“If anything, I was expecting a run-down, post-Communist fallout, winter-weary people trudging through a mediocre economy by hanging on to the edges of the EU’s strings.”
Dear Tartu,
IKEA was my first thought when I arrived at the international airport of Tallinn, Estonia. Walkways were framed in latté-colored wood while every odd part popped in freshly painted orange, blue, and yellow. I proceeded to scratch out the thought of IKEA when I realized I was generalizing Scandinavian nations to describe a country which was not Scandinavian to begin with. You, dear friend, was one of its kind.
Estonia was the first country I had ever landed on without bearing any expectations. My summer had begun to stretch long and endless, the commotion of family life slightly louder than I was comfortable with, the absence of friends a little too big in my heart. I flew, not with the intention to explore, but as an excuse to get away. If anything, I was expecting a piece of run-down, post-Communist fallout, winter-weary people trudging through a mediocre economy by hanging on to the edges of the EU’s strings.
How pleasant it was, to be thrown back by an opposite reality.
Tartu, the second biggest city in Estonia, is home to the University of Tartu and to ambitious, intelligent youth by the thousands. Perhaps the most magical component about Tartu is the lack of social boundaries, which can be frightening at first for its rarity. In no other place I had been to was I so wholeheartedly woven into the town’s fabrics. In Tartu, everyone is your friend, and you are theirs. On my first day, I was hiding underneath my blanket in the shadowed corner of my shared hostel room, scared to show my face for being possibly the only Asian within quite a radius. The next day, I was jumping from one new, excited friend to another, the least self-conscious as I remembered ever being.
Every June night, the blood-orange sunset dragged on into the hours and towards dawn. The sun that dipped into the shallow horizon and stayed there, pondering until it decided to come right back up again at 4 AM. The pink glow on the cobblestones of Old Town, terrace seats filling up by the day as locals shed their masks and tourists hitched their backpacks with shining eyes. The kind of exploratory, curious eyes of someone opening a present, that I had forgotten used to be so common before.
Yet, I hung onto a certain pride: I was not here to check out the nearest castle or manor, or take Instagram pictures in front of the Town Hall. I was a person, here, in Tartu, slowly but surely finding my feet within the people.
Tartu, I possessed a soft, fragile, 20-year-old heart and I opened it to you. You accepted gracefully and let me into yours.
With gratitude,
Lyon
