30.8: The Klamp's at Põltsamaa

Today I had a pretty laid back morning, with a few Skype calls, writing and a visit to Werner’s. The main activity for the day was to travel to Põltsamaa, a town ~50km northwest of Tartu to meet the Klamp family. I am distantly related to the Klamps and my grandmother is a good friend of Eha Klamp, with whom I have been in contact. At 1pm I was at the bussijaam and ready to board the bus to Põltsamaa. By about 8 minutes past 1 however, I was thinking that perhaps I had encountered my first Estonian bus that wasn’t running perfectly to schedule! I went inside to enquire and instead found that the Tartu bussijaam has one platform on the opposite side of the station from where I was sitting, where the Põltsamaa/Tallinn direction busses depart. Now I know. Fortunately the next bus was due to depart in about 5 minutes and was an express line, so I was only 10 minutes late in the end… lucky! I rang Eha to let her know.

Eha and husband Toivo along with one of their grandchildren were at the Põltsamaa bussijaam to greet me. We drove back to the local youth centre that Eha and Toivo’s daughter Heidi helped establish in 1999 and now manages. We visited here in 2012, this is the post. Eha and Toivo’s son Mati was there and it was his daughter’s seventh birthday party. As such, there were lots of children and other people there celebrating. We spent the afternoon catching up over a large spread of party food, talking about our respective lives. Eha and Toivo both seemed to be in good health. Mati works in a school for children with special needs and is also one half of a very popular Estonian band, Ansambel MaMa. A YouTube video is below. Both Mati and Heidi are considering travelling to Australia in the future, which was nice to hear. After exchanging some gifts and taking some photos, Eha and Toivo dropped me back at the Bussijaam to catch the 18.30 bus back to Tartu.

Inside the youth centre

View from front of youth centre 

Toivo, Eha and me

Mati, me and Heidi

My evening wasn’t over, however. Back at Terviseks, Christian had been slaving over the stove for three hours to cook us all dinner. A risotto for the vegetarians and an extremely good pasta sauce for the carnivores. We had a most pleasant evening together. Besides Christian and me, there were three sisters from Austria and another long-term Terviseks resident from Italy.