Yesterday I had my first job interview here in Sweden. I passed the first round and will be introduced to some of my (hopefully) future colleagues next week. They will be the ones who make the final decision. The job would be assembling medical equipment, a perfect job, in my opinion. I get to make something and that something will help somebody.

I heard about this opening through a friend of R's who has become my friend also. Thank you, M, for this opportunity!

Now to continue with the vacation.

My brother drove us around in Estonia one day. The first stop was Rakvere Castle. It was built by Danes in 13th century and destroyed in Livonian War in 16th century. Nowadays it is a museum and event site. Near the castle there is a statue of an ancient ox called "tarvas" that used to live in Estonian territory but has become extinct.

Tarvas was a huge animal, the person in black is R and he's almost 2 metres (6.6 ft) tall. You can imagine how big the tarvas bull was.

This is a view of the castle ruins from a road. The yellow building below is an example of Soviet concrete architecture and the spire in the middle of the ruins is a church tower beyond the castle, not part of it.

This is the main entrance to the inner courtyard of the castle, taken from the courtyard.

The courtyard itself...

and the tallest tower.

From the courtyard you have access to the dining hall...

and bailiff's private chambers. You can enter the chapel also, but I forgot to take a picture.

There are many places to explore, for example narrow stairs up...

where one can view the outer courtyard.

After climbing the walls we were tired and getting a bit hungry. So my brother took us to Lake Peipus where local people sell freshly smoked fish and fresh pickles. We bought a whole smoked bream, a kilo of pickles and had a picnic at one of Lake Peipus's beaches. Yummy!

The people who live in that part of Estonia are Russian immigrants from 17th and 18th centuries. They left Russia because of a church reform — they didn't go along with the changes and had to leave to preserve the Old Russian Orthodox ways and their lives. So they have. If you are interested in Old Believers check out this website: Russian Old Believers in Estonia.

After the picnic it was getting late so we headed back to the cottage.

To be continued...