small letterset printing

These two days I started to work with small metal letters and a machine that I believe is called Bostonpress.
With the Bostonpress you can print small formats, but it's mainly used for manual postcard printing.

As I forgot to take a few snapshots I will do that in the next few days :D

Currently, I'm arranging some letters for the Bostonpress and I can say that it's not hard, but you have to put all the letters in a frame and fill in all the empty spaces in the frame so that the letters cannot move...and that's quite a feat :) Then, the frame goes on the machine's frame holder and you administer some paint on the round, plate-like part of the machine and watch the magic be done :)

Yeah, and btw. - one thing is constantly in my mind today...what I noticed that Estonians evidently like to do-they change some words that are the same in all languages and that only by one letter. For example, bank-pank, taxi-takso, billiard-pilliardi...that's kinda funny to me, even though it's stupid to mention it.Hahahahahaha...well, never mind. Seeya!

Resuming the work

Yesterday I was mainly concentrated on working on the guilliotine (for chopping papers, not heads XD), so-cutting paper to certain size, making the covers and binding the notebooks together. As the Hanceatic-medieval days are coming near (that's like Giostra in my city in Croatia), we have to do lots and lots of postcards, notebooks, posters and other stuff.

Today we had an old guy, former printer, show us how the "big green machine" works (I don't know what's it's name XD) so we could be able to make big posters too.

Here is the big green machine:

 This is the old guy :). He was calibrating the machine first.

 then test printing

 the tools for calibrating

 and the outcome :). Trükimuuseum means printing museum...and the date you all understand, I suppose :P

This machine was used in the past for printing and is now supposed to be history...but we will take care of it so it won't be forgotten.

Farewell.

Review #1

As it's Sunday today and the last day of the 4-day break; I have nothing new to report because I haven't worked at all :)
So, I'll fill in this blog post with my thoughts on my 3-week life in Estonia.

When I first came, I was euphoric and happy about my EVS having succeeded and didn't realize my surroundings yet. As time passed and as I saw more and more of the Estonian culture and the habits of people here, I started to feel a bit uncomfortable-as an outsider. Well, I guess this is normal for someone coming from far away.

As I met many people here and found a few friends it was easier for me to accept everything and force myself to realize the situation I'm in. By doing that I made my life easier and started adapting to the life here.

Now I can say that Tartu is my home, I don't feel homesick, of course I miss my family and friends, but as I'm not bound to them, I just need to stay in contact with them...that's all.
I won't generalize Estonian people anymore because that wouldn't be right...I passed that stage already.
So, there are cold and closed Estonians as well as Croatians...it's not a rule of whereabouts.

In the near future I'd like to visit other parts of Estonia and experience other aspects of the Estonian culture, to be more understanding and motivates for my constant life here. So far I have been only in Tartu and visited only the countryside outside Tartu (and I really, really like it :D )

The only negative thing in all of this is that I still don't have my motivation for learning the language, but I hopefully will (in the middle of July, when I start my language course)...this is one of the things that you can't really influence and can't force yourself into...just like playing an instrument. I have plenty of "why is that so" explanations, but I don't need to explain myself...all's well what ends well, right? :D

I will keep adopting and I believe during my year of stay here everything will be ok.

Farewell

Jaanipäev - Suteki da ne

As the title says-Yesterday night (today early morning) was the Jaanipäev, one of the Estonian important celebrations...and as the other part of the title says in Japanese "Suteki da ne"-Isn't it beautiful :)

It was my first time taking part in an event like this-people sitting around a bonfire, eating, drinking and talking...it was truly amazing and I'm sure I'll remember it for a long time :)
The fire had an hypnotizing effect and you could literaly lose yourself in thought...all in all, it was a really refreshing and soul-soothing experience.

I'm not working today because it's a holiday and the weekend comes after it...so, resuming at Monday :)

See you in 2 days then.
Cheers

Mission complete!

And I finally completed the underlaying of one entire font: the uppercase, lowercase and numbers-everything.

Other than that, today we have rearranged some machines (very heavy) in the printing museum and moved the drawers with bigger wooden fonts and metal fonts near the smaller ones so there could be some kind of an order.

Now, I only have to test the letters if they were underlayed correctly (that is my tomorrow's job) and after that we'll see. :)

In the next month there are a few events I want to take part in and I have, as well, decided that somewhere in July or August I'm going to visit Helsinki (depends on when will I get my residency permit and ID card) because I just have to!

As my language course won't start before 18th of July, I have plenty of space for events, exhibitions, concerts or whatever...but I have to find something interesting first :P

Head aiga for now :)

Underlaying #2

Back to the normal tasks in the printing museum-cutting paper using the guilliotine, underlaying the same font of letters, but now the lowercase ones, not uppercase...and when I finish that, we'll have an entire set of letters to use in the workshops and normal printing :)

This is an empty drawer which was full of uncleaned letters:

and these are the ones which I cleaned today and still need to be underlayed:

but that I leave for tomorrow, because I don't want to dream letters tonight :P

btw. Soon is the Jaanipäev (Midsummer day) which is one of the most important days in the year for Estonians...and I would like to see what it's like. They say that they all go to the countryside, make a big fire and stay around it awake all night...sounds cool :D

See you for two days ;)

Back!

That's it-the training is over :)
It was pretty cool and I've met a few new people.
We were playing some social games and were having a lot of fun with it, talked about our countries, motivation, projects, expectations...most of the time was talk, talk, talk :D

This is the hotel where the training was held...it's really nice :)

and after an exausting day of training, we went to the Lõunakeskus shopping centre-zoo shop, just to see the animal offer :D

and the 4th day we went to the city and walked around a bit and I shot a few photos:

All in all, it was very fun on the on-arrival training, I got some new friends and I'm sure we'll meet again sometime :)
Now...from Monday, I shall resume my regular volunteering in the museum :)

Day 1 & 2 of the On-arrival training

The on-arrival traing started yesterday at 1 p.m. in Kantri Hotel just at the Tartu border.
I was really excited of meeting other EVS volunteers in Estonia and I was really surprised when I saw that there are only 4 more: 2 guys from Georgia, one guy from Albania and one girl from Armenia...and I really connected with them the first instant.

The trainers Kristi, Margus and Virko are really full of ideas and they really know how to interact with people and they are really funny people.

The training still needs to continue and we have 4 days left...so I'll be explaining what did we actually do on the training when everything falls into place.

See you soon :)

the "shooto pantsu" day XD

First time in an Estonian movie theatre and it was great :)
I watched the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and even though I watched it twice already, it's a good sequel of the previous ones (but not as good).

Well, all in all, I had fun and that's the most important thing.

Today is the first day I have seen rain in Estonia, hehehehe...so it was like I've never seen it at all :P
In the museum I finally finished underlaying the letters...now it's nice and smooth and I'm yet to see if I did a good job (test print...hope it goes well).

This was the tool for measuring the letters (and their height should be exactly 23,64 mm)

and this was the glue I used in binding the paper/cartone under the letters:

It took me long enough :)
The final organised, sorted and cleaned version is this (in it's drawer):

And that was it with underlaying. Tomorrow I'll see what will be my task for the morning, because in the afternoon I'm going on the on-arrival training, so I won't be present in the museum for a few days :)

Btw. I was planning to go to Helsinki this Friday on Bon Jovi's concert with some friends, but the training screwed me up XD
No matter...I'll have a lot of other chances for visiting the neighbouring countries...somewhere in July :D

...and the title in japanese means "short swimming pants" and I had to buy them cause I'll be going to sauna on one of the training days =)

So, see you in a few days with the training news :)

an another sunny Saturday in Tartu ;)

They say Estonians are shy and stick to their own friends...it's kinda hard to get them open up to you as a stranger, but when they do-you see what kind of people they really are and it's definately worth it :D.

That happened to me and now I can say I am fortunate enough to have a few real Estonian friends by my side which will make my adaptation here a lot easier (Thanks guys :D ).

The most difficult thing for anyone coming from a faraway country is to find his place in the host country and people to hang around with and show you around the city you live in...even though I was a bit sceptic and as I am a person who doesn't acquire friends easily, I was surprised by the result :)

After all, I have learned that stuff like these can't be planned in advance...it just happens :)

As for my project - I'm still working with underlaying the letters, so nothing new about it.

In a few days I'll have my on-arrival training in Tartu, starting from June 14th to June 18th in Hotel Kantri.

It's sort of a "welcome meeting" between the Estonian national agency and all the EVS volunteers that came to Estonia recently.

I don't know what to expect, so I'll try not to think about it much and just get it done (hopefully I'll find a few additional friends :D ).

That's all there is for now...so, see you next week when we'll be continuing our very important work :P

Start of my second week in Estonia

And here it is-one week has passed :)
I can honestly say that I'm getting used to living here in Tartu and I'm starting enjoying it.
People here are polite and fair and they mind their own business (just like Japanese people).

My 2nd week started with paint. My assignment was to experiment with paint mixing and make a rainbow!...and we all know how it ended XD - I have put too much paint on the paper (so it will probably dry forever) and ruined my jeans and t-shirt, but I guess I learned something and that was the main idea. I now know which color mixed gets which color (and amount does matter, of course), how to administer less paint to dry faster...but one thing is clear - I made a horrible rainbow! XD

It was supposed to be like this:

and my outcome was this:

XD

As for today, I have started cleaning, measuring and underlaying letters of a certain font (to make them leave a perfect imprint when used) and I can say it's sort of an interesting task, I mean, it's not very exciting, but it's thorough work (and I like being thorough :D)

This is the set after cleaning and they are yet to be underlayed:

A lot of new challenges await, but this is it for today. Nägemist! (as Estonians would say :D)

Day 1 & 2 at the printshop

These few days were especially interesting for me because I have learned some important things about the printing museum where I'm volunteering and I'm starting to understand how it works.
Well, I have tried my hand at making notebooks and liked it, found out how is the spiral binding done and actually, all of this is not hard-you just have to maintain your concentration.

Today we (the museum) had a workshop with creating little notebooks (which I was preparing, btw :D).
There were a bunch of kids with their teacher and a few volunteers (I guess they were volunteers) and the kids were choosing letters for their names to be printed on the notebook cover. It was quite funny watching them rushing over each other. My job there was to clean the big wooden covered-in-paint letters with turpentine and wipe them clean and dry so they could be used for the next-in-line who needed the letter( because there is limited amount of adequate letters, ofcourse).
I had two roles in this play: the first was to be the above-mentioned and the second one is a photographer :)...so I did my job as best as I could :)

Tomorrow, my host and I will be embarking on a quest for obtaining the residency permit from the authorities...and I hope we won't be returning empty-handed because in bureacracy matters there is always something missing, so I'll be arming myself with a hell of a lot of papers and try to beat them in their own game:)

Until the next post, I leave you be. :D

Tartu city and countryside

Here, as I promised, a few pictures of my surroundings :)
There will be more, of course, because Tartu is truly a beautiful place and there are a lot of things to be seen and documented.

Tartu, Estonia

After I came to Tartu, it just can't stop amazing me :)
The whole town has wi-fi network, free internet access wherever you are.
The people are totally different and you can't understand absolutely anything from the city signs.
The day lasts about 22 hours...so, almost no darkness at all...and that was the most shocking thing.
The city is known for it's mostly students population (and there are really a lot of them).
One of the things I still can't get used to is the Estonian love for going to saunas at 100 degrees and then jumping into cold -20 degrees water...maybe I will try it sometime, but definately not now - because it's still just too strange.

Of course, the people are friendly and I got a great reception here, but the one thing I didn't like at start, but probably will get used to are a hell of a lot of mosquitos...they are really everywhere, especially in the countyside.

OK, I'll be uploading some photos later...until later, then :)

The beginning of my adventure

Tere!

Well, who would say that flying in airplanes could be that fun :)...I took 3 flights from Zagreb to Tallinn (Zagreb-Budapest-Riga-Tallinn) and everything went OK until I've entered the Riga international airport.
The flight schedule was very tight so I had to hurry...but of course, something went wrong.
The passport control took more time than it should have, and because of that - I missed my flight to Tallinn.
This was just the beginning of my trouble. Fortunately I got an another ticket because it wasn't my fault, but I had to wait for 6 more hours until the time of departure.

First thing I had to do is inform my host about the change of plans so as I had only a Croatian phone, I needed to use a payable telephone. I changed 10 € into Latvian "santimu" (cent) and use them...so I did and then the phone broke, eating my coins - well, just my luck!

All this was solved eventually and I came safely to Tartu the same day at around 10 p.m., but I will remember it only for it's positive parts, as my first flight adventure.