In Estonia, aside from the DIY 🗼, we also visited an official one in the village of Tindi, near the town of Rõuge. The Pesapuu watchtower is designed in the shape of a bird's nest, or rather two of them. It's 30 meters high, and with the surrounding lakes, there's plenty to look at. Interestingly, there's a small notice hanging at the entrance. Its gist is that the construction contractor, having received the money from the client (the municipality), didn't pay the subcontractor who actually did the work. The amount is around 100k euros, and visitors are asked to donate to compensate for this fraud. A weird move, to be sure, but understandable. Nevertheless, I didn't donate. I do that pretty rarely, usually in person and directly to the individual. Though, I am subscribed on Patreon to two folks, the writer Alexander Wales and the YouTuber Grisha Mastrider with his channel "book guy".
Not far from the tower, with some difficulty, we found a joint and grabbed a bite. Besides the usual grilled veggies and meats, they also offered large beans stewed in a cauldron over a fire. In Latvian, for some reason, they're called pig beans (cūku pupas), but in Russian, horse beans. My brain is a bit broken, so I immediately started thinking about how the phrase "horse-sized" stems from the size of a horse's genitals. The beans were extremely tasty, although at a very European price — 5 euros for a small plate. More of a tasting portion than a full meal. After lunch, our teams split up. One headed to our campsite via an MTB route, and the other by asphalt. As we know, the motto of the "Snowdrop" tourist club is "It's time to split up."
On the way back, we unexpectedly spotted some kind of long-distance gravel race. First there was one biker, and then a whole pack. All carrying bags, meaning you could tell they were riding from afar, with quite a bit still left to go. This is trendy among gravel riders right now, these "self-reliance" style events (for example, the Lithuanian https://www.borderepic.lt/). Self-reliance is one of the key points of the Burning Man manifesto, by the way. Many people think Burning Man is just about crazy installations and freaky crowds. Nope, there's a whole idealistic philosophy. https://burningman.org/about/10-principles/ Which, like all utopian ideas, struggles a bit when it collides with real life.
