Reikop plans abroad to avoid Estonia’s summer

Marko Reikop has spent decades arranging his holidays abroad to avoid Estonia’s cold and rainy summers, he told ERR’s Vikerraadio morning programme.

“You could say that I have practically missed the Estonian summer, because I have been interested in non-Estonian summers for years,” Reikop said. He joked that people are surprised every autumn to hear that summer was poor, despite having lasted only six days according to statistics he had read.

“I am over 35 and I know that there is no summer in Estonia. I already do everything in December to try to avoid summer in Estonia, because it is very cold here, it rains and the mood is gloomy,” he said.

Heatwaves elsewhere in Europe have not discouraged him. Reikop said he enjoys sunny and warm weather and had not found himself in the middle of an extreme heatwave.

Reikop said he does not travel to random places, but carefully chooses destinations he wants to visit. He said he had tried to live without later regretting that he had worked too much, travelled too little or taken life too seriously.

“You have to do things straight away, go there straight away and visit the places you particularly want to see,” he said.

This summer, Reikop travelled to London to attend the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. He described it as the world’s largest classical music festival, running from mid-July to mid-September with concerts every day.

“There is a symphony orchestra, of course. Madonna will not appear there with a new hit, and Sabrina Carpenter will not perform there either,” Reikop said.

As a classical music enthusiast, he said he could no longer continue living among people with similar interests without attending the BBC Proms.

Reikop said he began hunting for tickets in March, but the festival programme is announced relatively late because assembling a two-month schedule is difficult. When tickets went on sale in late June or early July, he joined the online queue and found himself number 6,842.

The Royal Albert Hall holds 5,000 people, he said, while concerts take place every day for two months. Buyers do not purchase tickets for one specific concert, but for whichever performance tickets are available.

Reikop bought tickets for two concerts and chose the best remaining seats, which turned out to be in the last row of the fourth balcony, with his back against the wall.