My name is Siimon Rampe (and yes you spell 'Siimon' with two 'i's') and I was born in Wollongong, Australia, in 1973. Below is a snap-shot of how, what, where and why I feel the need to write this blog. I hope you understand...Lets begin with family: my mother (of English decent and a 3rd generation Byron Bay'er) and father (a full blooded Estonian who, to this day, has still never set foot in Estonia) separated when I was 3 or 4. When they parted ways, my father split for the big smoke of Sydney and I stayed with my mother in Wollongong.
A few years later, my mother met and married her 2nd husband whom she is still with to this day. As he was Catholic (and my schooling was suffering under the public system), I moved from a government school to a Catholic school still in Wollongong.
At the end of 6th grade, a life altering experience occured. My step-father took my mother and I to live in Bangkok, Thailand as his work required that he go there. At the time, for a boy who hadn't gone any farther north than Maroochidore in Queensland, and any more south than Adeliade in South Australia, there couldn't be any place in the world more different than Wollongong to end up. And the changes didn't stop there. Whilst in Bangkok, a new addition was added to the family in the way of an adopted sister. I got used to Bangkok and adapted well. Although I had my fun in Bangkok, my wide eyes and thoughts were always pointing back to Wollongong, where life seemed more "normal".
After returning back to Australia in 1985 after about 20 months in Thailand, I began high school back in Wollongong. I would not leave the shores of Australia again until for another sixteen years.
In that quiet time of non-travel, my life assumed the normal path of finish school, find an occupation to take up, find a girl, move out and get on with life. I ticked all those boxes. I even moved to Sydney! But all the while, I knew the world was out there. I'd seen it with my own eyes, and I had to see it again.
In 2001, I would return to Thailand. My trip there only served as side show to my true travel quest at the time - my first trip to Estonia. In my youth, Thailand had sunk into my bones without me knowing and consequently I knew I could never be satisfied with the simple life. Unfortunately, more often than not, I found relationships with women that wanted just that - the simple life.
Regardless of this subconcious knowledge, I still married a girl who fit this description. It didn't come without a payoff though. In our first year together, we travelled to Thailand, Finland and Estonia. The beginning of my "real" life had begun, only with a tag along - my first wife. Preceeding this adventure, we would also travel to Bali where I proposed and she accepted - a bad omen I would later find out. Never travel to Bali with a partner unless your married! That is, unless you want to keep that partner.
She and I would buy a house, an investment property and enjoy a reasonable amount of prosperity for a while. It would all collapse within 6 month of getting married. With my moving out and inevitable divorce, the next phase of my real life had begun.
A trip with some friends to the U.S. and Canada for snowboarding caped off a new relationship that had begun in Wollongong before I had left and would then see me chase that girl to Oxford in England only to work out it wasn't the right girl. While there, I could feel the pull of Estonia only a short flight away. I felt I was cheating myself by not going the extra distance.
On return to Australia, I did the unthinkable. I joined an online dating service. I knew after my failure in England that I could never take a regular Australian girl again. I had an interest I had to satisfy. I had to find out about the women of my heritage. I had to find out about Estonian women.
So it began. I "nudged" several women but was not getting a response. The ones that did made it out that Australia was just too far to warrant talking to someone like me. That was until an interesting, beautiful woman with a mullet hairdo nudged me.
Within three months, I would meet my wife face-to-face and begin living the way I had subconciously intended all along. I lived with her for a month in Estonia and felt what it would feel like to be an Estonian.
If, five years ago I were to be shown a glimps of my life now, I would have suffered 'futurshock'. No way would I have believed I would live the life I am now. No way could I have hoped for it to turn out any better.
