Life Update Cliff Notes

Farm clearing & Estonia landing

Pastries (of course!) with Liam in Tallinn’s Old Town, alongside 13th Century cobblestone streets. The twangy orange berries on my cake are local buckthorn.

It’s been a minute since my last update – actually almost four months when we were still in Portugal -- so consider this a reboot update for more regular connections. The last couple of months quickly added up to a whirlwind of to-do lists and logistics preparing to launch our new life chapter in Estonia and, to be honest, I found myself with zero space left to even process much less write. 

But life rolls forward (well, occasionally backward or sideways as I will be narrating – but so goes the adventure, right?) and I knew once the calendar flipped to June and I landed in Estonia with John arriving soon, things would open up.

To recap, right now the goal of this Substack is to capture and narrate my husband, John Ivanko, and yours truly’s adventure in moving to Estonia from our farm, Inn Serendipity, where we’ve been deeply rooted for 28 years in Wisconsin. 

For a quick overview of the (multiple!) reasons for this, see this first post.  I so appreciate all of you who have said “please send me updates – share the journey – I want to be an armchair traveler with you.”  I feel so loved and supported and truly have y’all in my suitcase (the carry-on super special bag. Not in the container of shipped belongings somewhere right now on a boat between Wisconsin and Estonia!).  We’ll see where this Substack project evolves to and please give me feedback, input and ideas.  This is a new format and forum for me, especially to be sharing so personally online.  Again, gratitude for your encouragement and support.

For right now, a quick Cliff Note update is in order, in timeline order of the last six months:

Wrapped up an epic Madeira trip

Hiking the levadas on Madeira, the perfect place to think about all to come soon.

Before we went to Madeira, if you asked me, “what was your favorite place I’ve traveled to,” I would truthfully have given you that expected yet honest, “I can’t decide – every place is beautiful in its own way,” perfunctory typical answer.” 

Until Madeira.

We are deeply in love with that Portuguese island off the west African coast where we went seeking sun, hiking, wine and pastries this past winter. 

The word that keeps coming to mind when John and I process Madeira is “epic.”

Talk about all the key ingredients for a winter destination:  while the weather was overall sunny and in the 60’s (that’s in the mid teens Celsius – yet another new learning curve for me — metric!), the key was that you could readily go from literally hiking above the clouds to a sunny, exotic black sand in under hour drive (granted with John navigating the steep (40+%) and narrow roads but so rolls the adventure). 

Add in the incredible topography and hiking on the levadas and the fact that the island was small enough (286 square miles or – here comes the metric again – 741 square kilometers) that you felt like you could really explore everything exceeded our expectations, including providing some needed chill travel time before the move.

We can back to Wisconsin mid March and jumped into a . . .

2.5 month master class in letting go

Our shipping container about to depart for Estonia — and always practical John throwing in some more lightweight crates.

Restored through that Maderia experience and fueled on sunshine, we came back to Wisconsin mid-March as ready as we’d ever be to immediately jump into the Estonia move logistics.

The good and motivating news is throughout the Madeira trip, we were moving forward with purchasing a place in Estonia that we saw on our scouting trip last December.  I will share much more on that soon, but for now safe to say it was an inspiring end goal behind in all the work coming up. 

We immediately put the farm, Inn Serendipity, on the market on April 1.  As I post this on June 14, the place has not yet sold which adds up to an unresolved piece of this new life chapter pie. The easiest way to describe thing now in our experience and selling situation is “dry.” High interest rates, market uncertainty and let’s also throw in global and climate chaos add up to people not moving, at least not quickly. 

Additionally, the people who have come to see the farm to date overall just haven’t been what I’d consider “on target.” Now I realize when you sell a property you can’t just lead by your heart and emotions, but the fact is that the folks coming overall didn’t understand full and thereby appreciate (or even care) about things like the solar and sustainability and self-reliance initiatives we’ve added in over the years keeps me repeating the “all will happen in good time” attemptive patience mantra.

While yes, the farm sale will resolve eventually, it’s a frustrating and looming piece of our next chapter that sits unresolved. In the meantime; however, there has been PLENTY to do clearing out EVERYTHING, both John and my collections over the years (being the sustainability and frugal-minded family that said, “oh sure” whenever anyone said, “can you use a fill in the blank” added up), alongside basically my parents’ entire household of immigrant family saves everything and stuff from John’s parents, but we keep reminding ourselves this clearing needed to be done no matter what.

Friendly public service announcement for everyone: you do not want to leave this for your kids to do.  Do it now. For me, something about major downsizing at age 57 felt in the end liberating. While I slogged in the moment of everything from digitizing 50+ scrapbooks to identifying the family heirlooms I truly loved, there’s something about doing it at an age when you’re still young enough to have a (hopefully!) full life chapter to come felt fresh and liberating.

I will share more on the whole downsizing process – both the practicalities and learnings we’ve had along with my simultaneous emotional processing (still working on that one) – but we pared down to things that couldn’t be replaced and that stuff is now in a shipping container somewhere between Wisconsin and Estonia. John is taking on the final purge and mega logistic wrap up before he leaves for Estonia mid-June.  As for me I just . . .

Landed in Estonia

Estonia is in Northern Europe, bordering the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland.

I’m now here in Estonia!  With my dual citizenship via my Estonian passport, I can come and stay as I choose without the need for a Visa or meeting the 90-day maximum Schengen limit (i.e., how long Americans can travel in an European Union EU country before they need to go 180 days somewhere else).  That’s John’s situation where he’s coming a few weeks later once he meets that 180 day reset mark, at which point we’ll be going through his visa and eventually spousal permit process in Estonia so he can stay as long as he wants (or puts up with me ha ha ).

I’ve been based in Estonia’s capital (and biggest) city of Tallinn before we head to the “final agreement” signing for our new place south of Pärnu, about two hours southwest. That said, one must remember the beautiful smallness of Estonia: It is about 1/3 the size of Wisconsin and two hours basically takes you to the other side of the country. Liam is based in Tallinn now so it’s been lovely to officially enter the “young adult” relationship phase of life and grateful to him for all of his support and help with this new adventure, especially with his Estonian language skills.

As if on symbolic cue just for me shortly after I arrived, Estonia celebrated their annual Flag Day on June 4, this year marking the 140th anniversary of the Estonian flag. The official flag of Estonia is raised every morning at the Pikk Hermann Tower on Toompea Hill right on the edge of Old Town in Tallinn. That morning I went on official flag raising which had some special pomp and circumstance.

This flag in this symbolic location was taken down by the Soviet Union in 1940 when Estonia was still independent, so the flying of it today and it’s colors represent so much more, especially to me moving forward:

Blue: the blue sky and sea and lakes of Estonia, representing loyalty and faith.

Black: the traditional black jacket of the Estonian peasant during past occupied times, symbolizing the tragic past of the nation.

White: the color of birch bark and snow and the light-filled summer nights illuminated by the midnight sun.

Coming soon: Journey to Tamme

Up past my bedtime: 10:45 pm in Tallinn on May 29

Speaking of midnight sun, the amount of daylight here right now as we head into the summer solstice is truly magic. The sun right rises at around 4 am and sets at 10:30 pm, which adds up to about 19 hours of magical, light-filled energy.

Boring me who is normally in bed early is finding herself fully awake way past her bedtime, an added cherry to my already overflowing sundae of life right now. Carpe diem indeed!

The next big step is the final legal purchasing our new place on the Baltic Sea in Jaagupi, about 20 kilometers (go metric!) south of the seaside town of Pärnu, where my father grew up. My next update to you will be officially from there.

While I most definitely still wake up confused as to where I am followed by “what the hell did we just do,” that feeling is quickly overpowered with a knowing in my heart this is all the right time and place. Gratitude to you for sharing in the journey.

Check out more photos (and ordering options) from John D. Ivanko on Alamy