Sunday, May 10, 2015

My mom asked for a photo of the barn...

My mom asked for a photo of the barn ... and here it is, resplendent in its fresh paint and cleaned-and-sealed rock!

Folks around here, when they hear me call this building “the barn”, immediately assume we've got horses or the like.  I'm going to have to start calling it “the shed” or some such thing.  Maybe “kuur”, which is Estonian for shed (and pronounced like “coor” in English).

I know what a kuur is because I once spent the night in one :)  In the late '90s I was on a business trip to Tallinn, Estonia.  I stayed over the weekend, rented a car, and drove to Hiiumaa island.  I had planned to stay at a small hotel in the city of Kaina, but when I got there it was completely full – and after a half hour of the staff helping me check with other hotels, they were all full as well.  Furthermore, the last ferry had already left for the mainland.  I thought I'd be sleeping in my (tiny!) rental car, but a woman on staff, who spoke some English, offered to let me stay in their kuur.  They also let me use their bathroom to take a bath (no shower!), and fed me breakfast in the morning.  I had to endure a death by 10,000 questions from their two children, about 8 and 10, both of whom spoke passable English and knew far more about Hollywood than I did :)

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