okay, okay. it just dawned on me that all the pictures i just added to this blog posted backwards so bear with me...

friday i left tallinn behind for a relaxing weekend in the country. a friend at school invited several people to hostel soomaa for a few days of sauna, hiking and canoeing in exchange for some help around the hostel. so i'm imagining some window washing or maybe some sweeping, etc.. however, when we arrived friday night i soon found out that "help around the hostel" actually means eight hours of manual labor... we spent saturday cutting wood out back and carrying it to and stacking it in the front, piling up scrap metal, bottles, paper tubes, and carting out loads of concrete chunks, glass, and tiles. by saturday evening we were exhausted but what had seemed impossible that morning managed to get finished with all of us pitching in.

our reward began just a few hours later with sauna! imagine the saunas you have seen in the states at your local gym, they look about the same in estonia... now imagine 70 - 90 degrees celsius ( that's about 160 - 190 degrees fahrenheit ) whoa... and don't think that i'm exaggerating, i saw the temperature gauge... this heat was intense... but cured my aching back! sauna in estonia is a ritual, many people go once or twice a week with friends and family, you spend some time inside the sauna, rinse off, then cool off outside, talking and drinking. when the cold air starts to get to you, back into the sauna! this is repeated two or three times and takes a few hours, a great way to socialize and relax at the end of the day.

sunday our reward continued with an all day canoeing and hiking adventure... we started off at eight thirty with 12 kilometers (7 miles) of canoeing, the sun still rising, birds in the trees, leaves starting to change colors, beautiful... then we pulled our canoes on shore and began a hike through the forrest. we picked delicious apples, saw red mushrooms straight from a fairy tale, marshland, deserted log cabins, a black river... after a few hours we headed back to our canoes for another 8 kilometers along the river. when we returned to the hostel at five pm we were exhausted and hungry but happy to have spent the day in the wilderness.

monday morning we were up at six am to catch the two hour train back to tallinn... with an open-ended invitation to return to soomaa for hiking or even cross-country skiing in exchange for more "help around the hostel"