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CABC Scandinavia Choir Tour

Days 5-6:  Kohtla-Jarva and the Drive to St. Pete

Next day most of the gang went shopping while I stayed in the room and caught up with the journal and my sleep! When it was time to go to the cultural center in Kohtla-Jarva for our next concert, we took our clothes and piled on the busses. What I should have brought but didn’t was my slicker: it rained cats and dogs by the time we got there!

We had an early dinner at a really cute little restaurant, but before getting there what should we see out the window but a funnel cloud!! Then a second one started and a little further down we had a full-blown waterspout over the Bay of Finland! I probably embarrassed a bunch of people by getting so excited... (Just goes to show God’s sense of humor: I spend ten days on the Great Plains purposely looking for these things and don’t find one, and here one drops out of the sky in Estonia of all places!)

Anyway, like I said the rain was coming down in sheets by the time we got to the cultural center, and we tried to wait it out but we finally had to make a run for it! We found a changing room and got into our outfits and onto the stage (hiding our carry-ons under the risers), where many of us women clandestinely took off our shoes! (That's when the "Who was the idiot who designed women's shoes?" lines start floating around...)  Rob asked me to do my testimony again (on went the shoes) and Duane (a bass) as well, and we both stage-whispered that with two interpreters rather than just the one like at Tallinn, we’d have to shorten our testimonies or else they'd go on forever! But it went great: we sang well and the people were blessed (we were gratified that anyone showed up at all in that driving rain). Duane did a great job and delivered a message that was very appropriate for the young people of that area. Me, well, I faltered again, but it wasn’t because I got choked up; it was because I was so transfixed listening to the interpreters speaking both Estonian and Russian!

    Giving my testimony at the cultural center in Kohtla-Jarva

    (thanks to the clandestine efforts of Susie!)

The ride back was hysterical: something was obviously amiss with our bus’ suspension, shocks, or both, because we (especially in the back) were having the bumpiest ride of our lives! We were making all sorts of noises and comments, and one gal commented that we were having way too much fun! ☺ Once back I got in line for the computer at the front desk because I realized I had forgotten to set Birdchat to "NOMAIL" and I didn’t want my mailbox gagging on me while I was gone. It was a popular place: many people were using it to touch base with families back home, and it just drove home the fact that, even abroad, the Internet is hard to live without!

Next morning we left at 8:00 in order to try and get to the Russian border at a decent hour. We stopped for coffee again at the same place and had both House Martins and Barn Swallows (Rob was incongruous that the latter was Estonia’s national bird). We also stopped for a White Stork nest which everyone enjoyed (and Duane in particular was having fun with his new telephoto lens, but I began to be dubious about Olympus’ claim that my zoom was the equivalent of a 380mm lens, when his was only a 300 and seemed to be about the same power as mine, if not a little more, even). At the McDonald’s (which was a zoo; I almost opted to go to the convenience store for junk food) one of the guys announced that there was some "bird activity" outside (some of the choir members were becoming quite "birder-friendly" by now), and I arrived to find several juvenile Jackdaws begging food and winning the hearts of a lot of folks!

            Outside the cute little house where we had coffee...                          ...Must have been pretty good stuff!

                                                                                                                                       (Rob, Duane, and his wife Rosi)

We stop for a White Stork nest (even the non-birders enjoyed that!)

Anyway, once we got to the border around 1:30, we didn’t get all the way through (both busses) until close to 8:00 p.m.!! In the meantime we got rubles (Olga, the very attractive money-changer, was the subject of much conversation and joking that day), watched for pickpockets, played several hands of Bridge and enjoyed several White Wagtails coming close to the bus. The daughter of one of the bus drivers (I think it was) offered to take people to see the walls of the Estonian fortress that were right there, and our guides okayed it, thinking we’d be at least another hour, but no sooner had they left when we started moving! Minor panic set in at first, but all was well: Fatima was able to call Eiro and the group in as they had two-way radios with which to communicate.

    White Wagtail shot                        Fortress on the Estonian side of                    Having been "paroled", both busses pile out

        from "prison"                                            the Narva River                                   and have our pictures taken next to the river!

Once it was actually our turn to pull through, things backfired at little: in order to be organized and allow for 60+ people to get to know each other better, we were all divided up into six "care groups" before the trip began, and while everyone stayed with their "group" (and each group had a leader), the groups were mixed and rotated between the two busses every day.  So since every bus had a daily list of which care group was supposed to be on which bus, Eiro thought it would be more expedient to make a list of each bus-load of people based on the care group lists and who was supposed to be in which bus that day, rather than passing a clipboard and having us all print our own names for the passport folks. But it backfired in that there was a handful of people on the "wrong" bus because everyone had to be on the same bus their luggage was on for customs, and some people’s luggage got on the wrong bus inadvertently early on, and it was too much trouble to unload everyone to straighten that out, so the people just joined the bus with their luggage on it. No problem, except that when the Estonian officials collected our passports (she came in and ordered everyone rather brusquely to "Sit down!"; our Bridge game ended in a hurry), they didn’t match the list that Eiro had made! Thankfully that got settled without incident, but that in itself took another hour at least (without being allowed to leave the bus)!

On the bridge crossing the Narva River (with a fort on both sides) we had both Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls up close, and what I thought was a Black-headed Gull but once it took wing, the back didn’t look like a Black-headed at all. That was another long wait; at least we were allowed to get out of the bus (along with all the other locals; we pondered the possibility that these poor souls have to go through this every day if they commute), so most of the gang took pictures of each other with the forts and river in the background.

                            Fancy Rock Pigeon                                        Herring Gull                                Great Black-backed Gull

Then we rolled to the Russian side, where a little "negotiating" got us through customs rather quickly.  We waited for the second bus at a gas station where I became very popular when I passed around the last remaining bag of sweet rolls! Larry (the official choir clown) drove us nuts with his riddles to pass the time: the major one had to do with this guy who walks into a bar and asks for a glass of water; the bartender pulls out a gun and points it at him; the guy says, "Thank you," and walks out. What happened? We agonized over that one for hours! Finally someone figured it out: the guy had the hiccups...

We were finally reunited and on our way to St. Petersburg, and rolled into our very ritzy hotel around 11:30, so what would ordinarily have been a four-hour drive in the States turned out to be ten (we had a time change)! We enjoyed dinner, then crashed (after steaming the concert dress by hanging it in the hot shower)!

                                Waiting for the other bus to get through Russian            The ritzy Pulkovskaya Hotel

                                                                    customs....*                                                        in St. Petersburg*