Oh, I dunno. Hanging out I suppose?

One can't help but notice that I have been absent from my blog for a litte while, is this the beginning of the end? The point where I forget about my blog and leave it to obscurity?

Hopefully not! I think it's more likely though that I have not left Tartu since I got back from the Netherlands so I assumed that nobody would want to hear about my doing nothing. But I guess most of you have lives far more boring than mine, and who I am I to keep you without your only source of entertainment?

Narcissism aside, I did actually leave Tartu once! Last Sunday in fact. After an overall lazy day in my room, at about 2:30pm I casually strolled to the bathroom to find roommate Mark Lemon frantically getting ready to leave to pick up a guitar he'd just bought from the Estonian version of ebay and asked if I wanted to come to Tallinn to get it, so I said yes! We travelled all up 5 hours there and back, and were only in Tallinn for about 2 hours, but overall it was worth it!

Just Mark and his guitar

But I can't say I've done a huge amount since then. I went to a 1920's theme party but didn't feel like dressing up, cheered on a fellow exchange student to Karaoke championship victory and aside from that just did some homework. Possibly my most boring week and a bit to read about, but it's been fun living it!

I've started to get back into the swing of the Eurovision writing now that there is actually some information flowing about and soon I will be really busy trying to balance University, Eurovision and travel, but thats the dream isn't it? If anyone wants to check out my articles; click here.

Thats all really, aside from drinking more than I should there isn't much more that I'm allowed to say, so here's what you all come here for anyway, photos of Horace!

Horace in front of Riga's famous Laima clock and in front of the Heerenveen Windmill

Final thought!

If you want to write a blog about your adventures in Europe, sometimes you should actually do something. Alternatively make a note about them so you can remember what you did and blog about them later.

Fauxsian.

Those who know anything about the usual delights of my culinary world know that Preston's Noodle Kingdom is perhaps one of my favourite places to eat in the world. With this in mind, along with the fact that there are a whole host of other fine Asian eateries I frequent (Ben-K in Hawthorn, Dae Jang Geum Korean BBQ Hall in the CBD, Basil House in Preston and random food stolen from awesome colleagues Yasuko Murakami, Cyndy Chan and Bridget Kinsik) can mean only one thing:

The thing that I am most homesick about is Asian food.

I managed to last nearly a month without any Asian food whatsoever, and believe me, it's been hard. During my trip to The Netherlands almost two weeks ago I finally caved when Paul suggested Wagamama's for dinner, and after a delicious bowl of Ramen, I knew it would be only a short amount of time until I bit the bullet and tried out Tartu's very own Žen Žen Buffet.

They didn't even have friggen chopsticks!

I really wanted this to be at least semi-authentic, I'd have accepted even an Albury-Wodonga level of Asianity to my food but alas, even this was too much to expect. From the minute I walked in and realised that not a single Asian person even worked in this restaurant, I knew I was doomed.

The pasta, as I am going to call it because referring to what I ate as noodles would be stretching it a bit was full of some very inauthentic ingredients, I can not recall eating a single dish in China with pieces of tomato or olives in them, yet here they were. Rest assured I complained about this to dining companion Mark Lemon throughout the entire affair.

"Spring Rolls w/ Tomato Sauce"

Our entrée arrived after the main, which would not have bothered me, but what did bother me was that the dish we ordered barely resembled what I requested. I thought that it would be nearly impossible to mess up spring rolls, but lo and behold, the samosa/pastie combination which was placed on our table with a little bowl of tomato sauce left me without any amusement at all.

At the end of the meal, the only real highlight was the cherry juice they served us. It's a regular Estonian brand, but at least it tasted like I expected it to.

Final thought?

God damn I could go for a good laksa right now...

Adventure!

This week has seen me only leave Tartumaa (my county) once, and that was when I briefly forayed into Valgamaa, which is the next county to the south west. So how does that constitute my most exciting week week so far?

Well, last weekend was a monument to laziness in which I'm pretty sure I did absolutely nothing of note, and this week was shaping up to be not much in particular until Erik's girlfriend dropped in from Germany! In convenient timing, my flatmate Mark went back to England to graduate from university so I slept in his room to give Erik a little privacy. This meant giving up my spacious mansion-room and living in a room surrounded by stuff from two people that I wasn't allowed to move at all. Thankfully I was allowed to return on Friday and it was good to be back!

Meanwhile I revived four packages in the mail this week! Two from Australia containing living essentials such as Tim Tams, Vegemite, Paprika and for a reason that I can no longer why I requested, Post-Its. The other two were from Threadless and Sharing Machine and I now have 7 new T-shirts which makes me feel good! Now I have options again! Hooray!

I made a big purchase this week of a Sony Handycam in which to take with me to Yerevan and I am now trying to find people in my dorm to talk to so I can get some practice in editing videos. So standby for a cool video introducing my fellow residents of Raatuse 22!

On the previous topic of mail, on Wednesday I received notification that my application for residency had been approved, so until July next year I am now an EU Resident and I get to pick up my Estonian ID card tomorrow morning. Pretty neat!

My biggest adventures however took place on Friday and Saturday. After speaking to my mate Indrek about his plans this weekend, I managed to snag an invite to the high ropes adventure course in Otepää in the afformentioned Valgamaa county. I rustled together a group of people to tag along and gosh darn it, we had an ADVENTURE!

Me feat. Kevin from Georgia

Overall it was a pretty awesome day! Full photos will be up on facebook soon. Friday night lead into Bloody Marys at Antoine and Ginger Tamás' apartment in which I got a migraine part way in and soldiered through with some Neurofen +. Awesome night and may I just say Neurofen plus I love you.

The next adventure took place in a two stage attack yesterday, when we took part in the Exchange Student Network's 'Do A Good Deed Day'. This led us to the Tartu animal shelter in which we got to see a heap of poor abandoned dogs. It was nice and a bit sad too. The animals all had their own little doggy houses outside but had to be chained up so they don't run away. All the dogs normally get one walk a day, but yesterday they all got a few walks and seemed very grateful for it. However, not being much of a dog person, I spent my time gardening! I removed as many reeds as I could from the pond without getting my sneakers wet and then pruned all the lower branches of the 8 or so trees surrounding. Overall I felt I didn't get as much done as I could have with some gumboots and better tools, but they seemed quite grateful nonetheless.

It rained heavily on the way back and we all got soaked to the bone, so what perfect way to get out of the wet clothes than to go swimming! Two of my German friends, Katja and Justus invited the whole dorm to go swimming with them, but surprise surprise, I was the only one foolish enough to want to go swimming while it was raining. It turned out to be awesome anyway, as there were some damn cool waterslides! I also finally enjoyed the quintessential Estonian experience of Sauna! This is in my memory my first major foray into public nudity and was much less awkward than I had expected. Although if I don't have to see another old man's né-né for at least the rest of my trip here, I will be happy.

All in all, upon returning to the dorm yesterday I finally got some long deserved sleep.

Oh and today? Just pissed about mostly.

AND NOW MY FINAL THOUGHT!

Adventuring is fun. You should always do more, and if possible shout 'ADVENTURE!' and throw your fist in the air to alert everybody nearby you are on an adventure.

The Finland trip that wasn't and the first week of classes.

So, my planned trip to Finland last weekend failed incredibly early on!

I got as far as the bus station when I discovered that they wouldn't take my credit card and only took cash. Defeated before I even began. After half-heartedly attempting to hitchhike for a few minutes I decided that these problems were more than likely to repeat themselves and packed it back home.

No regrets though as I ended up making a few friends Saturday night in Tartu, even convincing a few of them to sit at the top of the arch on the bridge and have a beer until everyone eventually wigged out. I used to be so afraid of heights, my mantra of ''Will I regret not doing this later'' has helped me overcome a lot of fears in the last year or so. So that's this weeks life lesson, if you think you'll regret doing nothing, suck it up and do it!

I also had my first classes this week! Estonian classes have highlighted how little I know about English grammar causing me to become confused right from the word go, but I've been promised some additional reading assistance by one of my American friends, so I should overcome this!

Lithuanian class is now cancelled due to the class taking place in Estonian. Why it was published on the list of classes taught in English is beyond me, but oh well! In replacement I've picked up two classes that each have half as much credit points, History of the English Language and Nordic Viking & Medieval Literature. I've yet to have the History class, but my Viking class has set me 4 poems and 10 chapters of Icelandic Saga to read before next class!

The bright side of all this timetable switching is that I know have an extremely streamlined timetable! I only have classes on two days; Monday and Wednesday. Both days classes start at 12 and run until 4 and 6 respectively. Long days but it gives me plenty of time to piss about.

As for my last two subjects; Minorities in the Media in the Baltic Sea Region is kinda dull but looks like it might pick up, and my online subject English in South East Asia and the Pacific has yet to be worked on. Should really do that soon!

But not this weekend! Tonight is the Raatuse International Food Festival where we all cook national dishes and share them on the 4th floor! I made ANZAC Biscuits that turned out pretty swell, we shall wait and see how Europeans feel though, and tomorrow I am going to Lithuania for a few days! So I shall see y'all soon with fresh tales of Vilnius adventures!

Oh, and Hungarians are this weeks Germans, with about 5 new Hungarian friends! Hooray!

Aussie now actually in Eesti!

So I have finally arrived! Well, I've actually been here for a little over a week now. But why no blog updates until now you ask? Well the answer is quite simple!

I'm an idiot.

Yes, correct, I'm an idiot who forgot that shipping your desktop PC to the other side of the world is only a good idea if you insulate both outside and inside. So essentially the hard drives fell out somewhere during the flight and damaged some of the internal components of my computer, so I'm stuck borrowing my dorm mate's computers until it's fixed, which means yet another blog post without pictures. Sorry kids!

Now, on to what I've actually done! Sit around children and let me tell you a tale...

So basically I got to Tallinn last Friday on the tiniest plane I'd ever been on and was greeted at the airport by the effervescent Kristiina Veerde who greeted me with mostly inflated balloons and a bottle of beer as well as some other treasures. We were promptly whisked into the old town by an efficient bus and with the help of our Krissu, we found the hostel and I got some food and my new favourite Tallinn café 'Must Puudel' which is owned by several Estonian celebrities including Vaiko Eplik (Eurovision 2003 lead singer!). Later that night I joined my friend Fred to check out a few bars where we ran into another friend of mine Janno. In the second bar they played several Eurovision songs. It was pretty damn fun.

On Saturday we went to the re-independence day concert 'Vabaduse Laul' in the national song festival grounds where I saw a number of musical acts from the always quirky Brainstorm to the eccentric Kerli and the bizarre folk warblings of some Norwegian chick who didn't even seem to know why she was there. I saw an unfathomable amount of Estonian flags and it was an amazing experience. I also met Kristiina's Mum and Sister and her Mum bought me an Estonian-English dictionary which has already guided my culinary expedition through a few supermarkets! Aitäh Mrs Veerde!

With Sunday just for relaxing, I arrived in Tartu on Monday around midday. After a quick tour and a run to the shops with Krissu, she headed home to Rapla and I began to settle in. I met my room mate fairly soon after that; Erik Müller, a German medical student doing his placement at the university hospital. Sharing is not nearly as hard as I thought it would be! The room has plenty of space and we're both respectful and pretty easy going. We hung out at a local pub on Monday and that was the end of that.

Tuesday through Friday have blurred together a little bit in a whirr of drinking, orientation, making new friends and meeting new dorm mates including Mark from Chippenham, England, another German called Ferdinand and a Frenchman called Alexander. However there is still one spot free, so who knows who will show up!

Friday was the international student pub crawl, which ended as messily as you would expect, however on the plus side I made a whole swag of friends. There should be photos of this. I shall at this point take a moment to point out how damn cheap beer is in this country. Dayum.

Saturday was hangover recovery, not much to see here aside from the mysterious Kangaroo meat dumplings I found in the supermarket next door, moderately delicious!

So that leaves us with today when along with 14 others I boarded a bus to the adorably named Kauksi to enjoy the last weekend of summer in Europe's 4th biggest lake, Lake *Peipsi! With the lake being so huge, there were waves just like you would get in the ocean, except with fresh water. I met a whole lot of new people, swam, sunbathed (note I didn't say tan, I still don't tan), and walked a heap. On paper it's not so exciting but I assure you it was, again photos to come.

So thats it for now! Stay tuned for my next blog where I discuss my first week of classes and a probable visit to Finland next weekend! That's right bitches, I'm going to Finland.

Oh and final point; damn this country has some attractive people. Like seriously dayum!

*apparently this is called something else in English, but this is what everyone here calls it.