Karl Saar - 17

One ordinary day in the life of 17-year-old boy in Mustamäe, Tallinn, Estonia

Short Bio

Karl is in his final year of upper-secondary school and is beginning to make choices that feel larger than the apartment, school gym, and bus routes that shape most of his week. Tall and brown-haired, he wears wire-frame glasses when he studies and has faint tan lines on his arms from basketball. He lives with his mother, Maarja, who works in payroll administration; his father, Tõnu, a building-maintenance technician; his 14-year-old brother, Martin; and Liis. The family is financially stable, but they plan carefully, compare grocery prices, and do not assume that university abroad would be easy to afford. Karl is considering programs connected to business, communications, or sports management, possibly in English, while trying not to let future plans distract him from the exams directly in front of him.

Mustamäe is a residential district in western Tallinn, known for its large groups of apartment blocks built during the Soviet period, broad streets, schools, green spaces, and public sports facilities. Many buildings have since been renovated, with insulated facades, enclosed balconies, brighter entrances, and better heating. Karl’s neighborhood is not especially dramatic or fashionable, but it is convenient: his school, a supermarket, bus stops, basketball courts, and several friends are all nearby. On a wet spring morning, the district looks mostly gray, green, and blue—the blocks, the birches, and the city bus shelters.

A Shared Room and Breakfast Before Revision

Karl wakes at 7:35 when Martin’s alarm starts ringing from the other side of the bedroom. It is a harsh electronic sound that Martin never changes because, he claims, gentler alarms do not work. Their room is the smaller of the apartment’s two bedrooms. Karl’s bed sits beneath a shelf of schoolbooks, a few basketball medals, and a small desk lamp. Martin’s bed is near the window, beside a gaming headset and a heap of hoodies that has been there long enough to become part of the furniture.

“You said there was no school,” Martin says without opening his eyes.

“There isn’t,” Karl replies. “There’s math.”

Martin groans as if this confirms something deeply unfair about the world.

In the kitchen, Maarja has put out dark rye bread, sliced cheese, cucumbers, and a carton of keefir (a fermented milk drink). Tõnu drinks coffee while checking messages from work. He has no call scheduled today, but a building-services job can change quickly when a tenant reports a leak or a broken door lock. At the other end of the table, Maarja has her laptop open beside a bowl of apples. She is sorting a few household payments before the rest of the day begins.

Karl makes two open-faced sandwiches and eats quickly. Liis is looking for a blue colored pencil for an art worksheet that she says is “basically impossible” without the exact shade. She has an after-school art activity at the community center later in the day, and Karl has agreed to collect her afterward because both parents will still be busy.

“You’ll help me with fractions too?” she asks.

“After work,” he says. “But you have to try them before I get home.”

She gives him a doubtful look, then nods. The agreement is not new. Karl helps because he is the oldest, and because he is usually the person available to explain something without turning it into a lecture.

Broad Mathematics at the Kitchen Table

By 8:20, Karl has claimed the dining table with a notebook, calculator, water bottle, and several broad-mathematics practice papers. Estonia’s upper-secondary students complete state examinations in Estonian, mathematics, and a foreign language, alongside school requirements that include an additional examination and a research or practical project. Karl chose broad mathematics rather than the more advanced track because it suits the programs he is considering, though it still gives him enough problems to make a Saturday morning feel serious.

He begins with functions, then moves to probability. For the first half hour, his handwriting is clean and evenly spaced. When a graph question goes wrong, his notes become more crowded. He eventually finds the mistake: he copied one number incorrectly from the question. It annoys him more than a hard problem would have. Difficult questions feel honest. Careless errors feel personal.

His class chat is active on his phone. One classmate posts a photograph of a practice test covered in red corrections. Another writes, “We are all becoming accountants now.” Karl reacts with a laughing face but does not join the conversation. He still has basketball training and work ahead, and he wants to finish one more section before leaving.

Before closing his laptop, he checks feedback on an English essay about whether universities should prioritize practical skills over academic theory. His teacher has written that his argument is clear but the ending feels rushed. Karl reads the final paragraph twice, then saves a note to revise it after dinner. He likes English and speaks it easily, especially online, but essay writing makes him slow down. It is harder to sound convincing when every sentence has to carry its own weight.

Bus Ride and Basketball Practice

At 10:15, Karl packs his papers away, changes into a gray hoodie and straight-leg jeans, and puts on his white basketball shoes. The black puffer goes over everything. He walks downstairs past the mailboxes and a notice board covered with plumbing announcements, apartment listings, and a flyer for a missing cat. Outside, the spring rain has stopped, but water remains in shallow patches along the pavement.

The blue bus stop near Männi Park is busy with ordinary weekend errands. An older woman holds two grocery bags against her legs. A father steadies a toddler’s scooter while checking the road. Karl taps his personalized transit card when he boards. Registered residents of Tallinn can use city transport without paying a fare, which means he can travel between school, practice, and work without asking for petrol money or waiting for a ride.

Through the bus window, he sees renovated apartment entrances, balconies with drying laundry, bicycle racks, and small grocery shops under the lower floors of residential buildings. The ride to his school gym takes less than fifteen minutes. It is one reason he rarely thinks of the neighborhood as limiting, even when he complains about it. Most of what he needs is close enough to reach on foot or by bus.

Saturday basketball training is informal because several teammates are studying for exams or working. Eight boys show up, including Karl’s friend Rasmus, the team’s center. Rasmus tells him that he has become “a man of equations” since the weather improved.

“You’d study too if you could count past ten,” Karl says.

During warm-up, Karl steals the ball from him and turns the exchange into a layup.

As point guard, Karl enjoys the quick decisions that basketball requires. He calls a play, watches the defense shift, and chooses whether to pass or drive toward the basket. For ninety minutes, applications, marks, and family budgets move to the edge of his mind. There are only sneakers squeaking on the gym floor, the slap of the ball, and teammates calling for it. When Rasmus misses two free throws in a row, Karl tells him the basket is offended by his haircut. Rasmus answers with a rude gesture, and nobody bothers to hide their laughter.

Afternoon at the Supermarket

After practice, Karl changes back into his hoodie and walks to the supermarket where he works occasional Saturday shifts. He is usually assigned to dry goods, beverages, or whatever aisle needs restocking. Today’s shift is short, from one until four, and his manager keeps it in daytime hours that fit around school. The work is repetitive, but Karl does not mind it. It gives him money for shoes, cinema tickets, birthday gifts, and the smaller expenses he would rather not ask his parents to cover.

He opens boxes of pasta, tea, canned fish, and breakfast cereal, checks dates, and rotates older products toward the front of the shelf. He works beside Svetlana, an older employee who often speaks Russian when the aisle is quiet. Karl understands most of what she says and answers in simple Russian when he can. If he cannot find a word, he switches to Estonian or English, and neither of them makes much of it. In Tallinn, hearing different languages in shops, buses, and courtyards is ordinary.

A customer asks where the buckwheat has been moved, then complains that its price has risen again. Karl leads him to the shelf and listens politely. At home, prices are discussed too, though without panic. Maarja checks discounts before larger shopping trips, and Tõnu pays attention to heating and electricity bills. They do not ask Karl to hand over his wages, but he understands why they would rather he work only occasionally than take shifts that cut into his exam preparation.

During his break, he buys a kohuke (a sweet curd snack coated in chocolate) and checks his phone. Anette, a classmate from English, has sent him a photo of her essay feedback. “Apparently I also cannot write endings,” she has written.

Karl types, “Good news: we can fail structurally together,” then pauses before sending it.

Her reply arrives quickly: “Study group Tuesday?”

He answers yes and puts his phone away before Svetlana returns from the staff room. He does not tell anyone at work why he is smiling.

Collecting Liis and Starting Dinner

Karl finishes at four and walks toward the community center where Liis has been at her art activity. She comes outside in a bright yellow raincoat, carrying a folder with a watercolor fox inside. The raincoat is too thin for the wind, but she refuses to admit it.

“Did you make that?” Karl asks, taking the folder so it will not bend.

“Obviously,” Liis says. “And I got the sky right.”

They walk through Männi Park, where younger children are still using the playground and two teenagers are shooting at an outdoor court. Liis tells him that another girl in her class drew a fox after seeing hers. Karl listens while watching for traffic at the crossing. At home, his role is usually practical: carrying bags, checking whether Liis has packed her school things, explaining homework, or taking over the stove when their parents arrive late. He would not call it looking after her. It is simply part of being the oldest child.

Maarja arrives shortly after five, and Tõnu comes home with a bag of groceries. Karl begins dinner while his parents talk through next week’s errands. He pounds chicken cutlets, coats them in crumbs, and puts trays of seasoned potatoes into the oven. Liis sets the table but forgets forks until Martin points it out with exaggerated disbelief.

The meal is Karl’s favorite: chicken schnitzel, crisp oven potatoes, cucumber salad, and lingonberry jam. They eat at the table rather than in front of the television, although Martin keeps glancing at his phone whenever he thinks their mother is not watching. Tõnu asks about practice. Maarja asks whether Karl expects more supermarket shifts next month.

“Maybe two,” Karl says. “I need revision time.”

Neither parent argues. The household is stable, but nobody treats money as endless. Studying abroad would mean scholarships, part-time work, or choosing a program closer to home. Karl has not decided which compromise he is willing to make.

Homework, Essay Feedback, and Sleep

After dinner, Karl washes dishes while Liis dries them badly, leaving a trail of water across the counter. Then they sit down with her fraction worksheet. She tries to move through the answers as quickly as possible, and Karl stops her after the second mistake. He draws circles and divides them into pieces until she can see what the numbers mean.

“You’re not bad at this,” he tells her. “You’re skipping the part where you think.”

“That sounds like I’m bad at it,” Liis says.

“It sounds like you’re eleven.”

Later, Karl returns to the dining table for his own work. He rewrites the conclusion of his English essay, making it more specific and less abrupt, then completes another set of broad-mathematics questions. In the bedroom, Martin studies geography with one earbud in, Arctic Monkeys playing quietly enough that their mother does not call from the kitchen. When Martin goes to shower, Karl puts on nublu at low volume and checks his calculations again.

Near eleven, he steps onto the enclosed balcony for a minute. Most windows in the surrounding blocks are dark, though television light flickers behind a few curtains. A bus moves along the main road. Wind rattles a loose bicycle reflector in the courtyard below. Karl checks his phone: Anette has confirmed Tuesday’s study group, Rasmus has posted a video of a missed layup from practice, and the class chat is arguing about which mathematics topics will appear on the exam.

Back in the bedroom, Martin is asleep with his phone charging on the floor. Karl plugs in his own phone, stacks his mathematics papers beside his glasses, and lays out clean clothes for Sunday. He thinks briefly about applications, the cost of living in another country, and whether leaving Tallinn after graduation will feel exciting or simply expensive. The thoughts are familiar rather than dramatic, like an unfinished task waiting on the desk.

He turns off the lamp before midnight. From the next room, he hears Liis laugh once in her sleep and a cupboard door close softly in the kitchen. By morning, the apartment will be busy again, and there will be another list of things to do.