Street corner in Tallinn's Old Town
Estonia is really one of the most interesting countries I have ever visited. And no, it is not an intestinal disease, which is what an American friend of mine asked me when I told her I was traveling to Estonia. It is however a tiny, but very up-and-coming nation in the Baltic sea that few outsiders ever visit.
For many years Estonia was part of the Soviet Union, but since achieving its independence in 1991, it's seen massive change and many consider it to be the most successful, economically and politically of the former Soviet states. I stayed here for about 10 days recently and enjoyed most of the visit, though it took a few days for Tallinn to grow on me - being a bit different than I had expected.
I arrived here via an overnight boat trip from Stockholm on Tallink. Tallink runs an enormous cruise ship service across the Baltic and my adventures began the moment I boarded. Sharing my cabin with me was an old Russian man who didn't speak English, a young Estonian teen age boy who was so blond he looked albino, and an old Estonian drunk who, in the middle of the night, decided to start yelling some kind of obscenities in his sleep while the rest of us tried in vain to get him to stop. If the outbursts weren't enough, the stench of cheap, hard, eastern-European liquor made the scenario all the more surreal. This was my first exposure to the Estonian language... A rather weird language indeed!
Estonian billboard advertisement
Estonian is a Finno-Ugric language, very much related to Finnish, but still rather unique and bizarre-sounding, enough to confound even the most accomplished polyglot. I managed to learn a few words of Estonian during my trip, the most useful of which is "terviseks" which means "cheers" when you are drinking. It sounds a lot like "terrible sex", and one Swedish guy I know made fun of this word a lot. But Estonian has a LOT of weird words... For example, the word for port is "sadam", and the word for appetizer is the rather unappetizing looking "eelroad". Good night is "head ööd" and the number 2 is "kaks", pronounced "cocks". Their currency is the Estonian krona, commonly written as the EEK. So something might cost 100 EEKs. EEK!
When people speak Estonian it does sound VERY odd to an outsider. One of my favorite sounds in Estonian is the letter "õ", which doesn't exist in any other language. An Estonian friend tells me that in order to pronounce a word with this sound you have to pretend that you are vomiting... Even worse, some words have a double "õõ" in which case you have to vomit for a little longer since the double vowel doubles the length that you pronounce it. There are loads of single and double vowel sounds we don't have in English including ö, ü, ä, öö, üü, and ää. "öö" is even a real word - it means "night". In addition to the crazy vowels there are tons of dipthongs and tripthongs to keep your tongue flapping well into the night.
Dipthongs, tripthongs and Holy Shit! thongs
Aside from their strange language, Estonia has absolutely the most beautiful women I have seen anywhere in the world. I mean GORGEOUS! Strangely enough, the men are not nearly as good-looking (with exceptions, of course). For some strange reason most of the men look like rejects from Russian central casting, victims of too much sausage and dumplings, while the women almost all look like next year's undiscovered super model. I think it has more to do with the fact that the men aren't really appearance orientated (for themselves, that is). Things are changing but there's still that lingering Eastern European stigma that believes that only gay men dress well and look after their appearance.
Despite the fact that Estonia (or Eesti, as the Estonians call it) has its own unique language, more than a quarter of the people living in Estonia are Russian and speak Russian. This makes for an interesting contrast and cultural dichotomy. While fewer people are learning Russian these days, there definitely is a lot of Russian influence, especially amongst the drunks that you meet on the street. I have to say that I didn't care much for the younger Russian population, who seem rather vulgar, lost and disinterested. They are in some ways a homeless people inside of Estonia who often drown their sorrows in vodka and other forms of alcohol or drugs. It's rather sad really. On my trip back to Stockholm I met a Swedish Jehovah's Witness who works in Eastern Estonia, near the Russian border. Here Russians make up about 95% of the population and drugs and alcoholism are rampant. He told me about all the junkies shooting up in staircases and general misery and hopelessness that pervades much of the Russian population in the more rural areas of Estonia.
I'm not trying to say the all Russians in Estonia are bad, but the younger ones especially don't have a lot of future and leave you with a negative impression. The older Russians in Tallinn are much more charming and have a bit more character than the young ones. Perhaps they can relate more to a time when Russia was more self-confident and politically powerful. Or they relate to pre-Communist Russia and the "old ways" - like this one fascinating woman I came across while wandering though Tallinn's old town.
With such a large Russian population, there is a bit of tension between the 2 cultures and it makes for some interesting cultural contrasts. One of the more visible contrasts can be seen in the architecture. There are lots of ugly, grey, depressing post-war communist style apartment blocks, of the type that you see all over Eastern Europe. These contrast sharply with the almost primitive, pre-Soviet wooden frame, Victorian style houses that you find all over Estonia and are gennerally in bad need of a new paint job. Tallinn, like so many other places in Europe is a living history book. The other kinds of structures you find are the medieval Hanseatic buildings (mainly seen in the marvelous Old Town
click here for my old town gallery), and the ultra modern scandinavian inspired sleek new constructions that are popping up like daisies all over Tallinn.
Gleaming new apartment building next to 19th century wooden house
Tallinn has come a long way since 1991 and you can tell that this country is changing very quickly. Lots of money is being pumped into this country by the European Union as it prepares for futher integration into the west. In some ways Estonia's small size makes the process easier, compared to larger countries from the former Soviet Union who are limping by in comparison. The proximity to Scandinavia, both culturallly and geographically are also in Estonia's favor and the overriding impression one gets from a visit to Tallinn is one of a young and vibrant nation, with a foot in the past, but with its vision firmly set on the future. The internet in particular is one area where Estonia is really nmaking strides. Free WiFi is widely available in Tallinn and the government of Estonia has plans to make the ENTIRE country accessible by WiFi within a year of two ( which would make it the first country in the world to achieve full WiFi coverage). Estonia is already one of the most well-connected countries in the world with a very internet-savvy population. Even highly successful services like
Skype and
Kazaa where first developed in Estonia, by Estonians.
Estonian businessman surfing in a public park
This is definitely a country to keep an eye on, and not a bad place to visit either. I suspect that by the time I return the country will have changed even more, and probably gotten a lot more expensive too (Estonia is set to adopt the Euro sometime next year).
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