Monday, October 31, 2011
Happy Halloween!
Sunday, October 30, 2011
London calling
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Nice car, what about the house?
In Estonia everybody loves cars. You can see a lot of nice cars driving around, which is amazing considering how poor Estonia is. In addition to the small salaries, it is also very expensive to drive cars here. Parking always costs money and gas is about $6.50 a gallon (1.25 euros a liter). Also tires, changing oil and fixing a broken car all cost more here. Part of that is the 20% VAT tax they have, but part is because Estonia is a small market far away from the middle of Europe. I am very happy to pay 7 euros a month for my city bus pass. How do others pay for their cars? By living in small Soviet apartments. This picture above is of two nice SUVs in front of our building. In the US if someone had the money to buy a nice new Mercedes SUV, they would also have the money to buy a house and a garage. Here, people can't afford both so they go with the car. I still haven't figured out why though. I kind of like never having to worry about a break down, a wreck, or having my car get stolen or broken into.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
The half remont
Things are great in Estonia. It is fall and things are nice. Today I went to Tartu, it was nice to see the branch and a lot friends. Maris went to Tõrva yesterday, and then came to Tartu this morning. On the way back home I took a picture of the building next door. This is what we call a half remont. They renovate the sides of the apartment building, but not the middle. I guess it is too expensive to renovate the entire building, but by renovating the sides you can save a lot of money on heating. I guess the most heat leaves through the ends of the building. Most sides are a lot prettier than this building, but you can still see the difference. Sometimes if there is a building with a business on the first floor and apartments on the upper floors only the first floor will be renovated. I prefer the full remont, but you get what you get and you don't get upset.
Here is a path that leads from our building to the road, except that they only built half of it. I'm not sure if they ran out of asphalt, or if it was Soviet planning. In the summer it is ok, we just walk on the grass but in the winter you end up walking into a huge snow bank.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Little Estonia
