Gingerbread, blood sausage & gnomes :My Estonian Christmas

Merry Christmas and a happy new year! Häid jõule ja head uut aastat!

I hope you are having a great time with your families and friends! :)

Although I haven't been quite in a christmas mood this year, I enjoyed it. I was really afraid of it, because I thought i would be really homesick, but as it turned out this was not the case.

Christmas is quite similar to Germany here I guess, but there are a few differences. Although the Estonians have also the 'adventskalender' (but it's not that common) they have additional the 'päkapikkud',little gnomes who visit the children every night in December and put some sweets in their 'sussid' slippers. 

The biggest difference was probably that many Estonian families visit the graveyard on Christmas Eve and light candles instead of going to church. After we came back from the graveyard we ate the Christmas meal. Pork, chicken,fish and eggs, potatoes and sauerkraut, peet salad and 'kringel', a sweet yummy bread with rosins.
The traditional Christmas food though is blood sausage and pumpkin salad with potatoes, I ate this on the last school day. Every stude also got a chocolate box from my school as a christmas present! To get it we had had to prepare something: a dance, a movie clip, a song...

However, the santa claus 'jõuluvana' came to our house and brought not one but two huge bags of presents to our house. The whole family was surrounded, the children were running excited through the house, with big eyes and rosy cheeks.
 To get a present everyone had to say a little rhyme, dance or sing.
I decided for this rhyme (because it's so short :D)
                           vahuveini vanniga 

                          piparkooke panniga

                          verivorste krõbedaid

                          palju päevi toredaid

I really missed the various German christmas cookies, because the Estonians only seem to know gingerbread :D

These were our creations :))

The slightly different Christmas tree in Rakvere

The days after Christmas Eve I just spent at home and made Kaiserschmarrn, an Austrian dish, it's basically pancakes ripped in little pieces. 

I also drove to Tallinn to visit the Curly Strings concert(a very famous Estonian band). It was so great. I had goosebumps several times and I even understood much of what the band was talking about between the songs. 

This is their most famous song, if you want to hear some of their music! :)

https://youtu.be/vFlUhVyp0cA 

The next day we went to the cinema to see an Estonian movie, which was also really good and with English subtitles, so that I was able to understand it, before we drove back.

Over Christmas Eve and my birthday we are staying again at the aunt's house. 

I remember exactly the moment one year ago, when the last moments of 2014 passed, I was wondering where the new year would take me. 

And now I am here, the last ours of the new year are running. This year was the most exciting, the hardest, the year I travelled the most, the year I met amazing people from all over the world, the year left my home behind, the year I found a new one.

And I am looking forward to what the next year will bring.