Once out at the Bay of Tallinn

I had been out of Estonia almost a year. It was great to be back and pleasant to find the people just the same*. A number of strange new houses have been built, there are more types of soviet-nostalgic ice-cream on sale, but apart from this - well, it's enormously comforting to find everything just as it always was. I had enough time to sleep for a week, spend time doing nothing with my mom, read the new Harry P_tter book, visit friends, study some, and host Riccardo - the latter being a demanding task: he had already been in Estonia 3 times before, and we had to go beyond the usual tourist attractions and see closer.

As a part of my family's effort to make Riccardo have fun during his visit we took a ride to Naissaar (an island roughly 10 km northeast of Tallinn) in my uncle's tiny inflatable boat. We packed up the tent, food and beer until it took up almost half of the little boat and set out. The weather had been dodgy all day, but it had cleared up just as we reached the port, and the ride was great fun. The waves weren't too big, but it seemed like a good idea to agree among the four of us that we can say later they were approximately 2 metres or so. As we reached the northern tip of the island the waves rose until they really did seem to be 2 metres high - the stones at the shallow bottom were giving us their greeting this way. The waves closed with a foamy rumble behind us and suddenly one of these reached out over our little boat, the water green against the sunlight. I thought: "Wow..." and felt myself sliding down into the warm water under the overturned boat.

When I emerged and saw the others' heads bobbing around the bottom of the boat my first thought was to gather up as much of the baggage as possible. I grabbed the first plastic bag I saw and heaved it on top of the boat bottom. It was canned fish - I still have no idea how it could float. The only other thing we found was a 5-litre bottle of water (also floating). Nothing else was to be found around. As I sat on top of the boat, trying to pour water out of my sleeves, having water, paddles and canned fish with us seemed to be a poor consolation. I remembered vividly the transparent waterproof bag into which we had packed all phones, car keys and documents - it hadn't been tied to the boat as the tent and food was. I deduced it must have sunk and, between taking turns to paddle ferociously towards the shore, said goodbye to my (already second) brave camera, driving licence, id and everything that would be a mess to reapply, not to mention pay, for. The situation definitely didn't seem serious enough to take on the "earthly things don't matter" stance yet.

When the first surprise had passed and we had congratulated ourselves accordingly for having ended up in a proper modern-day shipwreck (merehäda, literally "trouble-on-the-sea"), my uncle took out his waterproof pouch holding a phone and, calm as if he would be rescheduling a business meeting, called a few of his friends living on the island. "Hey, how's it going? Are you at the island? Ah, too bad, a wave overturned my boat here at the north tip... Yeah, very strange, never heard anything like that around here... Well, I'll just call x then..." Of the people who were in a position to help us from the island most were right at the other side of it, more or less 10 km away. So, instead of making a big deal out of things, a decision was made that a few guys from the north end would come to pick us up in a row-boat.

In the meantime, paddling was serious business. The strong current kept turning us away from the shore, directing back towards Tallinn. There was no way of turning the boat right way up again - even if only half of the things were still latched to it, it would definitely have been too heavy to turn for 2 men and 2 women at open water. Also, this operation would certainly have liberated everything that had still remained inside, so the little hope of procuring our belongings from the sea with no working engine would have been lost. While paddling was doing little to take us closer to the shore (in fact, we seemed to drift farther away with each minute), it did give a sense of purpose to the situation. While wondering how long it could take for someone to set up their boat and reach us, we had time to make an endless series of jokes on how to open a tin can without any tools save a cellphone and a bottle of water; create a keep-warm boxing match and agree on telling lies to any family members until the whole adventure would be safely behind us. It must have been by the end of the second hour or so when we saw a tiny spot moving towards us across the waves.

Our saviour wasn't three men, but one - a stout fellow with the look of a weary old Basset Hound, pulling on the oars of his tiny boat with the impression of being quite somewhere else. Riccardo and I transferred to his white plastic rowboat and, having connected the upside-down rubber boat behind it, pointed ourselves once again towards the shore that wouldn't come closer.

It went on for another hour. I didn't have another chance to paddle and staying immobile soon made my teeth clatter with cold. Waving hands around just to move some part of my body, I listened to my uncle arranging for another boat to come from the other side after all - the current was too strong to row across and darkness would be coming in a while. The sky had turned a brilliant pink, contrasting the sharp outlines of the dark clouds against the sunlight that would soon be gone. It takes time for the night to come in Estonia, but we didn't fancy having to try our luck in the dark.

There wasn't much more to do than wait. Being in trouble didn't seem as much fun as it had before and the pool of water inside my pants was quite cold to sit in. As the twilight started to thicken around us, we finally saw the border guard arrive. They headed for the location we had previously communicated and passed us without noticing. Great! So much waiting and now they don't even see us! It was a relief to see the boat finally turn.

Watching from the warm inside, we saw 3 border guards, my uncle and our valiant saviour finally grab the rubber boat, its propeller still sticking out, and turn it the right way up again. At the moment they had managed it, we saw all the waterproof bags spread around over the water. The blue tubes in which my backpack and shoes were, the black plastic-packed ones with food, the yellow bundles with warm clothes and - miraculously - the tiny transparent package, most important of all. One by one, the closest bags landed in the border guard boat. I remember sighing at the irony of the situation - there it was, while the documents were floating off towards south, and they were saving the beer first...

It took some time for the boat to circle the surroundings and make sure no other bags were left. It seemed unreal - we really hadn't lost anything except some of the boat equipment. I couldn't believe our luck. As we took our course towards the south end of the island, my uncle's phone rang and for the first time it wasn't anything about boats. My mother wanted to know why I hadn't answered my phone for the last few hours. "Ah, well, you know, I switched it off until we were in the boat. We're setting up the tent... Yeah, it's nice here... Hey, I've got to go and help with the cooking, talk tomorrow..." It had been a while since I had told such outright lies to her. But the opposite would have been worse, at least she could sleep that night.

It was a wonderful feeling to set foot on dry land. A friend of my uncle's gave us a sauna and a place to sleep for that night. Arriving to the warm house and starting to unpack all the wet bags felt like being extremely rich. One thing after another that I had already believed lost emerged and I turned random things in my hands, returned to me from under the sea.

The best news of all was a mountain of food that had stayed dry (unlike the clothes). We had an excellent feast and good old traditional ways of warming up – vodka for the inside cold, sauna for the outside one. By that time we were already wondering how much planning it had taken for my uncle to arrange all that and how long should our thank-you letter to Nokia and the Estonian coast guard be. It has been a while since I have slept as well as that night.

But on the other side, I felt it was my duty to thank the sea the old way. It had gotten us in trouble, but also let us go and take all our belongings with us as well. If there is one thing that growing up on an island teaches you, it's that the sea is not always so kind. I bought a bottle of vodka and said thanks at the tip of the farthest peninsula.

* except bj, who I was glad to find looking much happier than before.

Inglish

My brand-new master course in Verona includes 80 hours of English lessons. I tried to tell the tutor delicately that I'd rather prefer advanced Italian (as I doubt the professor will be able to teach me anything on the side of an intermediate group), but she didn't get my point. I'll just sit it out, then, it's not so bad either. But it does give me a lot of time to think of Italians and their idea of English.

Considering that it's a movie-translating country, it's surprising how much the Italians love everything that is foreign. The favourites are the Scandinavians (mostly Sweden - sorry, Marie), US and UK, but most other civilised places are all fine too. There is a very special way in which "the Nordic countries" are seen (north means north of Austria, by the way, though France doesn't count). Mostly this includes an understanding that anything to do with the state is definitely much better organised*, that the job market works better, that there are more women in the parliament, that the sky is more blue... **. And of course, the English language is revered up to the point of foolishness.

I thought this tendency of praying towards North-West just a slight quirk of the young population. In fact, I didn't really see it much in Valdagno. This is why I was so surprised when I suddenly heard one university professor after another sticking English phrases into their speech. When I asked for Italian equivalents, I was told that "leadership" and "mentoring" and such don't translate, so this is how they are used. Alright. Then I heard "public speaking" and "week-end" instead of perfectly Italian "parlare in pubblico" and "fine della settimana" and started to think something was not in its right place. In fact, there are:
1) English words integrated into Italian, such as "il computer", "lo shopping", "lo smog" for new objects or actions. Mostly used the same way in other languages too.
2) English words integrated into Italian, though original alternatives exist, such as "weekend", "office", "meeting", "mouse" (pronunce: mau:z).
3) English words integrated into Italian, but by a different meaning than originally; or words that look like English, but aren't. These include "mobbing" (bullying), "sponsor"(buyer, as in someone who orders a project), "pullman" (bus, but no idea why it's supposed to be English), "week" (short for "weekend"), "stage" (apprenticeship, derives really from French (I think), but sometimes pronunced as English).

Really, I'm not hoping for the 1920s back when all words of foreign origin were changed to Italian ones (and, as legends say, each bar turned into "quisibeve": "hereonedrinks"), but I can't help noticing that as the English words sink deeper into the language, they drift away from their original meaning. Where a native English speaker would remain perplexed, Italians understand each other perfectly, saying "brekk" instead of "break" and "buon wikk" ("have a good weekend").

Needless to say, these very same Italians that are so eager to pick up new words to use for making themselves look cool, don't really speak English too well. They do like the Nordic countries, but somehow still travel south. They can't manage films with subtitles as the national film-translation business has never given them a chance of reading from the screen. This is not a problem for me: I prefer good Italian to bad English. But I couldn't hold myself back from writing on the evaluation-sheet of the most eager of our non-English-speaking Inglish speaking lecturers to take some lessons so that she'd at least know how to read "outsourcing" from her Powerpoint slides. The karma will surely get back at me right when I get a sudden strange urge to use French expressions in my presentations...


*this is usually expressed as: "you know, abroad the maternity leave isn't so messed up", not really considering any places very near Italy where the maternity leave doesn't even exist or is anyway likely to be much more messed up than in the rich industrial Veneto.
**In fact the only things for which the foreigners are ridiculed are food and fashion. The gag-effect as a reaction to socks-in-sandals and midnight cappuccinos is infectious. Soon you will see me stop writing about the Italians who fuss about how much milk you can put in your coffee at which time of the day; and start fussing about Germans who ask for a cappuccino in the afternoon***.
***that's a big no-no.