My alarm goes off and for a moment I’m disoriented. Nothing looks familiar. Where am I? - Then, of course! The events of the previous day come flooding back. Every small thing becomes a discovery. How does the shower work? Is there hot water? My hair dryer - while it has an international setting - does not have an adapter. Turns out there is a “hotel” hair dryer that they keep at the front desk. Guests can borrow it. While not crucial today, tomorrow I want to look my best for our day long program of film screenings.

The first thing, I snap a photo out the window. There are two paths of foot prints marking the pristine snow running in opposite directions down the hill from the hotel. Later I realize I can take either one to or from the museum. Heading downstairs to the dining room, a pleasant familiar smell of coffee hits my nose. There is a small buffet set out on a table in the corner. It’s help yourself. Stacks of bread, black pumpernickel and a rough textured white sit under a plastic dome next to a toaster, cheeses, hard boiled eggs, sliced salami, muesli, a tureen of hot cereal, pitchers of juice, milk and kefir. In the middle was a tiered platter of quartered tomatoes and small sliced cucumber. It reminds me of the type of breakfasts served in Austria when I lived on Friedrichshof. It was all vaguely familiar. A pot of coffee and hot water for tea sat on a warming plate. Three women were already eating together at one of the tables. They spoke Estonian which I now know is in the Finnish family of languages.

I helped myself to some muesli and coffee and sit by a window, enjoying my quiet surroundings. No cell phones ringing, no morning news blaring from the radio of traffic jams, no front page image from the Boston Globe or NYTimes of the latest carnage in Iraq to assault me. The sky is light grey. Huge black birds, like ravens, populate the surrounding trees. Dilapidated wood frame buildings with deep sloping roofs, edge the hotel property. As the women get up to leave my attention is brought back to the dining room. Two large, dark, slightly menacing paintings are the only wall decorations at either ends of the room. Some young, soviet style artist, trying to look modern. The work is crude but interesting nonetheless. A large white tiled fireplace goes unused as central heating was added when the hotel was renovated a few years after the Soviets finally left the Estonians to figure out how to make a better life for themselves.

After breakfast I have an hour or so to wander around before the film program starts. Today the focus is a workshop on the uses of animation in documentary film. Julia Berg, who I met at the airport, will lead the discussion and introduce the films. SUCKERFISH, a short by a young Canadian filmmaker, Lisa Jackson will be shown. It takes a very innovative approach to talking about Native identity and mother/daughter relationships. We distribute this title and I’ll be interested to see audience reaction in this setting.

Before leaving the hotel I ask the woman at the desk (there appear to be two, a day clerk and a night clerk) the best route to the museum. I generally have a bad sense of direction in the abstract, not good at reading maps and the only way I feel confident in a new place is to walk it. The museum is indeed only ten minutes by foot, near the bottom of the hill. Snow and ice cover the narrow sidewalks but the paved, asphalt streets are bare. A few nondescript late model cars pass. The architecture is a discomforting mishmash. A few renovated buildings stand out, others are falling apart from long years of neglect. Some look ancient, metal roofs, wood siding, once painted, now a uniform grey but of a design I’ve never seen before. I’m later told these structures demonstrate a scandinavian influence. I walk up and down the side streets, drinking in the atmosphere, eating every detail with my eyes. A stranger but not feeling strange.