In the beginning of 2019 we bought a house and a piece of land in Aruküla. The house basically did not have any windows or doors, proper walls or even floors (just catching a rhyme here 🙂 ) but we bought it nevertheless and started to renovate it. We are nearly finished with it but that’s a whole another topic for a separate post :). Anyways, in summer 2020 we moved to live in Aruküla permanantely.
Aruküla is located about 20km SE of Tallinn and called home for about two thousand residents. It’s just big enough and also small enough. Tallinn is by no means a big city on a global scale (about half a million people living there) but it’s huge compared to Aruküla. And to be honest, I could not imagine myself living there anymore, although I did that for the most of my life. It’s just too much people, noise, traffic and so on. Obviously different parts of Tallinn provide a different kind of experience, you cannot compare city center with Nõmme for example, but the previous point still remains valid.
In Aruküla we have everything we need – a store 2 min walk from our home, another one just 7 minutes away, a train station that connects you to the city within 20 minutes just a 4-5 min walk away, a pharmacy, a library, a post office, children playgrounds, 2 kindergartens, 2 schools, a stadium and heck, we even have an ice rink (which I haven’t used yet, but the time will come).
The previous list is not in an order of importance, it just states the fact that everything is close at hand. In addition we have several (really good) street food places and a nice lunch place/cafeteria to get delicious dishes from.
Oh, and a small shop for construction related items, which I’m highly grateful for! More about it in the post about renovating a house.
There are numerous hiking trails and places to walk nearby, a local swimming place and the seaside just 25min away.
People are friendly and warm, there are so many couples with kids and the overall atmosphere is just nice. You know, one of the benefits of living in a smaller place :).
And obviously living in a house is quite different compared to living in an apartment, especially during summertime. It’s just so nice to spend time in your own yard, play with your kid or dogs and just enjoy the fresh air around you. Yes, during winter you have to put quite a lot of effort in cleaning snow but most of the time I try to take it as a free exercise compared to paying for the entrance fee to the gym :).
Just a 10 minute drive away is Jüri which is slightly bigger and offers all the things you might miss sometimes, for example a swimming pool, a proper gym or a bigger shop. And 10 minutes is no time at all plus it’s always 10 minutes since there are no traffic jams.
One thing I really enjoy is every time I drive home from Tallinn the road takes you between forests and fields and you can literally feel yourself relaxing a bit more and just looking forward to getting home. It’s a totally different experience then just driving in the city the whole time.
If you are wondering where Aruküla is located exactly then just click here – https://www.google.ee/maps/place/Aruk%C3%BCla,+Harju+maakond/@59.3633498,25.0606583,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x4692e8adbc5f60fb:0xa00b36f6fe4d160!8m2!3d59.3598764!4d25.0734593?hl=et
And here are 2 videos I’ve made just for fun in the past couple of years. For some reason both are during winter, I need to make one in summertime also 🙂
Wish you all the best!
Lauri
The World As It Is 