Thoughts on Estonia

 Sitting at the airport now and probably taking my last look at this interesting country and language for some time now, but here are some things that have struck me:

1: The number of people

There are fewer than 1.4 million people in the country. And about a third of them speak Russian anyway. For comparison, two central neighbourhoods in Beijing (Dongcheng and Xicheng since you ask) have a combined population of 1.6 million.

So your chances of seeing or hearing Estonian anywhere else in the world are vanishingly small. And most Estonians speak English or Russian or both, as well as their own language. And their own language is very distinctive and not much like any other European language. It is closest to Finnish, but not very close. 'Balti Jaam' is the railway station, 'Beebituba' is the nursing room at the airport, and thank you sounds like ay toh! And, rather strangely, the three languages of the Baltic states are all mutually unintelligible (and Estonian even less than the other two)

We went to visit a small town called Rapla (our Estonian contact's only question was "why?") and it was very quiet. Coming back to Talinn, a capital city smaller than Leicester, it was like going to Times Square in comparison. "Traffic from both direction! Wow!" So I feel that, as with Ireland, a long conversation between two random Estonians would find common relatives. And that is a nice part of one's national identity, and a good reason to protect it.

2: The 'struggle for independence'

Our amusing guide around Talinn gave us a short potted history of Estonia and the Estonians and admitted that they have only had self-determination for about 50 years in the last 800 years. So everything is a bit new, and you have to imagine that nobody is taking it for granted yet.

And it all started off with a crusade! The king of Denmark got special permission to launch a crusade against Estonia in the early 13th century as they were some of the last pagans in Northern Europe. I think we know what his real motive may have been. And perhaps not-coincidentally, Estonia is now one of the least religious countries in the whole of the EU.

And after a couple of hundred years of the Danes, the Germans had a go for a few more centuries, then a couple of centuries of imperial Russia, until finally after WWI, the Estonians briefly had their own state. That did not survive WWII, after which the Soviets annexed and ran all three Baltic states until the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. And in 1991 Estonia regained its independence (and there is a rather unlikely plaque of Boris Yeltsin in Talinn as he happened to be in charge when independence was granted). So now it is 35 years self-governing again, but you get the idea that nobody is getting ahead of themselves (although they do apparently have one of the best cyber-security set-ups in all of Europe).

3: The city of Talinn

This, like the other Baltic capitals, is very scenic and charming and surprisingly intact. It is probably the finest of the three. A huge number of buildings date from the 13th and 14th centuries and large parts of the walls are intact. It is really quite beautiful, but I'm afraid that even in May there were a lot of tourist groups arriving and I believe in summer it gets quite highly-trafficked, if not overwhelmed. The good news is that even outside the Old Town there is lots of interest in the city, and there are many areas where old industrial architecture has been intelligently-repurposed for its new tourist uses. 

4. Food and drink

They have excellent beers, as another post on here will explain! But in terms of food, I was fully prepared to get a Norwegian-style fish cornucopia, only to be told by our guide that the Estonians rather look down on fish as the poor fare of islanders. They go much more for farm staples like pork, wheat and potatoes. And excellent pancakes as I can attest.

So if you are at a loose end and have some spondoolicks, why not try Estonia? Clean, sunny, historic and friendly. And if you can co-ordinate your trip with the beer festival, all the merrier