Pärnu is the best place for absolutely everything

I was born, grew up and attended university in Tartu. My husband is from Pärnu and after graduating from Tallinn University of Technology, he was assigned to work here. I came with him and have been living in Pärnu County since November 1982. However, it took a while before I was accepted by locals here. New businesses and new people are ignored at first – you have to earn it to become accepted. Fortunately, it is not as extreme here as in Saaremaa – if you’re an open-minded communicator, you will also find people to hang out with. Still, it all depends on yourself.

I am a psychologist by education and serendipitously, my first job was at the Pärnu Family Counselling Centre. I started working with quite young children and did that as a part-timer, because there were no more clients. By the time I gave up my job as the Manager of the Family Counselling Centre after 11 years, a team was in place to help people with a wide variety of issues. The queue to admittance was several weeks, and the workload grew rapidly.

I worked at the Family Counselling Centre for 11 years, passed a lot of training during that time, became a family therapist and established a totally new service in Pärnu. This is also the time when the idea of family childbirth was initiated here and in cooperation with Kadri Vahula we started the Family School – so that fathers would come to the childbirth and be able to help their women at childbirth. By now, it has become the norm for a father to be at the birth of his child and I am truly proud to the bottom of my heart for having been able to bring this on. As a family therapist I often saw that many problems started when the baby was born into the family. Relationships and roles changed and young parents were not ready for this. Their previous relationship no longer worked, as new parents were focussing primarily on their changed roles now  – being a mother and a father. I wanted to make it clear – what matters most to children is that their mom and dad are a loving couple, first and foremost – a woman and a man. Only then they can be good parents.

Later I moved on to the private sector, managing for 5 years in Pärnu the local office of the well-known recruitment company Fontes. In 2001 I started my own company Tammiste Personalibüroo, which offers training and recruitment services all over Estonia. I have 10 colleagues, most of whom work in Tallinn, but I have stayed true to Pärnu myself, measuring the kilometres of the road to get home at night. Pärnu has become my hometown. I’m often away because of work, but there is always a good feeling in my heart when I return. There was a time when I was planning to move to Tallinn, but for family reasons it did not work out and there are no longer such plans today.

Pärnu is the best place for absolutely everything. There is everything an active person of any age needs – good schools, a theatre, a concert hall, a cinema, gyms, golf and tennis courts… What I miss is the customers for my business and that is the only reason I work in other cities, mainly in Tallinn, where most of the businesses are situated. As an entrepreneur I have to be where my clients are.

Pärnu is a wonderful place to live. My work has allowed me to organize my life flexibly and I have remained an inhabitant of Pärnu. Satisfaction comes from doing the right thing with passion and dedication. Nothing can be achieved in life without hard work, the willingness to commit 110% and constantly learning throughout your life. I’ve never measured the length of my work days, always trying to do more than is expected of me. I’ve set goals for myself and not backed off from those, even if they were initially not supported by others.

There are many big and strong companies in Pärnu where remarkable things can be accomplished. At the same time, it is a lovely safe city where your soul and spirit can rest – what a truly great value in this busy world!