„And where is home for you?“ asks another customer in the restaurant. I really need to find a clever, interesting, witty answer to that...
„Tell you what, I'll by you a drink if you get it right in three guesses! (pose and smile)“ seemed to work pretty well on all three of the handsome guy customers I tried the approach on in the bar. „I'm from Estonia, they say Estonia has the most beautiful women in the world, that's why I left!“ didn't seem to work that well though, so I kinda felt a need to apologise for my conceitedness straight after that :P

My usual answer still turns out boring, something like „I'm from Estonia“ - (awkward silence) - „oh!“ or alternatively, if I'm lucky enough -„Oh, we've been to Estonia in 2003“. Luckily I've found that most of our visitors have actually heard of or even visited my country, so the small talk can move on to discussing the Estonian language or the old town of Tallinn or the differences in weather conditions and such.
Still, being constantly recognised as a foreigner bugs me a bit, especially as I have an image that most British people don't exactly have the healthiest opinion about all the Eastern-Europeans immigrating and taking over their jobs :P It worked out a bit better when I was still blonde (hair colour) so people would suggest I was from Sweden, Finland, Denmark or on some occasions from the Netherlands, sometimes as close as the Baltic region as a whole; never Poland, Russia, Czech Republic etc that I get now that I've gone back to my natural (kinda) hair colour :P
I suppose people just need something to smalltalk about, and my recognisably Eastern-European accent must be the most evident thing there! I don't really think that most of the people here hold a grudge against me, at least not for being Estonian...:P Oh well...

I've no idea where that unimportant whine about nationalities came from ; I must say that I am immeasurably proud to be Estonian (why else would I go on about being one :P) and also extremely glad to live and work in Scotland!

glad to get that off my mind though...

what's the speed limit in Ardfern?

The decision to move to Scotland, all alone, to do a job I'd never had anything to do with before was really quite an easy one to take. It just took a bit of self talk convincing myself that my little comfort zone in Birmingham amongst all those lovely English ladies with sugarcraft classes and afternoon tea breaks, amongst my Estonian companions I used to go out with, amongs my growing pile of useless belongings that I had bought/collected during my stay in England doesn't really give too many all time high experiences to remember when I'm looking back at life in my golden days...

So as it happened, I set my profile up on a webpage which a friend had reccomended me a day earlier, and on the next day I received a confusing phone call claiming that I „fit the bill“ and could I possibly start on the 31-st of July. Seriously, after all the broken English I presented during that phone call (which I think came mainly from the fact that I hadn't really made too many phone calls in English before), I was only left wondering how could the person on the other side still possibly think about formalising his job offer by sending me a confirmation email with the job details. But he did. I put great effort into having an immaculate official e-mail conversation with the owner to counterbalance the two other broken English conversations I had with him... People say I was hired only because I'm an attractive female but I like to think that I quite quickly justified my being here and became quite a valued, trusted worker (except the few occasions I have showed up to work still feeling drunk, side-effects of working/living in a pub I guess..)






Ardfern must be the most interesting village of them all. It struck me as a place where everyone has great insights into almost anything. People here seem just lovely and fun and fearless and positively crazy.
Of course there might be the psychological aspect derived from the fact that English is not my first language (therefore anyone who can form full, sophisticated-sounding sentences in English would sound extremely intelligent!), and that I am doing my first bar job ever and that I have never really lived in any west-Scottish village before...



People here love their pubs and their drink. Again, of course, as I'm working in the pub, my sample group consists mainly of people who regularly come into the pub and therefore drink..
During the first month I spent living in Ardfern, I surely doubled the amount of alcohol I had drunk throughout all my previous life. Yes, I was (and am again, sort of) a quite moderate drinker, so the drinking culture here struck me as nothing else but... wild :P