kinnised, kinnised

Tartu again from the metal synthetic catastrophe that is downtown doubling for a "real city." Milk soup gray sky. Tartu people are closed, kinnised, they say. Not to the isolated degree of the Tallinners, but still -- remote. You know your neighbors, you know your friends, but there is that added degree of hesitance. People are busy in Estonia, busy, busy, busy. So goes Tartu. After living here, Tartu, for two and a half years again, I know some people, even others well to the minor degree, but I am not in their shit to the degree that I am in the shit of the people of Viljandi, where I am well acquainted with dirty laundry (and they no doubt have sampled mine). People in Viljandi wink at you knowingly. They know everything about you. They know the color of your underwear before you know it yourself. In Tartu? That reluctance, those pulled kisses, those restrained kalli kalli-s. Fine and good, fine and well, yet somehow dissatisfying. Trade intimacy for a movie theater, a shopping center, an apteek that stays open all night long, and a bunch of wannabe Italian restaurants and one real one, except that it's run by northerners.