In Estonia, we didn't go deep inland; we stayed near the border, around Misso. A very picturesque place. There are so many hills that the elevation gain on the first day was 750 meters according to the barometer. That's really a lot for the Baltics. On the way, we stopped by some battered, weird-looking 🗼, where the stairs are designed so that you get in your own way as you climb. When we came down, an 👴 from a nearby farmstead came over and started chatting with us in heavily Estonianized Russian. It wasn't easy to understand, but we still managed to find out that he built the 🗼 just for fun, and this one is already his fourth! I immediately felt glad that we survived the visit. Because it's completely unknown whether the dude has a background in construction and a blueprint with load calculations. Still, good on him for making stuff like this — most people in the countryside just get wasted, at least in Latvia. Maybe that's the secret to why Estonians are so far ahead of us. Roadside self-service sales of 🍎🍏 and 🍅🥒 are super widespread there — you drop the cash, you take the apples. I've seen this in Lithuania too, and with honey, no less!. And even in Latvia it exists in places. But people coming from the country that must not be named get a little mind-blown by such futurism.
I hope someday we'll live in a world where this is the norm.
