Six Words of Russian

As this was now my fourth time camping, I figured I was an old hand. A forest commuter. A modern-day mountaineer. A middle-aged, overweight, trailblazing adventurer …or at least well on the way to becoming one. I knew exactly what I needed for my trip to Aegna.

My lumpy crochet bag held a tent, an air mattress, a battery-operated pump, a sleeping bag, a small pillow, a kilo of charcoal, and a large metal tea kettle.

My hot-pink backpack, picked up half price at Sports Direct, held a change of clothes, bathing suit, large towel, a flat water bucket, a lantern, a small portable video camera, 600g sliced pork, two types of cheese, 200 grams of flour, salt and yeast so that I could make bread, ground coffee, cream, the espresso hand pump that my daughter gave me, a liter of Coke Zero, half a head of lettuce, two bananas and an apple.

I had everything I needed for an overnight stay. I also couldn’t move.

It’s five minutes until I-have-to-leave-or-else-I’ll-miss-my-ferry and there’s just no way I can manage these bags to the coast, even if I can see it from my balcony.

I remove the half head of lettuce and, reluctantly, one of the two types of cheese before calling a taxi to take me to Linnahall, the concrete monstrosity built in a rush for the 1980 Olympics where the twice-a-day boat to the island of Aegna is probably already starting its engine for the morning trip. I need to get to meet the boat at Linnahall, not at the 1980 Olympics. It’s not that kind of trip.

The taxi driver is kind enough to carry my overladen bags to his car but then informs me that I don’t know where I am going. “You want the ferry terminal, don’t you?” The ferry terminal serves the large ships which transport 2,000 passengers spread over eleven decks across the Baltic to Helsinki about a dozen times a day. I’m only travelling 14 kilometres on a 50-year-old Russian motor boat which docks at the single tie-up point at the side of Linnahall. There’s a sign that says Patarei Sadam (Battery Harbor) screwed into the back of a bright orange dumpster, but I’ve never met anyone who knows it as such.

I give the know-it-all driver directions the rest of the way, much to his annoyance: he knew how to get there, he just didn’t think that’s where I wanted to go. I know this because he tells me, three times. Being from California, I never stop smiling but make my displeasure known by leaving a five-star review but not ticking the box that says “Driver was in a good mood.”

The water is calm and the sky is blue and as Tallinn retreats into the distance, I realise that I have not brought sunscreen or bug spray. There’s 35 of us on the boat but most of the space is taken up with ten-cent translucent plastic bags filled with groceries. A young nervous-looking couple are carrying four bags each, including six litres of water. The elderly couple sitting next to me have a wine box and two pineapples. An rough-shaven man with long grey hair, his black-t-shirt emblazoned with Hellraiser in Gothic script, is pulling beers out of a cooler for himself and his friend before we even leave the dock.

I don’t believe these people can make it through all the food and drink they have brought. There should be a drop off point when the day-trippers leave, so the rest of us can have their leftovers. Really, I just want some beer. I consider making friends with the metalheads. “You gonna finish that?”

In the distance, the island is shrouded in dark clouds. It rose out of the savage sea some 5,000 years ago and continues to rise 2.5 mm every year, while the ice-age boulders it pulled out of the sea slowly sink. I stare out at the misty horizon and watch it grow.

We arrive to overcast skies and a bitter wind. I should have brought more warm clothes. A woman carrying a tiny gold lamé handbag and a small fuzzy dog traipses over the metal ramp. She sets the dog down at the dock and it gleefully bounces forwards, ready for a seven-hour walk, as that’s when the ferry will return. A stern-faced ten-year-old with a mountain bike puts his helmet on and gets on his bike; his mother lugs three shopping bags off the boat with an annoyed look at her kid disappearing down the dirt path. I manage to maneuver my two bags off the boat and onto the concrete dock. The rickety coffee stand is open with faded posters offering cappuccino and chocolate covered ice cream bars. A collection of ivory painted chairs looking like they’ve escaped from an upmarket garden party are being encroached upon by wrinkled rugosa roses, an invasive species spreading along Aegna’s beaches. I could just stay here and drag my bags onto the next boat back to the mainland.

Instead, I set up a temporary camp next to the search and rescue station and rearrange my bags so that I can make multiple trips to the campsite on the north side of the island. A friendly looking islander with a tractor waves the first time he sees me but his face creases with concern as he passes me for the third time. It’s twenty minutes at a brisk walk but by the time I’ve picked up the last of my things, I’m taking forty minutes a leg. I should have packed less. I should have packed beer. I should have packed a tractor.

It’s all worth it once I have my things collected on a picnic bench and my tent set up among the twisted pines, the low branches creating long shadows as I sit inside and set up my bedding. A woodpecker taps a tree at the far side of my grove, competing with the sound of the Baltic sea just out of view. It’s already late afternoon. I decide that I brought exactly the right amount of things. I hide my valuables in the tent and plan a pilgrimage to the coffee stand to reward myself with a cold drink. Maybe even a beer.

As I trudge back to the south side of the island, something rustles and then a flurry of feathers explodes out of the bushes. A belligerent snipe stares at me from the middle of the path. “Hello,” I say in surprise. We look at each other in embarrassment and then, with a cock of his head, he leaps into the air and flies away.

Back at the dock, I am horrified to discover that the rickety stand is shuttered and dark, with a handwritten sign that says simply “We are closed today.” Devastated, I collapse into one of the ivory chairs and glare balefully at the silhouette of Tallinn across the bay. The sun has come out although the angry waves pounding on the rough concrete seems a precursor of bad weather to come.

The heavy-metal duo from the ferry arrive and, like me, stare in horror at the shuttered stand. The one with Hellraiser across his chest speaks to me in Russian. “I don’t speak Russian,” I say with an apologetic smile. “I just came here for a drink and found it closed.”

“Not Russian?” he says in English; in case I might have just forgotten. I shake my head, no. I point to the Cyrillic script on the sign on the shutter, presuming it says the same, that the coffee stall is inexplicably closed.

“Eesti?” That single word, Estonia, is enough to tell me that he doesn’t speak Estonian, even if I did, which I don’t, not enough to have the conversation he is trying to have. His friend is staring at the We’re Closed Today sign as if he might change the status of the stand through sheer force of will.

“Ei.” No.

“Vene keelt?” Hellraiser asks me in Estonian if I speak Russian, as if that will somehow unlock the impasse.

“Ei,” I say again. “Inglise keelt ja Saksa keelt.” English and German: my final offer.

He frowns. Meanwhile, his friend has given up trying to discover some hidden meaning in the sign and erupts in angry Russian. Hellraiser seems resigned to their fate. His friend points at me and says something which includes the English word “drink” and a lot more. I try to pretend that I’m not listening. They come to an abrupt agreement and leave without another word.

The warm sun and crashing waves are soothing and I’m in no rush to traverse this damned island again. My Russian friends reappear and Hellraiser tries to tell me something, stumbling between English and Estonian and Russian in his eagerness. He points to the search and rescue building and a ranger comes out, holding a collection of keys.

“He’s going to open it for us?”

“Beer!” Hellraiser grins proudly. “Beer only. Cash only and beer only.” He pauses and looks me up and down. “Maybe Long Drink, ” he says.

Long Drink is a sticky Finnish adult beverage made of syrupy fizzy soda and cheap gin. The soda claims to be grapefruit-flavored, although it’s clearly never been near a grapefruit, and worse, waters down the gin to something barely discernible. It’s sweet and sickly and I don’t know why he thinks I’d drink it but I am deeply offended. “Beer,” I say.

“Beer!” He shouts, bursting with excitement. As the ranger unlocks the door, Hellraiser pushes me to go first, searching for something to say in English, anything that I might understand. Finally he blurts out. “Come on baby, light my fire!”

Unable to think of a response, I follow the ranger into the darkened hut, lit only by the flickering promotional light on the fridge. He blocks my view of the fridge and points to the shelf. Warm beer? But I’ve gone too far to back out now. “Heineken,” I say, naming the first beer I can recognise in the darkness.

He opens the fridge. “How much?” I’m so relieved, I ask for two: one for now and one for the road. I pull out a five euro note. It’s about a euro a beer from a store, maybe two in a bar, and I am not going to judge the ranger for charging bar prices.

“Four,” he says. “Each.”

I grumpily get out a twenty. “Do you have change?”

He pauses for a moment, as if wondering if he’s under charged me, and then takes pity and starts rummaging for change.

I walk out of the hut, blinking against the sunlight as if I’ve done some sort of illicit drug deal. My new friend pats me on the shoulder. I wrack my brain for appropriate Doors lyrics to quote back at him. People are strange, perhaps. Or the Alabama song: Show me the way to the next whiskey bar. But before I can come up with the right verse, he mutters “Heineken?” under his breath. I’m not sure he wants to be my friend any more.

I try to make amends by saying thank you in Russian. “Spasibo.”

“Russian,” he shouts in Russian, and something else that is probably “I knew it! I knew you spoke Russian!”

“Nyet,” I say. I hold out my fingers to count the words I know: “Spasibo. Nyet. Da.”

He taps my other two fingers, the closed ones. “Vodka,” he says. “Pelmeni.”

“Babushka,” I say, now holding up six fingers.

But it is his turn to enter the shack and my blossoming Russian vocabulary isn’t interesting enough to distract him from his chance. I wave goodbye and sip my overpriced cold beer. I’ve been on the island for half a day and already I’m buying black market goods. From now on, I’ll stay on the north side of the island and stay out of trouble.

Part Three: