Tag: Riina Kindlam

Head uut aastat lovers of kitties aka kiisud! If you haven't yet visited the websites of animal shelters in Estonia, I suggest you do. (Web addresses listed at the end.) The stories, names and descriptions of the cats (much more numerous than dogs), waiting to find new homes, penned by dedicated vaba/tahtlikud (volunteers) ...

A fantastic reklaam (advertisement) for its witty play on words. Not Tere hommikust (Good morning), but Tere ummikust (Hello from the ummik). If a drain is umbes, it's clogged.   If it's umbne inside a room, there's a lack of fresh air.   An umb/sõlm is a knot that's really ...

You know muesli. Originally known in Swiss German as Bircher/muesli, (because it was developed around 1900 by Swiss physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner for patients in his hospital), or simply Müesli, the word is an Alemannic German diminutive of Mues which means "puree" or "mash-up." In non-Swiss Standard German, it is spelled ...

This scene of shadow puppetry or varju/teater, as it is  known in Estonian, was played out on New Year’s Eve in the Kassi/saba (“Cat’s tail”) neighborhood of Tallinn. It was part of a social event, but not a performance...   The shadow of the figure first-grader Hugo is holding up ...

Currently “running in the kino” or playing in Estonian movie theatres: Näljamängud: Pilapasknäär - Osa 2. Do you get it? Photo: Riina Kindlam   Translating the titles of books and films from the original language is always challenging and the results are often amusing and enlightening.   Remember the 1997 ...

On Sept. 23, the day of the autumnal equinox or sügisene pööri/päev at 11.21 Eastern European Summer Time, the place to be was on the corner of Suve and Sügise Streets in Tallinn, or literally on the spot where summer and fall meet.   Like virtually all place names in ...

Seen on a bright yellow pakendi/ringluse/tünn (package recycling container) on Soo tänav (Swamp Street) in Tallinn’s Kala/maja (Fish House) district. A pott/sepp is looking for work.   Pott/sepp is a compound word composed of pott (pot) + sepp (smith) and POTTER is one of its meanings, but not the primary ...

Mihkel Männik (on the left) and Martin Saar, two of the three men behind the Tallinna Naha/töö/koda or leather workshop set up shop in Solarise keskus (center) in midtown Tallinn for the entire month of detsember, showing off handmade items previously only seen and sold online.   The mood was ...

A natural, local, handmade alternative to the silver heat-reflecting sise/tallad (insoles) we have all slipped in our winter footware, turba/tallad are made of turvas (peat) and vill (wool).   The insoles resemble vilt (felt), in fact they have been made in the viltimise (felting) technique.   Their package reads: Villa ...

This fishing motorboat, on display at the Museum of Occupations in Tallinn, was built in the 1930s. It safely reached the island of Gotland in Sweden in the fall of 1944 with its cargo of passengers escaping Estonia ahead of the next Soviet invasion.  Next to it is a naval ...