Tere!
In Estonia, once a year, there is an event called “summer days” held by a company. If a company is too startup and has little money like sometimes they struggle with even paying for their employees’ salaries, “summer days” may not happen, but in many companies in Estonia it seems they have. Based on my own experience and bias, the majority of the companies in Estonia hold summer-day events with leisure activities and stays, and yet some companies include work…
In Timbeter, which was my first company to work in Estonia, during 2 and half a year, I had this summer-day event only once, and it included work. I had to give a presentation with a few of my colleagues, and after that, we went to an adventure park, had dinner and had BBQ after dinner. Next morning, we checked out after the breakfast. This company had only 10 employees at that time, but they checked only CEO and CTO’s schedules in summer, and the summer-day event date overlapped with my vacation, so I got compensative vacation days later.
In the company which I worked for in 2022, we went to Võhandu river and Partisi lake as our summer-day event.
Table of Contents
1. Where on earth are Võhandu river and Partsi lake!?
a. Võhandu river
b. Partsi lake
2. Activities we did
3. Accommodation
★Summary
1. Where on earth are Võhandu river and Partsi lake!?
Estonia has been popular among Japanese people since I came here, and there are lots of famous places for them compared to the time before 2017, but still they or even you may think:
Where the hell Võhandu river and Partsi lake. 😂
Both Võhandu river and Partsi lake are located in a county called Põlva which is sotuhern than Tartu. I wasn’t involved in planning this summer-day event (and it was not my job), so I still don’t know why Võhandu river and Partsi lake were chosen.
a. Võhandu river
We gathered in the office in Tallinn, and went to Võhandu river and Partsi lake by van chartered, spending three hours.
If you want to go there by yourself, it would be difficult to go there unless you charter a van by yourself or rent a car or drive your own car, I thought.
b. Partsi lake
Partsi lake has an island in the lake, and an accommodation is just beside the lake. The island in the lake was full of trees and grasses, so I didn’t land there or do anything. On the summer-day event, we actually arrived at Partsi lake first, and then headed to Võhandu river as we needed to drop our luggage.
2. Activities we did
As for the activities, the main activity was rafting in the Võhandu river. It was my first time rafting, and I had an impression of “we just go down the river by boat”, which was excessive optimism.
We were splitted into two groups, and I joined the second one. However, while we were going forward, we accidentally overtook the first group on the way to the goal, and since then we had competitively gone forward to progress as fast as possible. Besides, rafting required lots of physical power. Therefore, it was so hard to row a boat.
Furthermore, it got me pretty wet. I believe it wouldn’t be too uncomfortable if you wear swimwear under the shorts and the tshirt. I personally didn’t bring any digital devices by the way. (There was a pocket in front of the rafting jacket though.)
It took us two hours to reach the goal by rafting itself. When arriving at the goal, and getting off the boat, my body was so stiff. The following day, of course I got muscular pain. 😉
Also, there was no femininity seen from my side. (I enjoyed myself though.)
Later we heard that one of my previous colleagues who brought her phone for rafting checked the map while rafting, and the Võhandu river was actually connected to Latvia.
It might have been fun if we just went to Latvia with that small boat.
😂
We also experienced sup boarding after coming back to Partsi lake where our accommodation was from Võhandu river. It was actually quite a relaxing activity. If you are afraid of falling down into water, you will fail. ✌️
By the way, it was my first time swimming in the lake (though I have done it in the sea and rivers), and I was so surprised that water in Partsi lake was so black. One of the other previous colleagues and I googled later, and we found that it was not because of something chemical but natural. I remember the flashing water in the toilet was coloured too…
The accommodation beside Partsi lake had a tiny sauna and jacuzzi (?)/ a small warm pool (?) as well.
We laughed ridiculously a lot and enjoyed ourselves a lot, so I guess it could be an option for your private vacation plan in summer. It seems glamping is also possible. Since I personally don’t like camping, and want a proper bed to sleep in, I didn’t do it. I can sleep while camping, but it’s just continuously uncomfortable the whole night.
3. Accommodation
The accommodation beside Partsi lake seemed to have both a small house and a big house. It seemed we were supposed to occupy the big house with a larger group, and yet suddenly there were lots of cancellations due to sickness, etc, so we all stayed in the rooms on the second floor only. (Or maybe originally only the second floor, but there were still lots of empty beds.)
Each room has four or five beds, and that bed was quite small even for me who was 162 cm tall in order to move during the sleep. (In addition, because of rafting my arms were too tired, so it was difficult to fall asleep even though I was physically tired.)
In summer there are lots of insects (particularly flies and mosquitoes) in Estonia, so we closed our room window during the night, but luckily it was not hot as it was cold summer in July, 2022.
The accommodation’s bathrooms were shared (but of course separated for men and women!), and there are a few more toilets outside. For some reason, there were two showers in one shower room for women… There were also bottles of shampoo, conditioner as well as showergell.
As for meals at the accommodation, we had lunch on the day we arrived there, dinner, and breakfast the following morning. Also, they provide us with lots of snacks.
It appeared to be fine to bring alcoholic drinks, but I’m not so sure.
Later we found that if we stay there with a group of more than 10 people, it costs only around 30 EUR for each person. The website says only “breakfast included”, so I have no idea on lunch or dinner. Anyways, it was way cheaper than I thought…
★Summary
The summer-day event I experienced in this company was only this time, but everything was much better than the one I had when I worked for Timbeter. The best point was there was no talk about customers or what we do daily, and no presentation for work. But I think this depends on the company you work for. I loved the point that work is work, leisure time is leisure time in this company. Whilst we had company events including this summer-day event, there was nothing about what to improve at work, how to approach in business, etc as the purpose was to have fun, not meetings outside of the office, or work-related training. The balance is important indeed.
I have no idea if any other European countries have this sort of summer-day event.
However, anyways I believe anyone can do what we experienced in our summer-day event. There were few people in those areas, so if you are fed up with cities and famous/popular places in Estonia, perhaps you should go there.
Aitäh! 🙂
zooks.ee 