Winter in South Estonia, part 2
It was snowing for a couple of days before taking these shots. Trees and the ground were covered with snow. It all looked pretty with sunlight and I decided to take some photos.
I live on a small street which has a set of apartment buildings in the middle of a park area. The park area mostly contains spruce and pine trees, with some additional birch trees here-and-there.
There is a soccer stadium next to the apartment buildings. It is one of the two soccer stadiums in the town.
The stadium, maintained by the soccer club FC Elva, sees heavy use as a practice field, even during winter. It's located next to a high school.
The snowy streets run behind the stadium. The trees, houses, fences, and even the power wires are covered in snow.
The street leads to a railway crossing. There is sunlight shining through the tree tops. It looks pretty warm, but the temperature is actually around -20C.
The road takes to a small frozen lake after crossing the railway. The lake is about 1km from the crossing in direction away from the town.
The name of the lake literally means "quiet" (Vaikne). It is a recommended swimming place in warmer seasons. The water is clean in South Estonia and good for your health.
Leaving the lake, we find us on one more forest trail. The forest is relatively sparse here due to heavy windstorms in the last Autumn.
These trails take us to see a local species of bears: a wooden crawling bear (the sign says it's actually a wolf fishing with his tail).
The wolf crawls on the shore of this man-made lake. There is a fox, too, sadly missing from the photos, both part of the same folk story. The lake is called Paisjärv.
More such carved wooden figures can be found near the lake, but I did not visit them. Instead, I got back to the town streets, and reached the local railway station:
For the next, I visited Lake Arbi in the center of the town, not very far from the railway station. That's the third lake in this post. It has a small stream flowing out. A bridge goes over the stream.
The stream has ducks sitting on ice. It's around -20C outside, yet they are doing fine and don't look completely frozen.
My fingers were freezing even with thick gloves. I had to sometimes take the gloves off to adjust the camera parameters. This made my hands freeze even more.
The other side of the lake has our Festivals' Ground. I have not visited it too many times, but on the last Spring we had a folk dance festival here.
Adjacent to the arena are some houses and a pretty overview of the frozen lake. There is a trail across the snow to a tiny ramp.
This was not the last lake which I visited on the day. The next one is Lake Verevi, our town's biggest lake. It has a nice beach.
The beach area is quite plain. There were large beach buildings ages ago, but all of them have been removed, leaving a bit of empty area.
I headed back home after leaving the lake. There was a park on my way and I took a couple of photos of it.
The park contains benches and a kids' playground. There are also covered benches. Sometimes people sell stuff here. Drunks occupy the park on warmer days.
I took my last shot on this small walkway. I pass through here every day to get my food from the stores.
