Elin Viisileht, who was stationed on the premises of the former Seppo Clinic, shares her thoughts on her experience as a festival volunteer. She was both a tour guide and a team leader. Read her thoughts:
Open House is becoming an integral part of my autumn ‒ as time goes on, I enjoy guiding and interacting with people more and more. A few years ago, when leading my first Open House tours, I was still quite nervous, but this year, giving a tour to more than 60 people at once in the former Seppo Clinic building on Tõnismäe went off without a hitch. Could the rule apply here that the longer you dedicate yourself to something, the more likely you are to get into the groove?
I like to think about how all the people associated with Open House ‒ team members coordinating at headquarters and curators, guides and hosts working at the sites, logisticians and photographers bustling between them, and, on the other hand, all the visitors ‒ form a temporary yet continuous network for one weekend, through which a powerful transfer of energy takes place. If someone were to plot all these people bustling on a map, it would resemble an anthill where everyone has their assignment; in other words, everyone knows very well what to do and where to go.
In this lovely anthill, there is a brisk exchange of ideas and thoughts. Although guides and hosts spend the whole day in one building, through the visitors, we also gather impressions of what has been experienced in other buildings. A group of young men had just come from the Vana-Lõuna tram depot, and as we were all big fans of rail transport, we started bouncing ideas around about how awesome it would be to throw a birthday bash and sing karaoke in a moving tram (especially in the legendary Pauliine). This buoyant energy carried over to my upcoming tour, where we joked about which part of the house everyone would take for themselves (a spiral staircase ought to be in a proper apartment, after all) and what they would leave behind (someone else can have the basement cells). Where there are people, there are ideas!
Yet Open House opens not only doors, but also the recesses of people’s memories. In the former Seppo Clinic building, almost every tour had someone who could recall the building’s earlier times. The most memorable story was about a gentleman who worked as an orthopedist during the Soviet era and was sent from Seppo to a conference in Budapest thanks to his knowledge of Hungarian. The clever man took advantage of the opportunity and escaped the Soviet Union, eventually ending up living in New York, where he met his current wife. Thanks to Open House, he was able to step into the building where a completely new stage of his life had begun for the first time since 1981 (and together with his wife, no less). Being in the environment helps to dig up old memories, and Open House can sometimes offer rewarding opportunities to encounter one’s own past.
Every Open House also changes me personally and adds layers to my memory map. Three years of guiding equals three special places in Tallinn: in addition to this year’s Art Nouveau apartment building at Tõnismäe 5a, the Kopli kindergarten and the now-former film archives on Ristiku Street will always remind me of those respective autumns in my life. Passing by these buildings makes me feel right at home because I see and remember more than just walls and windows ‒ I know the story of these houses. I look forward to next year with excitement to make another place in this city my own in this way and to spend another fantastically intense weekend together with eager volunteers and curious visitors!
