Antonius Hotel Tartu

... because Estonians are generally so reserved and quiet that I forget they get excited and loud occasionally, like at concerts. Maybe the solution to cracking the "stoic Estonian" is just lots of beer and loud music.... Today was spent mostly at Cafe Werner, my study/home away from home in Tartu. (On a side note: I may have mentioned this before, but Werner was also the site where the original Estonian intelligentsia met to discuss the formation of the Estonian identity ...

... some souvenir shopping, and found another really cool little cafe that had kind of a weird cave theme going on. It was pretty cozy though. After a lovely day of churches and old things, it was time for me to leave Estonia. It was really difficult to get in the taxi and drive away from Peter's friends. I was really enjoying spending time with them, and hopefully will get to do so again sometime. Peter came to the airport with ...

The first thing we did this morning was get right to the mailing because we want to take as much as we can to the Post Office. We cannot wait until the last day should something could go wrong. We have until 5:20 PM tomorrow when our train leaves for Tallinn across the street from the apartment. After working about 45 minutes I knew there was something wrong ...

... out to about 100 people right now. You can see all of our past (just three so far) newsletters at www.kubik.org/ucgee. And now, back to our blog..... Snow has been falling lightly all night. Today we leave the Schultz's and Latvia. It has been a wonderful and exceedingly comfortable visit. We feel very close to the Schultz's and discussed many things dealing with our faith, families, friendship and Feast ...

It was time to start heading south as we were meeting old work friends of Brad's who were going to be in Prague in a week's time, something we had organised before we left Australia. 2000km to go, but we planned to stop and do more stuff on the way down. We opted to go down the east side of Estonia, by the shores of Lake Peipsi. Smoked fish again is the specialty on this massive lake which is more like an inland sea, so ...

... and Estonian Bible Study Course lessons. Finally all goes in the envelopes: GN, BSC, two Estonian translated articles. Whew!! Some of the Bible Study courses are printed in Ukraine, others are printed at Johnnie Lambert's home on his color laser printer. The quality is great.....the color laser versions look just like the offset printed versions. As you can see this has been a monumental effort involving translation, layout, printing ...

Last night Robert Schultz drove Bev and me all the way from Smiltene, Latvia to Tartu. It did not seem a long trip and all and took only 50 minutes from the border at Valga. We arrived at Johnnie Lambert's apartment in darkness and had to carefully enter making sure we followed all the security procedures properly so as not to set off any alarms. We were successful. Today we start working. There is lots to do prepare the mailing. There is a complex process to the Estonia ...

... mainly of ex-German pedigree and it's difficult to decide whether it is there dodgy suspension or the poor roads that make my pen fly across the page every other word. Unbelievably the locals tell me the trains are even slower and more uncomfortable. So finally two days latter than I expected I arrive in Tartu, this is Estonia's main university town and should be more lively than sleepy Parnu. My accommodation is in ...

... that it wasn't quite in Tartu it wasn't at all bad. Tartu is more down to earth than Tallin (less museum-like) with a more open and younger feel to it. It is the home to Estonia's most famous university and has a large student population. There is a small "old-town" which (in common with most "old" towns in Eastern Europe) is being heavily renovated. When we arrived there was an Opera being ...

... how good this all looked. We had all 12 stacks lessons of the spread out on Johnnie's work table. He has done such a tremendous job keeping this all going in spite of all the obstacles. Here is some of what has to be done: Translation Checking the translation Formatting More proofreading Printing and collating Preparing GN's with Estonian return address on card inside Stuffing ...