not 100%) sure that he would love them. He voiced his hesitation; I kept quiet about mine and told him that of course he would love it. Luckily, he did.

We feel quite at home here by now, having visited the park several times in the past. It’s almost becoming a bit boring, for me at least – the kids are more fond of traditions whereas I want more novelty. Perhaps we can find other such parks somewhere in Europe.

Taevaskoda, “Heaven’s hall”.

A layer of the sandstone cliff had collapsed some time in the past year, like it was sloughing off a layer of old skin. All the names and dates scratched into the cliff face were gone, as well as the lichens and other assorted things growing on it. The cliff looked unusually fresh and bright.

Of course people couldn’t just let it stay that way; new tags had already been carved into the sandstone.

Falling turned the sandstone into sand. Ordinary, yet not ordinary: pink, beige, pale yellow.

Before visiting Taevaskoda we stopped for a cooling swim at Kiidjärv. The kids mostly splashed; I chased a runaway beach ball across half the lake, as the wind drove it this way and that.

We ran into a couple of Adrian’s friends while catching Pokemons – all wearing the summer “uniform”.

After yesterday’s demanding walk, we thought we’d rest the “uphill walking muscles” and do something different today: rent bikes, take the Penkenbahn gondola up to the top of the mountain right next to Mayrhofen, and then bike down back to the village.

Renting bikes took a fair bit of time, because it wasn’t easy to find a bike with back-pedal brakes for Adrian. But we found them in the end.

The gondola ride to the top was fast and smooth and we had nice views of Mayrhofen. The gondola was very spacious and we had no trouble at all fitting the bikes in there.

At the top, the bicycle path first went uphill for a while, to the ever-present huts at the top. The slope was quite gentle but on gravel roads it was too much for the kids, so we ended up walking the bikes up.


After lunch at one of the huts we were finally ready to start cycling down. Unfortunately Adrian took a bad fall already at the first descent, bloodying half his face and breaking off half of his new front tooth. So that was the end of that. After cleaning and bandaging his face, we walked the bikes back up and came down by gondola again.

All in all, not a great day.