Soomaa, Estonia

Since I was feeling a bit fatigued of traveling, I decided to opt out of city life altogether. Therefore, I headed out to the countryside, or more specifically, a small town named Joesuu outside Soomaa (land of bogs) National Park. I will refrain from detailing the ordeal it took to get there, suffice to say that somehow I was able to make it an "ordeal".

I decided I needed some down time, so the first day I was there, I did very little. Mostly I read some factually incorrect information about whales (according to Melville, they are actually fish), and take a walk over a suspension bridge, which I realized was "suspended" only after it jerked wildly under my feet, making my heart jerk wildly in my chest as well. All in all, my day of downtime turned out to be rather dull, or maybe I was just tired of reading Moby Dick.

The next day I decided to go on a canoe trip down to the bogs. According to the canoe-rental-man, the Prime Minister of Estonia once paddled about in same canoe I was to take down the river. Whoowhoo!! (That was a genuinely excited whoowhoo by the way...I am not always sarcastic.) Anyway, I was quite happy in my little canoe, and for the first three hours I rowed my boat merrily down the stream. The next half-hour was not so merry. The wind started blowing fairly hard against me; my canoe subsequently developed an attitude problem and absolutely refused to listen to my paddle.

I started to become a little distressed, because I was thinking of my brother's canoeing horror story. (An ill-fated venture that left my brother and a friend carrying a canoe down the highway until they were picked up by a park ranger search party.) Would I wash up on shore, sink into the bogs and become part of that "Bog Body" special on the History Channel?

Fortunately I persevered, making it the canoe dropoff point and the starting point of the bog path. The path itself is little more than a wood plank about a foot wide. You must continuously pay attention to where you are walking, because one misstep could send you sinking into muck. I found the bogs to be extremely interesting, as the terrain looked like it was from another planet altogether. There is an odd stillness in the place that seems otherworldly. My photographs from the excursion didn't turn out so well, and I suppose it is because photographs cannot capture an atmosphere.

I had to walk the 6K back home, which I no longer consider a terribly long walk. Anyway, I wasn't even halfway there before some very nice people stopped and offered me a ride. (As they passed me, I was waving my hands about violently to keep the bugs out of my face. It is possible they thought I was trying to flag them down in a very spastic sort of way, or they knew the canoe-rental-man and assumed I could use a ride back to the hostel.)

The next day I walked down to the bogs again. There were tons of white butterflies fluttering about, not unlike dancing snowflakes. If I wasn't slightly sore from my prior canoeing excursion, I could have been lightly dreaming.

I have decided that I really like Estonia. Maybe my fondness for the country comes from the fact that I spent a lot of time at a very beautiful place, and the weather was really lovely while I was there. Though it rained a few times, it was a very pleasant sort of drizzle. The guy that worked at the hostel was told me his first memory was sitting on his father's shoulders, as his father walked out onto the frozen sea. I'm not a big fan of cold weather by any means, but I think I would rather like to see the ocean transformed into a sheet of ice.

Hmm...I was just thinking about wandering around in frigid weather. I must be going a tad crazy.



Random Question du jour: If you were a wrestler, what would you select as your wrestling name?