Welcome (back!) home to Estonia

Settling in at our new place: Tamme

Boardwalk path to the Baltic Sea at our new place: Tamme

Writing to you with two new big updates: 

1)    John made it safe and sound on his journey across the pond from Wisconsin to Estonia (well, minus a suitcase but that’s a small drop in pool of life change) and . . .

2)    We are officially at our new place here on the western coast of the Baltic Sea: Tamme!

Most importantly:  

My heart overflows with the knowing I’m in the right place. ❤️

That said, the reality of permanence is still settling in as part of me still feels like I’m a on a summer holiday and I just rented a cool AirBnB. That AirBnB aura is amplified by the fact that we bought this place furnished and the former owners left most everything we would immediately need from shampoo in the shower to a tea kettle in the kitchen, so settling in came easy, especially until we receive our shipment of personal stuff from the states in a few weeks.

How we got here

When we made the decision a little over a year ago to take the leap and move to Estonia, our first (and only!) scouting trip happened last December, 2023,  when we came to Estonia to both celebrate the holidays with Liam in Tallinn and check out some properties before we headed for warmer climates on Madeira. 

In Estonia, all real estate listings are congregated sites so we could do easy research. Interesting and different than the States: anyone can list on this site, whether you are selling by owner or have a real estate agent representing you. With our farm sale (still on the market as I write), the only way we could get listed on the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) is through a real estate agent.

We pulled together a list of eight properties that met our criteria (read on for that) and did on-site visits and tours the week prior to Christmas – i.e., right around the Winter Solstice. Yes indeed, we looked at future homes during the darkest and arguably bleakest time of year in the northern hemisphere. Perhaps an unusual strategy for a life-changing real estate purchase:  see it at its gloomy worst. But we figured if we saw a place in December that we sparked to, it would only be more magical in summer. Spoiler alert: the crazy strategy worked.

Fun fact: I’ve never been to Estonia before that trip last December, 2023.

Yes, you are calculating that right: I made the decision to move nearly five thousand miles without ever having been to the country. John traveled to Estonia during his trip around the world back in 1992, right after the Baltics regained independence, and loved it.

But for me, this is a true leap of faith to embrace both something new yet coupled with a strong intuition in my soul that I belong to this land, amplified by my Ancestry DNA test confirming my 100% Baltic DNA. I realize there is a much bigger and deeper personal story and journey for me here that I am just beginning to process and will gladly share as it grows. For now, take it as a reminder that embarking on life change doesn’t always have to meet all the rational check-box criteria. The heart can play an important role.

Criteria: Water & move-in ready

A 1960s painting by my dad in of his Estonian homeland memories

John and I had two key criteria for our new place in Estonia: 

1)     Location: On the Baltic Sea

For us, there’s just something about being on the water, from looking out over her vastness to all the smells and sounds. But up until now, coastal living has always been something we just experienced while traveling. For this next (and we realize potentially last – we see this as our forever home) life chapter, we said let’s put all the key cards on the table and prioritize being somewhere where we could put our toes in the sand and hear the waves. 

Initially we were thinking an island property in Estonia. We’ve always loved that island vibe of being totally away (cue the Jimmy Buffet soundtrack) and gravitated to island travel whenever we could, from Mackinac Island in Michigan to more recently, Madeira. For a small country the size of a third of Wisconsin, Estonia has a lot of islands: 2,355 with 22 permanently inhabited.  Fun fact: That island count keeps growing thanks to improved surveying technology. As recent in 2015, over 800 more islands were confirmed and added to the total count.

But we kept options open during that December scouting trip and saw both some places on the islands of Saaremaa and Muhu along with up and down the Estonian coast.

2)     Not a fixer-upper

Let me caveat: The initial romance of old properties and restoring them to renewed glory forever captures my heart. And that is what we’ve been doing for nearly three decades on our farm in Wisconsin. 

While we jumped into all of that restoration work whole-heartedly at Inn Serendipity, especially that first decade when we were young enthusiastic newlyweds in our 30s, we realized life is at a different stage right now. For us, the idea of the fixer-upper alongside the major barrier of language and navigating all of that in a new country and unknown cost sent warning signals. While every home has its fair share of maintenance and we knew we’d have projects regardless, we wanted something that we could still easy move into and manage (and enjoy!) from the get-go.

Most of the places on our December tour were truly beautiful coastal settings, but needing major work and yet still at fairly high prices for Estonia. Nearly all of these types of places were owned by elderly Finns. During the late 1990s when Estonia just regained independence and prices were low, smart Finns (remember only a short two-hour ferry away) bought summer properties here.

Flash forward thirty years and we saw several places with the same background story: The Finns who bought it were now in their 80s, one spouse passed, their kids didn’t want the place and they put it on the market. Some places didn’t even have someone living there at all for a few years.

While these places clearly had been loved and used by these families during the summer years for decades, they were never intended for year-round living and simply needed a lot of work to get them fully livable. For example, as saunas are a big part of Nordic culture, these places often had a separate sauna house and the bathroom was in there versus the main house. While I have been rightly called a crunchy, hippie granolahead over the years, I still need to pee in my own house.

But one place we saw did indeed both meet the criteria of by the sea and newer construction. Not only newer construction, but with extremely sustainability-minded and intentional design, from strawbale walls to geothermal heating.

Welcome to our new home: Tamme

Our new home in Estonia — Tamme — means oak tree

With much more details and stories to come, especially on that eco-design front that we are so excited about and learning much more details on right now, here are the key logistic details of the place we ended up purchasing and currently settling in:

Name:  Tamme

Tamme (prounounced “Taa-m-eh” not “Tammy.”  “Taa” rhymes with “baa”) means “oak tree” in Estonian, and there are several of these older trees on the property along with baby saplings we’ve been transplanting.

Rural properties typically come with a name – and no need for a street number.  So, our official address is:

Tamme (name of property)

Jaagupi (our town:  population 92)

Häädemeeste (our parish: 790)

Pärnumaa (our county: 15 counties, 13 on the mainland and 2 on islands)

Estonia

The property is 2.5 hectares (a little over 6 acres) located right on the Baltic Sea, technically the Gulf of Riga. The house is fairly set back from the coastline, which added a lot of comfort to our decision knowing the impact of climate change and coastlines and flooding, we should be safe there.

Tamme is about 40 kilometers (a little over 20 miles) south of Pärnu, the fourth largest city in Estonia (remember “larger” here is still a manageable 39,000) that is wonderfully known as “Estonia’s Summer Capital,” thanks to a large (2 kilometers or 1.2 miles) sandy beach and fun European summer vibe with lots of cafes and festivals.

My dad grew up in Pärnu, where the family ran a bakery in the 1930s. They left in 1944, when my dad was 20 years old, right before the final Soviet invasion. Tamme is also quite close – 20 kilometers or 12 miles  – from the Latvian border so we’re near my mom’s roots as well.  

I’m sure they are both smiling, or more likely laughing and rather confused by all of this. While I grew up in a very cultural rooted immigrant Baltic household, this idea of moving back to the homeland after the Baltics regained independence in 1991 never came up in conversations. Not in the slightest. With Liam learning the Estonian language during Covid and finding his calling here during his travels here and then moving permanently Estonia in 2023 after both my parents passed, this planted the starter seeds for our move a year later.  More of our initial thought process in my first post.

Embracing serendipity

The Baltic Sea coastline at Tamme

So, while all of this makes deep sense in my heart, it reminds me of the need to forever be open to opportunities life throws our way. Especially if serendipity brings you something that was never on the radar. I fully believe the universe has her reasons.

And sometimes it is only after you leap that things start making sense, literally coming full circle as I only recently realized, way after we purchased the property. 

Our place, Tamme, is on the end of a longer driveway that connects to the main road, which is a couple kilometers off the "highway" that connects Pärnu and Tallinn. I use quotes because the main highway is just a two-lane road (that said, Estonian roads are in really good shape) so nothing crazy but apparently that highway was put in during the Soviet Olympics in 1980, which replaced my road - the “Old Riga Road” - so basically there is no traffic on my road except for locals, tourists and a lot of bicyclists.

Before the highway was the main road to Riga, this “Old Riga Road” we are now living on was the primary route to Riga. My dad and family first went to Riga when they left during the Great Escape in fall of 1944 (80 years ago) and did a combination of walking and catching rides when they could and you see where this is going . . . they literally escaped and left down the road we now live on (we're just about 12 miles from the Latvian border -- about 20 miles from Pärnu where they would have started). 

That is a thunderclap of a personal revelation and a lot there for me to process and think about with much more history for me to study. But bottom line, there's a true circle of life thing going on here. Taking that first step can ignite serendipity in ways we can never plan. I hope sharing our story sparks potential seeds of change for you.

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