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Why Estonians invite strangers into their back gardens each summer
- markvdb 2mo agoSimilar in neighbouring Latvia. Friends who recovered their grandparents' nationalised farm organised one there. They got to meet neighbours who lived there during the occupation. Pictures surfaced of the transformation into five tiny apartments in the late 1940s. Can't imagine the food safety institutions even considering pop-up home cafes in my native Belgium.
- AyyEye 2mo ago> Can't imagine the food safety institutions even considering pop-up home cafes in my native Belgium. Many states in the US have "cottage food" laws that allow low-risk foods (think baked goods, jams, jellies, candies, nuts, etc) to be labeled "this is an unregulated unlicensed cottage food product" and sold without a license. Belgium may have something similar.
- EGreg 2mo agoOrthodox Jews do it every Sukkot :)
- Nail2680 2mo agoI attended a Sukkot, druing which the host jokingly called the tent a "Jew Fort" and they had some lovely food and burned some herbs and overall had a great time. I really like the religious festivals that integrate more people. Like Holi, where I got to throw a lot of colored sand or something at people and eat good food. I feel like events like that really help integrate communities. Not Estonian, but a Swedish fellow I knew always had a summer event with lawn darts and other odd games and food each summer
- martheen 2mo agoSikh's similarly serve communal meal, langar, which invite everyone to come and eat together. As a non-Sikh, being invited to such events is such an educational experience because they're a very small minority in my country so pretty much everything I see was new to me.
- y-curious 2mo agoOh sweet, they welcome non-Jewish strangers too? I didn’t know that, I assumed it was just for their own community
- voicedYoda 2mo agoWe invite everyone, Jewish or not. We've hosted so many people, strangers and friends alike. It makes more sense to Jews, but it's also a great conversation to have with others.
- Tomte 2mo agoSwabia has something similar for wineries: Besenwirtschaft is a temporary small restaurant with very lax regulations. The main obligations are: at most 4 months open, at most 40 chairs, only cold food (often bread with lard), the wine does not have to be produced by the owner themselves, but the grapes have to be. They are „advertised“ by hanging a broom outside (Besen is broom). You tend to go visit a few over an afternoon, because they concentrate on certain wine-making towns.
- croisillon 2mo agoAustria has “Heuriger” on a similar rule
- jcattle 2mo agoOr Buschenschank in Styria (where you traditionally don't get warm food, only "Brettljause")
- jahnu 2mo agoBuschenschank In Vienna too. Nussberg is my favourite place to be. Heuriger in Vienna are permanent buildings and can serve warm food and drinks other than wine and may open all year round.
- Markoff 2mo agoTLDR to earn (tax free?) money, it has nothing to do with hospitality
- tjomk 2mo agoLet's go the US way and arrest children for doing lemonade stands. How dare they not get a license and pay their taxes to Uncle Sam! /s
- baal80spam 2mo ago> arrest children for doing lemonade stands Get your facts straight. This is the EU-way. It literally happened in Poland - a child got fined for a lemonade stand.
- helsinkiandrew 2mo ago[dead]
- Markoff 2mo agoOr maybe let's just not pretend people are inviting strangers into their gardens because they wanna meet them as that clickbait title pretend and not just to earn money.
- xyzelement 2mo agoLow IQ take. There are probably millions of child lemonade stands in the US. I think you must be referring to a story where one family was asked to take down theirs for some reason. The reason that story was written and is memorable is because it's so whacky and unusual. I expect my kids to run lemonade stands with no complications:)
- john_strinlai 2mo agothis comment would be so much better if you didn't start with "Low IQ take.".
- someoneeestis 2mo agoI live in Estonia for a very long time now, over a decade. I love the kodukohvikud (Home Cafes) but the framing of "inviting strangers" is a little odd. It's not free. While there is a lot of theoretical opportunity for bonding, it's still just a temporary commercial enterprise. For anyone who has lived here, it's a known fact that Estonians won't exactly engage with strangers in a warm way, if at all. Smiling at strangers is considered poor social form here and it doesn't matter if you're a foreigner or native. It does increase social cohesion amongst neighbors at least for a week or two. Kodukohvikud are a unique experience but it's not really "inviting strangers in my backyard" in the way a free community oriented and socially engaging event would be. Naturally, the article will only show the very few who have a story to tell while ignoring the fact that 90% of them don't have one to tell. You get your keefir, you get your viineripirukas, pay for it, eat isolated with your family on a table and that's all most of the time. It's akin to someone who makes pizzas to sell in the terrace to passersby. Really cool, quite nice but again, weird framing because you wouldn't say that about "Jean Paul who sells pizza from his balcony", so to speak. I still love it, though!
- scorepeon 2mo agoAmerican living in Tartu here. You're not wrong. There has even been a trend of having professional catering which is disappointing. That being said I'm super excited for this weekend's event in Tammelinn[0]. I'm on a mission to find who has the best rabarberikook. 0. https://tammelinnaselts.ee/kodukohvikutepaevadest https://tammelinnaselts.ee/kodukohvikutepaevadest
- someoneeestis 2mo agoI lived in Tartu for four years and hold great memories from our city of good thoughts. Enjoy the Tammelinn event and bless the city for me!
- tauntz 2mo agoHeh, there's also https://www-kambja-info.translate.goog/syndmus/avatud-aiad-2026-igal-aial-oma-lugu/?_x_tr_sl=et&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-kambja-info.translate.goog/syndmus/avatud-aiad-2... right next to Tartu. This Saturday. If you have a car, come by ("Puzzle Café") and say hi - I'm making pulled pork burgers and.. other stuff that I still need to figure out (24h to go!) :)
- tomaac_ 2mo agoThis is very popular concept in Latvia too. https://www.latvia.travel/en/event/home-cafe-days-2026 https://www.latvia.travel/en/event/home-cafe-days-2026 You can even check all menus and availability online (unfortunately only in Latvian): https://majaskafejnicas.lv/destinations/ https://majaskafejnicas.lv/destinations/
- shevy-java 2mo ago[flagged]
- tonyedgecombe 2mo agoRussians think they don’t need an invitation.
- youaremidwit 2mo ago[dead]
- type0 2mo agoYou're not invited, so maybe you should go back to Russia
- rfrey 2mo agoJust go take the food.
- z3t4 2mo agoIf you are visiting Sweden in the summer look for the sign "Loppis" where ppl are selling used goods.
- zabzonk 2mo agoI remember back in the mid 1980s there was a scheme in Lincolnshire UK where you could just turn up at a house and go into their back garden to admire their plants - only gardens owned by people taking part in the scheme, obviously. Doesn't seem to exist anymore, and I guess I'm not surprised,
- masfuerte 2mo agoThe National Garden Scheme is still a thing. https://ngs.org.uk/who-we-are/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/ https://ngs.org.uk/who-we-are/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/
- zabzonk 2mo agoThanks, but I think that is more gardens that are owned by people with professional gardeners and other caretakers. The scheme I was thinking of was more individuals. I remember looking in to a small bungalow garden, where the owner proudly showed off her border plants, and offered us some cuttings.
- tonylucas 2mo agoThis was definitely also a 'thing' when I was growing up in Somerset, I think they just called it a 'garden open day' or similar, but I can distinctly remember wandering around one massive garden and nearly walking straight into the pond covered in Duckweed.
- graemep 2mo agoThere are also various events where you can visit historical buildings, and some include private homes. A lot of them seem to require booking these days whereas it used to be more just turn up. Many listed here: https://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/ https://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/
- dpedu 2mo agoThat's pretty interesting, I've never heard of this! I've done something somewhat similar when visiting the Isle of Man. For the unfamiliar, the Isle of Man hosts a world-renown motorsport race, mainly motorcycles, widely considered the most dangerous and deadly race in the world. Average of 2 to 3 fatalities per year. It's a rather small and relatively sparsely populated island, but for the weeks of the race, the population absolutely explodes as visitors come from all over the world. The local government runs a program called Homestay, which encourages residents to rent out their properties or spare rooms, etc, to tourists. And I stayed in one such Homestay. I think I paid 25 pounds a night to stay for about 2 weeks, in the 4th largest town on the island. It's a great deal, my hosts were amazing, and it's a much better experience than a hotel if you care about learning about the island. I met their entire family and they shared "local knowledge" of interesting spots to check out.
- nkg 2mo ago"It's quite traditional to help foreign visitors on Hiiumaa because back then it meant they were here because of [a] shipwreck or something like that, and they needed help." It's crazy that your 1st thought seeing a stranger in your village is that he might be lost or distressed.