Breaking the ice – Estonia comes in from the cold

“First we have to cross the icebergs,” our guide, Herling Mesi, says, pointing to a barely visible ridge on the otherwise flat expanse of frozen lake.

She is worried that a patch of broken ice won’t take the weight of the truck with all its passengers, so we climb out, walk over the slushy chunks, then hop back in. As with many vehicles from the Soviet era, the truck is a homemade mashup of whatever parts were available: the front…