Winter is dark. Mid November, it is already dark by 4 PM. And it gets worse everyday until the end of the year. And even when days start becoming longer again, the temperatures are still dropping and the spring is still far away. Estonians know winter can be dark and cold, and so they have recipes to cheer your life.
Major winter events in Tallinn are the Dark Nights Film Festival, in November, the Christmas Market on the main square of the old town, and the Tartu Marathon, a 65 km long cross-country skiing race, happening mid-February. The start of this race is given at the Tehvandi stadium, where I had the honour of trying skiing for the first time.
In between, people spend time as they can, planning the next sunny holidays or enjoying home and family.
Kitchen pleasures
Certainly one of the main winter highlight of locals and foreigners in Estonia is the creativity they deliver in the kitchen. Around Christmas, it is very common to make gingerbreads, called Piparkook here. And any other stuff you are into during the dark weekends.
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| Piparkook (gingerbreads) |
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| Cinnamon rolls |
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| Macarons "de Tallinn" |
Do you have your reflector?
Street lighting in Tallinn is just sufficient to walk without bumping into poles. But it is not sufficient to make pedestrians visible to cars. So it is in the law that every pedestrian (and cyclists too, but that is obvious) must always have reflectors when walking outside of daylight hours. Ideally, it should hang from your jacket on your side between the thigh and the knee. There is a very active campaign about it every year when darkness starts to be around. And it is a very easy way to recognise locals from visitor.
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