EVS in Estonia

That was an idea, I aways wanted to realize… Promoting Estonia in my own town : Le Bourget du Lac, located in the French Alps.

As my mother is now in the city council , and with her team decided to organize one Festival about Europe on the 18th of July 2009 (with Irland as guest country), I proposed to take part in the event, through the european market set in the main street of the village, creating a stand on Estonia.

I had prepared everything, with the help of my family of course. My mother had found some artificial cornflower (national flower in Estonia), I brought back from our last trip some estonian specialities such as : dark bread with garlic, moose sausages, Kalev chocolates, roasted almonds with cinnamon. And my estonian flag was waving in the air.

At first, we had some rain, and only a few people were stopping by. But in the afternoon, the sky cleared up, and my stand was a success. I was so happy to explain, and to do my best to promote Estonia. I answered questions, first one was usually “but where is Estonia?”. But finally it is good point I think that for now nobody really know about Estonia, because thanks to this, they don’t have any prejudice about this country, everything for them is a discovery. Lots of people told me that the pictures we had taken (especially Jonathan’s one) were beautiful, and were given them the desire to go overthere.

I was so touched, when small children asked me if they could take the small estonian flags, and after that I saw that they were wearing them or brandishing them in the streets of my village. I was hearing “Tere, tere !” everytime I was crossing somebody in the street. And that was for me one of the best pleasure I had.

Thanks everybody for passing by our stand, thanks to our dear estonian friends who helped us promoting well their country ! Hope we are good ambassadors of this small country !

Here is also an extract of an interview on my EVS (European Volontary Service) experience in english done by a journalist from RFI (Radio France International) in Paris, during the Day of Europe on the 9th of May 2009 :