choir “Kalev”

This weekend I had my first rehearsal with the boys choir. So I got up at 6am on Saturday to catch the train from Rakke at 7am. When I arrived at the school where the choir is rehearsing, I wrote to them because nobody was there. Unfortunately, the rehearsal started at 11am instead of 10am, but since nobody knew me, nobody remembered to tell me. But after this it was a busy first day where we started to prepare for next year’s festival, sang some German songs and also “Locus iste” which is like a school anthem for my school in Germany. In the evening we played the most competitive game of tag with a ball I’ve ever seen, which is why the conductor has a rule that anyone who hits an instrument, a window or anything technical has to do 20 push-ups. Because I didn’t get much sleep the night before, I went to bed relatively early and slept well. At least if you don’t mention that my mattress had a hole in it, so I was effectively sleeping on the floor, but it wasn’t a big deal, so after someone woke me up to get breakfast I didn’t feel any pain from the night or anything. So the second rehearsal day started at 10am and then, depending on where you live in Estonia, it ended earlier or later to get home on time. For me and the last group it ended at 1pm.

Then I went back to Tallinn and first went to the bus station to get a bus card, which is valid throughout Estonia. When I got there I found out that I could also get it at the main station, but I didn’t know that before and apparently neither did my family. As I still had some time before my train left, I went to the old town to explore it for the first time. And something happened that I’d heard about, but I hadn’t expected it to be on such a scale. There were so many Germans that I definitely heard more German than Estonian, but that had it’s advantages, because I had to possibility to walk for a few minutes with a German guide and listened to what the Germans were learning there. So after those few minutes with a guide and 1.5 hours of exploring on my own, I can say that I imagined it would be much more interesting. Of course you can see nice buildings and churches and stuff, but it just wasn’t that exciting or special. Maybe it’s better if you know more about the history or something, but just walking around and doing what everyone else does is definitely not my thing. I took some pictures of buildings that everyone takes pictures of, and also some buildings that nobody takes pictures of, but maybe you like them too. The most interesting part for me was the park next to the old city wall where everyone is playing disc golf. So after leaving the old town I sat there watching them and waiting for my train. One thing I thought was really cool was the musicians at the station. There was a jazz band, a guy improvising on the guitar and a few others and they mostly sounded pretty good and it was nice to listen to them. Now I’m sitting on the train back home and I’m happy about this successful weekend.