The ones who have lived here more than my six days, always tell that "Oh, that is Jena- everybody knows everybody or you will meet those two times a day in our town." So besides that this little town connects as many people as are in Tartu quite closely then some of them are even more closely connected.
So the story behind this introduction is quite simple... I went to watch the last spanish match with spanish people who are here. To meet them we had one street in the old town, before one gate and passage. As we had time I popped into, looked what was in that gate and found out that there was a cafe and an organisation there that has grown out o anti-nazi movement. There I met an Estonain boy who his here a chef. So there I met a bunch of interesting people. The history of that organisation reminded me of Estonian fight for the freedom in the end of 80´s. As I was rushing to the match I just stayed there a couple of minutes.
Spanish people have their little community here, which is nice. I quess is it easy to find their fellow due to their overwhelming nature. Among ten spanish people, yelling and jumping and drinking, was quite a fun experience to be. The most important at that hour was the ball that went back and towards in Johannesburg. Some men started crying and praying when some of their men were injured or just down. Beside yelling "buta" or "por favor", there was one who was like a sports commentator, talking funnily, like "Villa saw in that gate the face of his cousin when hitting the goal..." They being fascinated in the football fascinates me, so is in the case of germans.
I quess what what was interesting for me is that football, food or words are the tip of an iceberg, the daily side of culture that unites the people of one country. From there I could draw some conclusions- each side of culture, is it cousine, sport or language, should have a daily and simple, usable face. When we use more often these new words from English or elsewhere and are proud of the language the most on the 14th of september, we think much of our songfestivals, but in our more or less daily lives the songs are not that important and skiing usually comes to us through television when Kiku is in the competition, Estonian food, we are more likely to think of kama, and to scare foreigners. Of course I am talking about the avagrage and big picture when describing the contradictions of our saying "our culture is foundation stone of our nation and country" and choosing to have it in our lives in quite limited days. The point here might be that I would relly like to think how to see the Estonian culture in our everydaylives, to make it closer to people, because that is a way to intergrate people from different nationalities, and people among the culture itself.
I came here and knew that the German culture is not so concrete thing- they are often looking for the American way of life perhaps and you would not see the "German dances" performance here, at least when sober people doing it. But they have their deep side of the culture, connected with their Germany and their part of the country. And it easy for the newcommers or immigrants or minorities to take over the daily "German things", because they are not thought as these holy relics, like our flag and language sometimes are considered. Because then the other nationalities here can produce their own micture, keeping their identity, former natinality and traditions and becoming step-by-step more German.
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