Today, the group left the quiet campsite at Taevaskoja in order to go to the much anticipated city of Tartu – the second largest city in Eesti. On the bus, everyone was talking to their neighbor about his or her hopes for the academic capital of the country. We hoped to did a city filled with a deep culture. We hoped to find a city with academic opportunities around every corner. We hoped to find a city packed with scientific and technological innovation.
What Tartu showed us was that she is all of those things and more.
Upon arrival, we first set off to the University of Tartu. UT is within the top 2% of universities worldwide, and provides students our age many choices in masters and doctoral programs, taught mainly in English but also a variety of other languages as well. Javier, a new lawyer and participant in this program from Chile, was specifically interested in Tartu's newly created IT law degree, which lasts one year and focuses intensely on law in the technological field.
After that, we ate lunch and had a few hours to explore Tartu on our own. Some went for walks along the river, others went to buy chocolate at the Kalev shop, and a few began to seek out pastries at local bakeries.
All 30 of us reconvened at the Tartu botanical garden, where we walked as a group towards the brand new Estonian National Museum. For many, this was the highlight of the day!
As a brand new building, the museum boasts an unique experience into history, including interactive screens and automatic translation into Estonian, Russian, and English. Calvin (England) told us that he really enjoyed the "Echos of the Urals" exhibition, specifically the section that traced the various dialects in the Northern European region. This new exhibit is one of the best in Estonia, exploring ancient Uralic culture that is so important to this region.
Although it began to rain, we ended our night at Aparaaditehas for some delicious food and famous blue cheese cake :)
In the end, everyone is excited to explore this wonderful city tomorrow as well as to meet a last year exchange participant who lives in Estonia now and to go to Ahhaa science center.
- Lorry Lill, Karmen Kullamaa and Alex Hubschmidt
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