Cultural Differences

Well, it's coming up on two months since I've left the US and began my year of study abroad. It's been a slow week here, not much to update on, although next week I'll be in Russia, so that should provide more than enough material for a blog post! Anyway, what I thought I'd do instead of talk about my life is post some random cultural differences that I've noticed since coming here. These can be European generally, Estonian, or even Tartu specific. Also I tend to notice the bad over the good, especially when it comes to differences, but hopefully that doesn't come across too much. I made this list a week or two ago and most of them seem obvious and trifling to me now, so take that as you will. Cultural differences are just that: differences, and are generally easy to overcome!

• Bathrooms are very basic here, and generally pretty small (rarely have I found any for more than 1-3 people) 
• Light switches to bathrooms are on the outside wall, obviously so you can prank your friends into using the bathroom in the dark.
• This is just my own experience so far, but the theatre here only shows crappy romantic comedies and movies like final destination five, and also they've already been out of theatres in America for months.
• Electric kettles! They boil water so fast it'll make your head spin. It's basically like having a Keurig instant coffee maker except with the Keurig I'm pretty sure the water has been heated beforehand. I'm fairly sure it has to do with the fact that 
• The voltage in these outlets is double ours.
• The atmosphere here is much more open and relaxed. Everything is open into the early morning and you will find people of all ages eating at cafes outdoors until 2 am! 
• Servers here don't bring you your bill immediately, which can be good or bad depending on how much of a hurry you're in. If you don't have time you're probably going to have to flag someone down.
• But you can sit in a cafe for hours having only ordered a drink and the servers I'm assuming make decent money so tipping is not as customary.
• Customer service as we know it in the US is almost nonexistent. People are friendly enough, but mostly they are roadblocks. They are unable and sometimes unwilling to help you, and occasionally even act like you're accusing them of something. Maybe it's a holdover from Soviet times, where people knew nothing and said nothing if they knew what was good for them. Ordinarily I'd think that was ridiculous (and I still do to some extent) but with some older people you kinda feel like they're thinking"why are you causing all this trouble" when all you did was ask a question. Whoo that was a long rant (and I could probably continue) but that has been a big culture shock for me. But it has made me more independent and self-reliant.
• Beer is cheap and in huge glasses and typically on draught and tastes amazing. Everything else is small and expensive. So interpret that as you will. Including water. It tastes good, but it's small and expensive.
• The coke here is made with sugar instead of corn syrup so it tastes much sweeter, which I thought would be a huge positive but I don't know. It's almost too sweet for me. Definitely not a bad thing, just different. I'll probably come back home and think it tastes awful there now.
• Also Fanta tastes way different because of the sugar and because they actually put orange juice in it. And there's four kinds of pop here: Coke, Sprite, Fanta, and RC.
• Estonians call anything fizzy "limonaad," including Coke, etc. But it doesn't mean "lemonade" to them, the word for lemon is "sidrun." So I don't know what the story is with that one.
• Public transportation here is the best. The larger buses have wifi, the ferry had wifi, they're comfortable and cheap and get you everywhere.
• Speaking of wifi, almost every building in this town has free wifi. But of course everyone in the establishment is using it so sometimes it can be slow or not work. 
• Food comes in much smaller portions, both in restaurants and at the store. One interesting exception is some drinks come in 1.25-1.5 liter bottles and people drink them like we would 20 oz bottles. 
• There are sidewalks and the entire town is walker- and cycler-friendly, including bike ramps nearly everywhere. Also every major crosswalk has signals that everyone strictly follows (apparently you can be fined for crossing when it says don't walk).  
• Credit/debit cards here use the "chip and pin" system, which means your card has a little chip inside of it and you slide your card into the machine and use your four-digit PIN code to make purchases. This seems to be a much more secure and quicker way to pay and they accept it EVERYWHERE here. You can use it to pay for a ticket on the train, for a pack of gum, for literally anything. In the US you'd get some odd looks if you paid for one drink or a bag of chips with your card. Here it's standard. I really am glad I got the chip and pin card. 
• Depictions of female nudity in public are quite common. You can hardly walk into a cafe or pub without seeing (artistic) pictures or paintings of naked women, which being American is of course a big culture shock. I wonder how Estonian women feel about it. I don't think they notice or care.
• Egg-flavored ice cream. Sounds disgusting, tastes delicious. 
• Right now there are birds EVERYWHERE! I thought we had a lot of birds back home but these birds are huge and are constantly flying around town. And they're squawkers, like ravens or something. Like something out of a horror movie. Sometimes it feels like I'm living in a Hitchcock movie. But it is kind of peaceful to watch when they're not squawking maniacally.
• Also, Estonians say you will get rich if you get crapped on by a bird, which I think is hilarious. They say it's because "the odds are so low that one will hit you that it's lucky and means you will soon get rich." It seemed to me that with hundreds of birds flying overhead you'd be more lucky to avoid it.

I'm going to stop here because this is more than enough for a blog post. A lot of this stuff is second nature to me now, I should add. Part of the fun of living abroad is learning about and dealing with these lifestyle changes. While it can be overwhelming at first, if you keep an open mind and approach things with a sense of irony or humor it can actually be quite enjoyable.