ReUse at the festival of lights in Lyon

Here is an article to wish you all a Happy New Year 2009 (”Head uut aastat” in estonian) ! This is the occasion also for us to catch up on the end of 2008 during which we were surprised to hear about Estonia in the “Fête des Lumières” in Lyon. This festival of Lights is famous in France for its different works of art using light in the city.

Apparently, the French Institute in Tallinn had cooperated with an estonian artist to propose one estonian participation at this festival : “Re-Use”, a contemporary work of art using traditional folk songs and lights and shadows. It was a bit strange but at least represented this small little country to the inhabitants of Lyon. What many people appreciated most of all was the complementary shot of vodka (Viru Valge, an estonian brand) and a piece of “leib” or dark bread.

We were so thrilled to see these familiar things that we immediatly poured all our refraint estonian to the blond girl holding the bread. We hadn’t spoken for a few months and thought she would be happy and surprised. She was surprised for sure and we could see that on her face by the was her eyes looked wide at us. But she did not seem as happy as we thought. We found out quickly that she wasn’t estonian but german and was just helping out for this event. A little frustrated, we still met THE estonian guy who held the stand. He made us feel better by saying that “we spoke perfect estonian” but in reality we didn’t understand his indications for another place we should see very near by. In the end, we said “head ööd” (good night) and walked in the direction we thought was good, we never found it !