A Living Museum

Kihnu island is like a museum: everything from old rusted anchors tethering boats to the sand; to the barns and bicycles and motorcycles, relics of another time; to dial-faced gas pumps; farm houses each with a stone well and a cellar built into a mound of earth; even to the cash register at the store - an abacus.

The people themselves could be museums pieces too, with their clothing, traditional striped skirts for the women and high boots and dark colored caps for the men, and in their chores, manually collecting hay, stacking it into enormous hills and tossing it, pitch fork by pitch fork, into the barn lofts. The stories of life they could tell, if only we understood the language. But that barrier didn't stop us from meeting them. One old woman who let me take her picture talked on and on. Maybe she was asking us who we were. A camper van is not a common sight here. Maybe she was telling us about her dog and two cats. We just nodded and told her of our trip and our plans. She smiled at us, we smiled back. I knew she understood one word we said because she repeated it - "Estonia".

Our second 'conversation' was with Jonn. We didn't understand a word he said either but we got a guided tour of his firehouse, all because we waved. He was so proud to show us everything: the two fire trucks, the water storage tank, the pump, the old radio receiver, the garage where he kept and fixed his Russian car. He rushed from room to room, barn to barn beckoning us to follow. It was fascinating; we told him so by smiling and nodding and smiling some more. Then we pulled out our Lonely Planet and pointed to the word for thank-you and he told us how to pronounce it properly. He pointed to all the words on the page and we repeated them. I think he liked the fact that we were trying to learn his language.

We found many other Estonians to be shy. Three men in caps and grey jackets turned their heads away and refused to let me take their picture in front of their motorcycles. The woman behind the counter at the store shook her head and turned away when we asked in English how to get to the cemetery. Finally I drew crosses in grass on a sheet of paper and she pointed to the side of the store. Later when we went to get an ice-cream cone, she slid behind the shelves when I wanted to take a picture of the abacus she had used to total our purchase. I adjusted the abacus for the picture and apparently shifted the beads so it no longer read 14.5 EEK (I couldn't tell). The woman shyly thrust her hand to readjust it then quickly pulled it back before so much as a fingertip could be photographed.

Our trip through the museum ended when we lined up at 3:15 to catch the 4:15 ferry, the last till Sunday, back to the mainland. Our evening ended with a pizza in Parnu and a walk along the beach in a campground we found along the main highway. So far the Baltics have been fascinating.