EVS in Estonia

For the common, going to Estonia is already quite a surprising idea. Going back puts you in the category of weirdo’s and other strange people you want to avoid, but a third time back has the effect of leaving most people open-mouthed and eyes wide open. Why would anyone impose himself such a long journey in a place like this ?! Amelie’s colleagues imagined that for our holidays we would be going to a warm sunny place somewhere south, but never would they believe the things we saw and did in Estonia !

Hopefully, you faithfull reader of our blog, you can understand our love and passion for this little country. We were welcomed as kings and our friends took us around as one of theirs. It was as if we had never left and even though time had passed since we had last seen each other, we caught up on news and told them all about our new life.

The excuse was the huge singing festival, UNESCO world heritage, called “Laulupidu”, which united 26 000 and more singers, plus two French, who were lucky to be invited as part of this incredible choir. But, Estonia was for us a haven of tranquility, friendship, and a simplicity which we have a hard time finding anywhere else. It just felt as if we were coming home in some way.

Thanks to all of you whom we saw during this trip, to the others, hopefully we will meet again next time !

As the Olympic are finished now, and have left the place to the paralympic games, the athletes all over the world are going home. It was the occasion for us to see the Estonian champions coming back to Tallinn, hailed by the crowed, and thanked by the president, the sports minister, the maire of the city and other should-be-known-but-not-by-us-people.

Estonia finally brought back 2 medals, one in disc throwing, by the champion Gerd Kanter (that we had already met last year at the airport !) and a silver medal for Tonu Endrekson and Juri Jaanson in rowing. that puts Estonia at the 46th place, (just after latvia !) but at the same level as Portugal or Belgium… not so bad !

We were therefore very glad to see all this enthusiasm with our own eyes and also hear (again) the national estonian anthem being sung in the old town.

On the third of May, we took part in the “Teeme ära” campaign as 34 000 or so other volunteers did, to clean Estonia from scattered rubbish and illegal dumps. 10 000 or more sites had been marked, using a very sofisticated software (created by one of the estonian conceptors of Skype) and visible on Google Maps.

We were only a small team of 5, Amelie and I, Piia, Margus’ wife, and her two children : Madleen and Taveet, but to be part of such a big event, was very rewarding. We have to say that the site that our team had been assigned to clean up had probably already been cleaned by some people during the last week, for we found quite a lot of trash, but already in plastic bags. We still had to put it all in bigger bags, which are easier to process, and we are very proud to have managed to carry a rusted bath tub, partially full of ciment !

If you are interested, you can watch a video from the BBC, (where our friend Indrek, the judo athleet is in too) which tells more about it.

Well, it was a good thing we weren’t in Tallinn that evening. We learned on Friday morning, when Margit and Merle brought us the paper about the events you might have heard about in the news, that are going on in Estonia at the moment. It all started with a statue, in comemoration for the russian soldiers who died in the second world war to get estonia out of the Nazi regime. For the russian people, living in Estonia, representing a big minority, this monument is very important and they believe Estonia should be gratefull to Russia. On the other hand, the estonians have a grudge about this event, for this “freedom” from the nazi regime marked also the beginning of the russian occupation which lasted 50 years !
They believe that Nazi germany was falling appart anyway and that Russia only used this as an excuse to invade them.

This monument has been the cause of many disturbances in the country in recent years and the president, when running for the elections promised to take care of this problem, not by destroing it as originaly planned, but dispacing it in a cemetary where it would be more appropriate and less visible as a remnant of the soviet occupation.

The Riot which took place when they actually started displacing the statue, occured because of the importance of russian speaking people in Estonia and it shows that Estonia still has not solved the problem of these state-less russians which do not belong to russia nor Estonia. They want to stay in Estonia but do not want to become citizens, for they still despize the estonian culture as when the USSR occupied it.
It is hard to tell the outcome of this crisis, but such violence has not occured in this country since the independance (1991) and the 9th of may is supposed to be the celebration for the russian victory on the Nazis. Everybody is fearing more violence…
But don’t worry for us, we’re safe in Joelahtme, where the local news is that storks have finally arrived and trees are budding.

If you’ve followed the news, you might know that last sunday (22nd) was the first turn of the elections in France.
We followed the news on internet and had voted ourselves through our parents, but it was fun to see how the estonian news reported the event. They showed all our candidates, and talked about the arrival of electronic voting machines which have been put in place for the first time in some cities.
Now, in France, the interesting thing is that they have been mentioning Estonia ! Why ? Because Estonia was the first country to use a voting system through the internet. Indeed, though the country is small, it is in the constitution that each citizen has the right to access to the world of information which is offered by internet…

So, for those who would like to know more about how the estonian elections went on (March 4th 2007), here is a short video about it…