CALL FOR SPONSORS: Minority Olympics

Continuing the Spotlight on Asia theme...

A team of Baltic film-makers is planning to produce a documentary about the Tibetan Olympics scheduled for Dharamsala, India, in May, and they need some support for defraying expenses.

You may have come across Edward Lucas writing about the similarities between Baltic and Tibetan causes.

Well, there's more. The seminal Estonian punk-ethos band Vennaskond will be performing at the Games.

The Tibetan Olympics are also the culmination of a six-month protest march through India to the border of the Tibetan "autonomous zone". That sounds more than a little bit like the Baltic Chain/Way.

I don't want to reveal the people involved in the project, as it is a small team and many of the producers would like to cover the other, larger Olympics as well.

If you are, say, someone who holds the purse strings at a film company -- the blogosphere can be a small world -- or just are interested in the making of great art for a good cause, drop a line at my e-mail on the blog profile page.

RIP: Two journalists and prison camp survivors

The journalist Dith Pran died today, which means that both the Pol Pot survivor and his filmic alter ego Haing Ngor are now gone.

For most of us kids who were 12 at the same time as River Phoenix and Wil Wheaton, our first "R"-rated movie before Stand By Me tended to be something like the uncut version of Excalibur. For me it was The Killing Fields.

This was the film that, more than Red Dawn or Rambo II, defined communism for me, growing up as an Estonian-American. I was aware that in 1949, Estonia experienced its own variation on the Cambodian nightmare. I identified strongly with Holocaust films as well, of which there were too many to list, but in some sense the Cambodian story was even closer to home because the evil was perpetrated purely on ideological grounds.

I may not have known what a sanitary napkin was (which John Malkovich is using as a clean cold compress for a hangover at the beginning of the movie, before everything goes to hell) but I knew what the field of skulls meant.

Pran's 40-mile trek to freedom in Thailand, the forced labour fields, the killing fields, the desperate failed attempt to get Pran out of the country by official channels...these are all indelible images.

This is a movie self-assured anough to use "Imagine" in the soundtrack -- usually thought of as more of a hippie Vietnam-era anthem -- in its pure sense, without any appeasement agenda.

**

Just over 59 years ago, on March 25, Estonia experienced its own killing fields, in a variation on the Cambodian and Chinese versions that could be just as brutal. Tens of thousands of Estonian families were deported to Siberia, in a strange collectivist agricultural paroxysm that took place ostensibly in peacetime. Rural people were singled out, subjected to a witch hunt, with confessions of being a "kulak" extorted, and then deported.

Reconciliation and healing are only one part of the picture. As far as the truth goes, it might be fitting to remember the words of author, publicist and freedom fighter Enn Sarv, a victim of a 1944 deportation, who died this week at 87: “One thing is clear: in the future as well, the occupation must be termed an occupation, the deeds of those who committed inhumane acts must be punished and Estonia's independence and continuity as a state dating from 1918 must be preserved, unwaveringly.”

The hour that never was

Earth Hour was held internationally yesterday at 8pm local time. Households and businesses were asked to minimize non-essential electricity consumption.

I don't want to leap to conclusions on the basis of subjective impressions, but judging from the blazing lights I saw in Tallinn, I get the feeling that a lot of people saw it as a good excuse to make the transition to summer time a little early -- and turn clocks one hour forward at 8pm, to skip the damn thing.

Or that they just skipped it.

CATALOGUE: Things my wife has given me

For the purposes of this post, I'm not talking about such things as poise or a reason to live, but about physical objects. Goodies.

Yesterday history was made as TTT completed a hand-knitted sweater. "Every wife should make a hand-knitted sweater for a husband once in her life," she said back when the work started. And while I was surprised by the sentiment -- when a woman bears a child, you would think that in itself would get her off the hook for quite a while with regard to any further sense of "duty" -- it wasn't anything like, "A wife should bake cookies for her husband every day." I did not smell provocation. So I cautiously ventured my assent.

Knitting has always seemed more like engineering or 3-D modelling than something domestic. I have even done it -- my grandmother taught me how when I was about ten. I remember it was meditative, like hiking or hoeing in the sun, but I have forgotten how. My one regret is that I didn't use this opportunity to relearn the technology, as I had a front row seat to the making of the sweater.

And so the last six weeks have seemed simply arcane at times.

For example, "House" was on TV one typical night. Irascible growlings about obscure autoimmune quandaries from the TV would be punctuated by my wife calling out stitch numbers (or I assume they were stitch numbers) every now and then, which I would have to remember. You had to be there, I guess, but take it from me, it was surreal.

One day, I noticed she was sitting across the street in one of her girlfriends' cars, huddled over some problem of higher knitting. This would have looked strange to the Kaitsepolitsei, I'm sure.

In short, many minds and hours went into this one.

She only took my girth measurement. That was what a manual said to do. Apparently the husband population in Estonia is homogeneous and has the same height-width ratio. This prompted some concern later that the sleeves on the finished sweater might be too short. But they were not, confirming that perhaps I am not as freakishly skinny as I had thought.

**

Exhibit 2 is a guitar pick bought in Santa Fe. It's made of silver, like most things for sale in Santa Fe. I hadn't heard of a silver guitar pick before but the sound is shimmery and glossy when you get used to the mechanics. It is quite intricately done, and seems to depict cliffside dwellings.

Recipe by request

Some readers wanted to know how to make pascha or paskha -- the white mounds in the Easter photo. Check out nami-nami for more authoritative Easter recipes. But this was the best of the ones on the picture:

1 kg ricotta
200 g sugar
4 egg yolks
200 g butter, melted and cooled
400 mL heavy cream
100g slivered almonds
juice and grated zest from one lemon
100 mL raisins
2 tsp vanilla extract

If this were a baseball lineup, the heart of the order would have some major league power. You might want to have this after a lighter meal, unless you're one of those Estonian women with racing metabolism who can eat a kg of ice cream without even gaining the kg.

Mix first three ingredients, thoroughly, then incorporate the rest. Pour into mould lined with cheesecloth. Let drip-dry 24 hours.* Eat. To savour, confiscate fair share and hide from wife with racing metabolism. Gets better and better, peaks at about 5 days.

We also had a killer "Genovese" lasagne today which I take complete credit for. Had some leftover pesto, mixed it into a runny Bechamel made with kefir and lots of nutmeg (I know, and it looked like hell, but it worked out great). Cracked an egg into it, then assembled it with sauteed courgette and onion, and a second vegetable layer of halved cherry tomatoes with Estonian cheese, Cheddar and finally Parmesan and bread crumbs on top. Tangy and somehow not heavy. Compatible with paskha for dessert.

* The sweet liquid can also be enjoyed. In general it is enjoyed by the same kinds of people who drink pickle brine and sauerkraut juice.

Precedent

I hope I never have to go through a divorce. Just saying, hypothetically. Imagine if I started drinking and writing about petty disputes in this blog or running a poll about family issues. Yuck.

That's what makes it hard to defend an Estonian writer named Olavi Ruitlane who has been ordered by an Estonian county court to close his blog, right here on blogspot, for insulting his ex-wife.

Ruitlane is a moderately established under-40 writer. He classifies as a kind of Bukowskian figure possessed of savage wit, who has written one excellent, important novel about what it was like in the Soviet army. He could write the Estonian Factotum. But this blog certainly isn't good times, not even in a crazy-bad satirical sense. Very little of the Estonian "poison pen blog" scene is. One mean-spirited example is Inno and Irja. I don't really get it.

But is Ruitlane's blog really libellous?

So naturally the word on everyone's lips today is "precedent" -- in a year that has already had ministers like Rein Lang saying that online comment privileges should be reeled in, and court cases about free speech online. And of course more distant echoes from Denmark (cartoons) and Netherlands (films).

The next word that comes to mind is "overturned", which the Tartu County Court ruling hopefully will be.

I'm trying to get my hands on a copy of the ruling. I'm confused about what authority the Tartu County court would have to order something removed from blogspot, and how they would enforce it.

I know one thing -- I wouldn't ever take down my blog if ordered to -- on pain of fines, or worse. If it plays, it stays.

Estonia leads the way - again?

Is Toomas Hendrik Ilves the first head of state to announce he will not attend the Beijing Olympic Games? It appears so. Kudos in any case on the decision.

To the best of my knowledge, the announced no-gos have been as follows: various groups and factions last year, Prince Charles (who of course is not a head of state) last month, Ilves on Monday March 24th, and now Czech President Vaclav Klaus today, hopefully to be followed by more.

Some more influential leaders have made ambiguous comments and stolen the headlines by in fact putting off a decision.

According to AP, "French President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested Tuesday (a day after Ilves office's comment) that a boycott of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was a possibility — the first world leader to raise the prospect of punishing China over its ongoing crackdown in Tibet."

Hein? It's all very well, and the mention of Tibet is appreciated, but is it not that this is just a finger in the wind?

Ilves's spokesman didn't link the decision expressly to Tibet but rather to a busy schedule. A busy schedule in August, though, in Estonia -- you can read between the lines. It could be that he merely prefers the fresh air at Ärma talu to the polluted air in China. But it's reasonably clear that this is a stern political message, and as strong as they come for ceremonial office-holders.

In an apparent bid to foil attempts by the world to treat the Baltics as a unified political space, Latvian President Valdis Zatlers announced the day after Ilves that he would be going to Beijing, and his PM followed suit. Just to spice it up, I guess. I hope they don't think they're going to get a container terminal that way.

We'll see what the Lithuanians will do.

In case anybody's counting yet, that's at least 3 leaders (Bush, Zatlers and the president of the Philippines) who will be schmoozing in Beijing, and 2 who will not.

And 1, Sarko, who is spearheading the moral battle for the consciences of the rest of the undecideds, while straddling the fence.

Changes and corrections

Changes to Linkscape:

- Achenblog will be delisted. Something has happened to Joel since he bought a cheap digital camera. It can be funny, but it's not why I listed it. And...there's also the fact that he never writes about Estonia! I mean what gives -- here's a successful syndicated columnist and book author who will famously tackle any subject, and what, not even a "Economic Tiger" formula story for the Washington Post? Kaua võib?

+ I'm repeating myself here, but here is how pic and text integration should be done, for the record. Of course, it helps to be a professional photographer who looks like Owen Wilson and make a lot of goofy faces. And to write about Estonia.

+ Speaking of integration of words and pics, here's one of the many blogs that happened to have been started soon after the riots (like Blue, Black and White Alert). He's used an official Estonian tourist slogan as the title (but why not, it's the best of the batch with its transitive-intransitive verbplay); he sure can write some copy himself. Incidentally, he has taught himself Estonian in a matter of a few years to the point where he can apparently translate to pay the bills -- wow.

+ I remove blogs if they aren't active, for let's say two months. But I monitor them all the time for signs of life. I notice Staatusreport is active again. If you delve into the archives, there's a Peru travelogue. And here's another South American odyssey in progress, just to make us all envious of people who get paid to travel and blog.

- I'm wondering about this whole distinction I make between "fora and agora" and ordinary punters. What was I thinking? This can only breed resentment from miscategorized people on both sides.

CORRECTIONS TO OTHER CONTENT: The company that runs the northeast passenger train line in Estonia is Southwest (www.edel.ee), not Southeast (www.kagu.ee), which is where you go if you're a hobo and need a quick loan.

Broom of the System was not David Foster Wallace's senior thesis, but I didn't make it up -- I heard it misreported somewhere.

Snow freakout

A big snowstorm has been lashing Estonia for the last 20 hours and is only now starting to die down in Tallinn. Winds have not been too bad, but accumulations have been 8-14 inches.

* Everybody in the capital has forgotten how to drive in the snow. I saw two accidents from the window of the cafe where I was working.

* Then again, there are four inches on most major arteries. Naturally, just as in a famous 1990s snowstorm where even trams were affected and mayor Robert Lepikson was taken to task, snowbound members of various parties have already managed to write Internet op eds implicating current mayor Savisaar. I swear these things must be pre-written.

* The national weather service has issued a forecast of additional accumulations in cm. Though not in inches, this is still a very American feature, first time I have ever seen this in Estonia. Usually no information is provided on expected amount of snowfall.

I'll bet by next year, people will start stocking up on batteries and schools will close. The metamorphosis of Estonia into a snow-fearing Western country will be complete, and studded tires will have been banned.

* Temps of up to +10 and rain for later this week. Could be soggy in the south.

Car resolution

It's looking like a Škoda Fabia Combi with a 70 hp diesel (for environmental considerations and fuel costs). It's huge for a supermini/subcompact, as big as the same company's Octavia used to be and almost as long as the '92 Subaru Legacy wagon back in the States.

Because it would be on an operating lease, I was thinking of a bare-bones "Classic", but the salesman convinced us with typical Estonian passive sales technique -- and in fact arguing against many of the features -- that the "Ambiente" would be better.

So basically a kind of Volkswagen. The only question is whether the 70 hp, which is also not quite as efficient as the 80 hp version, will get us up a hill in Slovakia, in case the world does not collapse and we take a family road trip to the Continent one of these summers.

Je'n les connais pas, ces femmes

Anyone else getting French Skype spam?

It started last night at 7:30 pm when "sexy femme arabe" popped up and asked "Tu es enfin de retour?" She wasn't wearing a veil anywhere in her profile picture, if you know what I mean.

I thought this was highly compromising. Here I am, just back from the eastern border and sitting at home, and some dusky dame with derrière en defile is already asking if I'm on the way back yet.

Then, today, "petite femme webcam" stopped by to ask: "Salut, t'es occupe?"

I guess the proper response would be: "Oui, j'e mari."

Odd things have been happening since I got back from Narva. Whenever WiFi signal strength is very low, Windows on Mac is likely to do a system dump with blue screen of death. Basically it means I can no longer have WiFi enabled when in transit.

Occasionally XP wants to install hardware, even though nothing has been plugged ito the USB.

It's not as simple as a virus or adware.

I smell the hand of Putin behind this. I knew those shots of the river were too placid to be for real. But I will get by. He can't intimidate me.

I had a dream

...that I was received by Barack and Hillary. In the internal logic of the dream, it was the most self-evident fact that the two should be together. I'm not sure if they were running mates or what. I don't think they had been elected yet but there was energy in the air, a feeling of a rest before a final push. It brought back memories (internally to the dream, obviously) of long fraternal evenings at cafe tables in civil rights days, of summer gatherings at Lennart Meri's house, back when the Estonian state was young.

I was underdressed for the occasion -- in fact I had missed a sleeve -- but it didn't seem to matter. We rapped and reasoned on matters. It felt like I was talking to my resident advisor in a dorm, except the space had high ceilings and was clearly a reception area.

One thing that struck me was that the dream-Barack had zero tolerance for even a hint of adulation and fawning.

I don't know where this stuff comes from, and certainly I have not made as much as a dream-endorsement, but I awoke feeling fresh and invigorated.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter... from chilly and snowy Tallinn.

A little-known fact is that Easter egg coloring was invented in Estonia -- to keep the white eggs used for the Easter egg hunt from being lost until spring in the snow.

No, the truth about that is that my mother-in-law was actually very perplexed upon hearing that her daughter's fiance's family "hid eggs" back in the States -- but to her credit she has obliged every single year since then. This year I believe it was my father-in-law who did the hiding of the eggs -- or a bunny with size 11 footwear.

The joy of the hunt:



Evidence of an attempt by wild bunnies to colour Easter eggs:



Three different kinds of pascha -- ricotta, "Czar's" and "King's" -- and a cake:



I do think the Eastern Orthodox Church has the right idea in ordaining that their Easter holiday is usually later, when it's warmer. I think the official computation is that it is held on the first Sunday after the 14th day of the lunar cycle starting after Mar. 21 (Julian) -- except for years when "it is just too damn cold and un-spring-like", in which case it is held a month later. It all started when the Venerable Bede's "Annual Egg Roll and Social" devolved into a snowball fight on the territory of the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow in the early 8th century.

Goodbye for this time, Narva

You can only take so many grey five-storey apartment buildings, and I realized there was a good Estonian expression to describe the prospect of giving Narva any more semi-charitable face time and spending my tourist dollar there -- trying to make gold bread from manure sitt.. Narva isn't a cesspool -- that is not what I was thinking -- but time's arrow is irreversible and the best that can be hoped for is to follow it full circle, and that something completely different will happen here, maybe in another 17 years.

There are some proactive options for reinventing Narva, too, most of them artificial, like moving a ministry here and a) subsidizing the move for public servants or b) launching a bullet commuter train from Tallinn. Or building an amusement park/resort complex.

As for building on existing features, the Kreenholm district, visited on the last day, has potential. If the factory ever goes out of business, and leaving aside the impact this would have on the local economy (people would probably absorb the blow stoically), I know a bunch of artists who would like to live there. With its brick architecture, the area looks a little like a college campus. This is the main building:



Indeed people are already taking steps in the direction of breathing new life into the tsarist-era buildings:



I wish they could stick one of those Reconstructed WIth EU Funds signs in front of this manor in Narva-Jõesuu, though:



I'll do the final instalment of the NE tour -- all you ever wanted to know about oil shale --a little bit later.

Roads are extraordinarily bad this year with the temperature fluctuating around zero. The bus ride back west was rough and long. The only domestic train to Tallinn is early in the morning. Just about every time the bus stopped, though, I was able to pick up WiFi. Even in Aseri.

The situation with truckers waiting in line at the border is a little better than it was in the summer. The last truck parked on the side of the road was at Vodava -- a line-up of only 10 km or so.

All quiet (sort of) on the EU External Border

LANGUAGE INSPECTION: The audio and video split

Looking at and listening in Narva, I would say that it is functionally bilingual, but what's interesting is where the split has occurred and how clean it is.

1) Estonian dominates the visual aspect. There is very little Cyrillic to be seen. Misguided high commissioners and Russian officials take note: this has nothing to do with the stipulations of the Language Act, as nothing forbids parallel Russian or English or Esperanto text on a billboard, as long as it is also in Estonian.***

Even public safety messages ("buckle up") are in Estonian.

The pic below is an exception -- a new ad by an advocacy group that is quite effective in pointing up that cannabis can be psychologically addictive. Of course, the message is universally clear -- don't use fish hooks as roach clips -- but is the wordplay lost in the Russian? ****



I walked around the city for an hour and a half and I counted only three (3) signs that had more Russian than Estonian. One was a practically handwritten sign in the "old town" that said Repairs. There was a blackboard advertising the day's special at Salvadore, an swanky restaurant. And a mom and pop store had some decal text on the window that could have been there since the Soviet era. And most ads were only in Estonian. Even Rimi supermarket price tags, special offers, in-store newsletters, same deal. Same at Selver..

2) Audio, on the other hand, is all in Russian -- TV channels (usually a TV is providing background sound while you eat). Only three Estonian channels and maybe one Finnish station. Music -- usually a "Gypsy stomp" (think flamenco with a disco beat -- minor descending bass line to the dominant). And of course everyone speaks Russian assuming it is understood.

**

I don't know if this split is fair or why it is so clean, but apparently it works. I mean, no advertiser is going to spend $$$ on Estonian text about campaign offers and casino specials no one can read, right?

There are some possibilities, none of which really fit perfectly a) big corporate giants like Rimi have just one strategy for Estonia and don't care, people need to buy food one way or another b) local Russians read and orient in written Estonian perfectly well, even though spoken language may be lagging c) advertising agencies and companies think in error that the language law is stiffer than it is and that advertisements can only be in Estonian... d) local Russophones get their consumer information from audio channels...

(I'm OK with the split, so I have been less militant about speaking Estonian than in the past. I do usually favour Estonian, then add in a lower tone of voice, halting Russian. A little like the norm for local government signs in majority Russophone towns where you have the Estonian and then the Russian in a smaller text size. :))

*** Section 18 says "Foreign languages shall be used for forwarding information to consumers of goods and services and in work-related communication pursuant to the procedure established by the Government of the Republic" and the procedure is Regulation No. 32 from 1996 --

****I didn't see any signs of drug addiction or AIDS, but I wasn't really looking

Narva

I was in Narva 10 years ago but I realize I have no recollection of the way the city looked. I have a dim memory of Peter's Square and the fortress but little else.

This is a good thing. I was kind of dreading writing about Narva in "now and then" terms, or now and "way back then" terms. with the temptation to impose the language issue on everything.



Then again, it seems locals are conscious about demographics in a wry and healthy -- and perhaps prescient manner. It's only 96% Russian, and who knows what the long-term dynamics could be. It's the EU, and Narva-Jõesuu is already marketing itself as the next Riviera. If not the Chinese, then perhaps southern Europeans.

Pretty Narva isn't. But not unforgivingly bleak, either. Visually, it's the place on this tour that is most like Tallinn so far. If I had to desctibe it to someone quickly, I would tell them to picture a part of the 20th century part of central Tallinn -- like Gonsiori street. Take away the Old Town, and put an early inspiration for the Fahle building --



-- and a international border checkpoint right on Freedom Square, and you have something close to Narva.

It's also a little like a theatre stage set for a town. It is drenched in history, but there are a lot of chalk marks, as it were. Now and then you run into a prop or a sign to remind you that you are right smack in the middle of history, even though the old buildings are missing:



**

I'm staying on the outskirts of the non-existent Old Town. I had to pick the most Swedish building I could find -- the Central Hotel. Just for some different flavour from the past few days.

The woman at the hotel reception had a lighter Estonian accent than mine (though she like a few other native Russian-speakers I have talked to grew progressively more shy about her language, for no good reason). She said that many Estonians come to Narva. "Viljandi, Pärnu..." Supposedly half business and half tourism.

Fantastic if true. I don't know anyone who has been to Narva in years.

SPA or sanatorium?

Estonia has a long tradition of sanatoriums -- curative resorts on the coast where you go to get well or feel well.

Some people just go to relax, often families with children; many people consent to be covered in local natural resources -- goos, muds, even petroleum byproducts. If there was a way to work oil shale into a procedure, they would.

About ten years ago, Estonia developed SPA culture. Spelled locally in all caps (like an acronym for Special Procedure Area), the SPAs are, I believe, a premiumized version of the sanatorium, with new-fangled procedures like cold therapy and salt chambers.

The main hotel in Narva-Jõesuu is exactly halfway between sanatorium and SPA. In fact the website calls it a sanatorium but the signs and flags say SPA hotel. It has all the goos, but doesn't fully deliver the goods.

I asked the affable and intelligent gent at reception which it was and he admitted he didn't know. He asked, rhetorically: what is a SPA, anyway?

The sanatorium is clearly moving in an upmarket direction, and expects to open a new sauna complex this summer, but there are some real archaeological finds.

On the second floor, in the reading room, is the complete Library of the Inter-Kolkhoz Sanatorium. It's interesting enough if you read Estonian, Russian and Finnish, but I'm reasonably sure the last time it was stocked was in the 1990s.

Registration for procedures is still completely paper-based. I wonder if this will ever change. When I wanted to use the weight room, I had to ask for the key in exchange for my yellow hotel card. Then a family with a small kid came down to the weight room, so I made some room for them and came upstairs to swim a few laps. But I had to return the gym room key first to get the yellow card back, then hand the card right back to proceed to pool. At times like this, I desperately want my fellow human to catch my eye with an "Aw, fuck it" look and wave me through with a smile or, as in the US South, a "you go right ahead, honey". But the person just took back the card as if it was a completely new document and made a cryptic marking in her book.

I did get the feeling that there was a greater amount of waving through and winking, compared to Toila Sanatorium in 2004.

I'll still bet that if I left a paperback in the former Inter-Kolkhoz Library, as vacationers are wont to do, it would be removed pending approval for a date stamp.


Narva-Jõesuu Sanaroorium: $70 gets you bed, breakfast and morning pool and sauna in what would be a three-star hotel in the actual Riviera, with four-star elemnents (the bar) here and there.

Good: Staff friendly, not into nickel and diming. Immaculate on the outside, at least three bars of WiFi everywhere.

Bad: Smokers have separate facility, as required by law, but on the same corridor as the rooms. Dining options unimaginative.

Constructive tip: At meals, two staff members stand at attention by the hot food buffet instead of busing tables and being pleasantly obsequious. It would be culturally inappropriate to expect a splash on balsamico on the tomato wedges and thick cucumber slices that come with every meal, but some variation would be in order.

Long Beach, Estonia

Narva-Jõesuu, the start of Estonia's longest unbroken stretch of sandy beach. This could have gone on for a very long time, 50 minutes with the wind.


While wandering around the town looking for the intricate wood trim the resort town is famed for, I came across this cute little cafe...


People were kicking it old style inside, though. This kept on happening. I wish they had been on my train.


Yes! Intricate wood trim.


The northeasternmost patch of land in Estonia. That is Russia there, across the river. There's a border guard tower behind me and a boat landing to the right, but it's pretty low-key. Though for some reason I didn't feel like photographing -- it was strange to walk to the end of a country without being stopped. I thought I saw some smoke from what might have been a native encampment or outpost on the Russian side, but that was it.


Neither demographic change, nor the shadow of the ugly building, shall stay us from flying our flag.


The official brochure. "Estonian Riviera" is not too far off and clearly the resort town's star is rising again, but aren't the stylistics of the picture leaning in a whole different direction?

Rakvere-Narva train

Estonia has decided to be a bus country, but trains are a perfectly serviceable and inexpensive way of going places -- and punctual, too. It's too bad there's only one a day on this itinerary, and it gets to Narva at 9pm, when activities are limited. So I'll write about Narva later. I'm going to hop on a bus to Narva-Jõesuu and come back to the the broad avenues on the way back.

Trains used to be sociable affairs, so I packed a “picnic basket” in a plastic bag, just like old times. If anyone offers me some "Moskva" sausage or chokeberry wine, I can reciprocate, and hopefully enrich en-train zakuski with some new ideas.

I have bread. I have a head of raw garlic -- what would a train ride be without the communal clove? Tomato and cucumber, of course. But here's what no one else will have: Vici Norwegian-style fish cakes -- a real steal at $1.20 for a pack of six. A little salty but 30% cod and no preservatives.

But I'm starting to realize that in fact there is going to be no one else on this train ride. The Estonian kids who boarded with me in Rakvere to visit their grandmother in Jõhvi have left, and a guy wth a collapsible bicycle got off in Kiviõli. It's just me. I'm just going to type what comes into my head -- a train Chautauqua. Think of it as the guy with the fish cakes and garlic rambling on to himself.

**

I was actually a little sorry to leave Rakvere. I had a feeling I could have squeezed out another worthwhile day here -- there were two old churches and a museum I didn't get to -- and still not have had a bad meal or service experience. Rakvere can’t be confused with a Baltic resort town, but it doesn’t waste what it has. I like what they have done with the central market square, for example, with modern art cum fountains and sculptures, plus it's surrounded by just about every existing retail store other than a Rimi. Downtown Tallinn doesn't have that.

Something needs to be done with a few blocks that appear to be consistent with old war damage and have the usual collection of 1960s housing and .vacant lots, but I can’t think of anything else that was ugly. Old hardwood trees, parks, and lots of big buildings make it a restful place. Maybe an "Elva of the north" would be closer than the Tartu comparison.

**

Rakvere is on the main Tallinn to Russia train line but interestingly there were no signs to the train station, although everything else from “Central Library” to “Oak Grove”. is covered by new tourist signs. I made the relatively uninteresting long walk to the station twice today. I had had a bad experience in the Netherlands about a year ago coming in on the train from Schiphol. They had recently changed the rules and I was nearly fined 40 euros for not having a ticket when I boarded. The evening train to Narva was a bit late in the evening, so I wanted to be sure. But at 3pm, the doors were locked.

It does open for an hour before the train leaves. There were two doors inside:



They were not facilities for mehed and naised or ticket cashiers. This is a place to stand and talk about what the hell is behind the doors, while waiting for the one thru-train per day. I took a picture and then went outside to pee on the freight tracks.

**

Those who live in the Baltics probably know that Estonia's railway policy has been schizophrenic.

Beides the long-term trend of disappearing lines and schedules, the long and terrible privatization saga has bred a number of wacky results, directly or indirectly. For example:

1) the northeast line which I am riding on is operated by a company called Southeast. Fair enough: the intercity line to Tartu in the south is the company’s flagship and pride; this is sort of understandable.

Less so the fact that 2) if you want to take a train from Tallinn to, say, the capital of Latvia, you have to take a train to the last stop on the line, Valga, then disembark, walk across town to the Latvian side of town and wait for a train to Riga. Remember, these are countries with the same track gauge, and don’t even have full passport control anymore.

3) The American company that bought Estonia's railway infrastructure in the 1990s found out somewhat later that its freight division had to compete unfairly with Russian free agents transport companies. And -- surprise of surprises -- guess whose side the new Estonian government took? As a result (to oversimplify a bit) the freight division was hemorrhaging cash, which the infrastructure division could have invested (and was in fact was supposed to invest under the privatization agreement) into the tracks.

The last one doesn’t matter, now. The solution on the part of the Estonian government was to drive both the Americans and the Russians out. Which I guess is elegant enough – if someone is going to preside over the long decline of the Estonian rails, let it be the Estonians themselves.

My personal testimony is this: Back in the American-led consortium era, Eesti Raudtee happened to be a good translation client. They – the American CEO and the British CFO, I believe -- ordered press clippings weekly for years, so I was sorry to see them go, if only for that reason. Though they developed an unhealthy fixation with articles on Savisaar in later years, my impression was that they were truly concerned about small town life (or at least how they were perceived in Tapa or Jõgeva) even thogh, let’s face it, they did not invest enough into fixing tracks, building crossings and avoiding fatalities. Then again, things were made difficult for the Americans every step of the way, incdluing by the Estonian executive branch – economics minister Savisaar of course, but Reform Party elements as well.

It was easy to make the American investors look bad in small town Estonia.. Railways are evocative, emotional things, especially if you live in a medium-sized town off the main highway, or Tapa, a town that only exists because of the rails..

There was a grain of truth behind the populist criticisms, too. It also didn’t help that the Americans even looked the part of early 20th century profiteers -- suspenders, spectacles and cigars and all. It didn’t help that they had brought in a bunch of fancy, heavy new US locomotives that pounded the hell out of the Soviet-era tracks. There was also a spate of fatal trck-train collisions in the first years of this decade, caused mainly by bad drivers, but still…

PHOTOS: A walk in Rakvere

My proposal for the official city government letterhead -- well, for serious business, anyway, like summonses and debt notices. Paper: light grey with the contact details in white on the bottom. The design could include the castle as well, just outside of the frame to the right.

A Ukrainian tagine of lamb (check ethnoculinary terminology) au gratin with fresh thyme. This was excellent and was had at Slaavi köök (Rakvere's version of "Rasputin"), $10.

A nice B&B on Lai called Art Cafe. Bed is on one side ($60 for a double), breakfast ($5)is across the street in the cafe. Small rooms in a loft but the interior materials are on the high side of four-star.

Folk whimsy. If Astrid Lindgren or Edgar Valter lived in Rakvere, this would be home. This was on the ridgeline walk back from the oak forest south of the castle.

The area lining Pikk is on the side of a glacial esker, which is a serious ridge for Estonia. As a result you have these vistas, complex and terraced for a town of under 20,000.

Tarvanpää

It feels great to be out of Tallinn.

Swedish tourists are declining in Estonia, Äripäev reported yesterday, because they find Estonia "too similar", and hence boring. They're probably spoiled or blind to detail. The positive side is that even if you live in Tallinn, you can take a refreshing city/town break an hour or two away -- without the hassle of travelling to weary old Stockholm.

In fact, if you're heading into northeast Estonia as I am, the joke is that you can even go to Paris -- there is a village by that name in a very scenic part of West-Virumaa.

I don't mean to write propaganda for the Tourism Board. I'm usually pretty blase about Estonia's microcharms (sometimes I even ask, a la the guy in Flasher's joke, do you have another homeland for me) -- but Rakvere, a county seat east of Tallinn, has impressed me with its vitality and charm.

This is a Monday evening in March, mind you, but there's life here. If I lived here and was, say, 20, I don't think I would tempted to pay 90 kroons for the hour ride into Tallinn, not every Friday night.

**

Rakvere town is at the foot of a highland region, the guidebooks will tell you.

You always have to allow for local standards when you hear Balts talk geographical relief ("Sigulda, the Switzerland of Latvia" and "Saaremaa's Grand Canyon" offer neither Alpine scenery nor burro rides). But there is no doubt -- there is a lofty atmosphere here, a feeling of being on a high plateau.

Especially on a day like this, standing on the famous castle hilltop, with light snow falling from a silver sky. The great statue of an aurochs watching over the road from Tallinn. The aurochs is what the bison was to the American West. I understand they have a small test herd that maintains the impressive expanse around the ramparts, and they sell aurochs jerky here in summer, when the castle is open, but I might be wrong.

Prayer flags flutter from one house, maybe in solidarity with Tibet.

I was sitting earlier at the Rakvere Theatre Cafe, which is lovely and built on a hillside. It's a little like Cafe Shakespeare at the Vanemuine in Tartu, if that cafe got a interior facelift.

There is more than that parallel with Tartu. The motto of the town says it is full of power. In any case, where else can you go that is an hour from Tallinn and has the soul of Tartu?

It's a more northerly sword-in-limestone power rather than the alluvial, fertile spirit of Tartu, though.

**

Like Tartu, which I believe is 75-80% Estonian, they're proud of the fact here that Rakvere is 85% Estonian, which is impressive for a town halfway between Maardu and Sillamäe. The Estonian population of 17,000 or so has stayed at the same level since independence. Interestingly enough, my family connection with Rakvere is my grandfather, who was half Ukrainian and one-quarter Russian -- yet Estonian.

REVIEW: The Grease Is Flowing

American kitsch meets...American public library architecture?

TGIF in Tallinn is pretty abysmal as a dining experience.

We enjoyed Baby Back Ribs out in Tabasalu a year or two ago, so the hope was that the centre had got a new kid-friendly American style brews-and-BBQ place. And maybe that elusive grail of food in the Baltics -- a decent burger.

Alas, the best I can advise is this: TGIF does have coffee for $1.50, which is a rarity, and a kid's menu quesadilla for $3.90, which was the best thing we ordered. So if you smuggle in some hamburgers from McDonald's or Hesburger (I recommend Hesburger's version of the Fish Mac, which is made with salmon), TGIF may be halfway acceptable if you're really hungry.

Just remember to tip your waitstaff for the burgers you smuggle in -- they are doing their best, and ours even spoke heavily accented Estonian as a second language after heavily accented English.

If you really want to know, here's the TGIF burger postmortem.

The burgers (regular, BBQ or Jack Daniels glaze) are all around $12.50 and come with about 15 French fries each. Some thought has been put into assembling the burgers from readymade units, so it's surprising it took more than 15 minutes to get them to table.



The burger looked good for about 5 seconds. But the bun, which I'd say had been frozen and thawed at least three times, started falling apart as soon as the autofocus clicked in.

The quarter kilo or so of beef in the burger tastes like it is taken from venerable cattle that died of old age. Beef like this is very much like a classic mutton experience from the 1970s -- it's full flavour, and you can taste whatever passes for lanolin in cattle.

The bacon tasted like honey-glazed ham. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't crispy, as claimed on the manu. At $12.50 a burger, false advertising isn't acceptable anymore. Incidentally, even Hesburger's burger pictures hanging outside its fast food restaurant are honest.

The tomato and lettuce had obviously been sandwiched between plastic wrap as individual portions sitting in the freezer or fridge. I know -- the heat from the burger (precooked, frozen and then charbroiled) is supposed to melt any ice left in the tomato and lettuce. But then you need to provide a way for the meltwater to exit the burger.

The bun failed catastrophically when I was halfway through, and since the meat wasn't good, I stopped there.

Cars I cee'd today

Went car shopping today.

While I am usually all for market selection and capitalism, sometimes I wish that car companies were more like media companies -- that you had one Google and maybe two or three other major manufacturers, all of them on the brink of merging with the first.

Instead there's at least 20 brands. All of them I associate vaguely with quality. There's not a Yugo among them. Even though it would be fun to laugh at Skoda, even this turns out to be a respectable company, like an Eastern cousin of VW, nor do the trams and trolleys Skoda made for the city of Tallinn ever break down.

All of the brands have a minivan type of car, now also known as a leisure activity vehicle, and a couple other names, none of which I can remember off the top of my head.



All of them are similarly priced. None is especially unique, as far I can see. One will be 10 cm longer, or there will be a couple mpg difference. They're all efficient, with the diesel models pushing 60 mpg. They all pretty have an jet-plane-like snout and a big ugly back end, almost like the door of a house. They're a little too high and the clearnance is a little low, but on the inside they could be fun family cars.

While we were driving back, my wife pointed out cars -- "look, there's a Citroen Berlingo" (this being the car-LAV we are leaning toward). One in fact turned out to be a Ford Tourneo.

The Berlingo is made in partnership with Peugeot, which markets its own version, called the Partner.

It seems it would be less confusing just to merge. Instead of the Berlingo, the Partner and (Renault) Kangoo, just have a Berlinpargoo.

This is another phenomenon -- proliferation of silly names. What on earth possessed the French to name a car after that foreign capital, anyway?

West coast fishery collapse

Bad news, worst in 40 years, for our favourite naturally red fish....Not so topical here, where most people have only tasted farm-raised, but an enduring memory from our stay in Oregon last summer.

If the mighty chinook is hurting, things are badly rotten somewhere. No suspects so far, this time.

Cultural observation #24

(Tomorrow is official Estonian Language Day)

When it comes to untranslatable expressions, the scale is often tipped toward Estonian, which has many words that don't have any one single counterpart in English.

Unlike the case of the legend about the number of Inuktitut words for snow, these aren't compound words I'm talking about.

For example, one that should be very salient this winter, with its lack of crisp, clear weather (and snow), is "karge". It's an odd one, often given as "harsh" but usually meaning "clean", "cold" and "spare", all at the same time. It's a little overused: if you hear the word "Nordic" ("Põhjamaa, põhjamaine"), about half the time you will soon hear the word "karge". And I would say it's often used as an excuse for why someone skimped on decorations -- as in, this white functionalist villa isn't a boring box, it's karge (representing a deep-seated quality of reticence that comes from our Nordic identity).

Speaking of architecture, another useful untranslatable word is "kammerlik", often used for such things as small but elegant Old Town apartments. It translates as a "tight little package", "refined" and "intimate" all at the same time -- kind of like the visual equivalent of chamber music.

Someone was just making the case that the word for nature, "loodus", is another untranslatable. Because if you say "Estonia has a very beautiful nature", you sound a little like Borat, right?

Actually this one is more of a missing concept in Estonian -- there aren't good words for "wilderness" and "great outdoors", so "nature" does double duty.

As in England and most of Europe, "wilderness" isn't really something you find in Estonia. The only true wildernesses in Estonia are, apart from some rocky islets, wetlands, and there you would just say the local word for bog or mire.

Environmentalism in Estonia has flirted with preservationism in some eras, but many typical countryside landscapes (as well as the most biologically diverse ones) are tall-grass meadows that are also shaped by humans and grazing, like, I suppose, the balds in the southern Appalachians of the US. The name for these is yet another untranslatable: pärandmaastik, heritage landscape.

FIVE YEARS ON: Man gone wrong

One of the great journalistic puzzles of our time is the case of Christopher Hitchens, who is so right about many things, but so wrong about Iraq.

When he started writing his hawkish pieces for Vanity Fair, I had hoped that it was a momentary lapse of reason, or devil's advocacy, but there it is again, a syndicated column. He's down deep in his hole, now, but over the sound of his untiring shovel, his argument comes across perfectly clearly, unmistakable Hitchens with that dry Screwtape edge.

This is a man who just last year wrote a brilliant rebuttal to religious dogmas (dismiss it as "atheist" if you will and snarl at the unnecessarily provocative title, but it is more subtle than that). Yet he has swallowed the official line, hook, bait and sinker, when it comes to Islamofascism.

I get the feeling that Hitchens believes in Al-Qaeda, in other words.

I don't believe in Al-Qaeda, in the sense of John Lennon not believing in certain things in "God". To me, Al-Qaeda's a concept by which we measure...our pain, over 9/11, yes -- but also the size of our defence budget. It's awfully convenient for a lot of things.

As of 2008, it's probably a moot point. We have probably willed Al-Qaeda into existence if it didn't really exist before. The average 14-year-old in Indonesia probably believe there is an organization with a working by-law and business cards.

But I grant it probably started innocently enough. One combatant probably said to another combatant, somewhere under a date palm, around the time of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, "well, let's go back to the base, Hassan", meaning the city centre, and a mic picked it up and transmitted it to some excitable CIA operative not particularly skilled in Arabic, who latched on to it through the chatter: The Base -- must be code for an elaborate secret organization, a maze of tunnels, the Old Man of the Mountain himself behind it...!" Or any number of variations.

What a great name, only inferior to "The Organization" or "Emmanuel Goldstein".

So in the most banal sense, Al-Qaeda has to be tied to everything, even secular regimes, because all things have a "base" or "centre". Except for US policy, where (I just have to bring David Byrne in here for a weird cameo, because talk of surges and permanent war is just that weird) "the centre...is missing". A screaming black hole.

**

Like Hitchens, I wrestled with the "actuarial numbers", too. All through early 2003, I had a debate with a guy in defence contracting in Houston about whether net lives would be saved by an invasion compared to the status quo under Saddam. We were like Stalinist accountants going over the statistics.

I was pretty well convinced that, no matter how evil the Saddam regime, people were not being exterminated there like they were in east-central Africa. For all of its astounding hypocrisy, political murders, and such shameful things as its female literacy figures, this was a place with a semblance of culture, with museums and cafes. There is no way over a million people would have been killed, even under sanctions.

The cost of freedom is buried in the ground, I concede -- but it doesn't hang over things permanently like a red splattered mist, as it still does outside the Green Zone.

How do you "cost" the loss of peace? How do you cost empty places at tables? They aren't actually un-costable, but they have so many repercussions that it boggles the mind. Some people are still picking up the pieces after a peacetime ferry disaster 14 years ago; how might things be going in Iraq? War and peace, that is what is truly apples and oranges.

Hitchens's claim that all this havoc is offset by our newfound experience we can apply to battling terrorism on other battlefields, is very weak. All I can say is that Hitchens can work on the consolidated balance sheet for "Good, Inc.", but meanwhile we still need to try to do the books on the failed subsidiary known as Enduring Freedom.

Who are his "terrorists" -- are they a special class of combatants, like hoplites or something? No, there are just poorer and poorer armies, until finally you get to the level of underground cells, then to individual members of a resistance who fight with their claws if they have to.

What is driving them is not a James Bond fantasy about a secret base called The Base, but the ideology of poverty and ignorance.

NE Estonia trip update; adventures in the Raadiomaja

My trip is still going to happen -- just a few days later.

As I try to get myself in the right mood for a slog fom one train station to the next, or more likely, bus station, I was just reading today again how public services are closing en masse in the countryside. This is a serious trend. About one-tenth of Estonia's initial number of some 500 post offices closed in 2006, this year about another one-fifth will shut down. Today the yellow press wrote about a settlement in the NE that was picked as "village as the year" in 2006 that now lacks a kindergarten and general store and is set to lose its post office this summer.

Something similar happened to small towns in America in the 1970s -- except there's no four-lane commercial strips with chains, at least not outside of smaller Estonian towns. Where do the people go? Are they driving 50 km to a Selver supermarket? Have they moved to the city?

Quality of life is quite good in Estonia, but the streets are getting empty and the highways aren't getting filled, either.

Of course, like the 1970s, there's also back-to-the-landism, or at least a professed interest in old folkways. It's not like things (manor houses and buildings( are necessarily falling apart, but from what you read in the press, it sure sounds like ordinary middle-class life in the countryside is less viable.

**

I like to eat at the old radio building's canteen. Our own office building has a cafe, too, but the radio building's next door is better. The canteen doesn't advertise on the outside but people from the outside are allowed in, if they say the password -- "palun kohvikusse" (to the cafe, please). If you think this is an easy security workaround, then you haven't considered the other half of the story. You have to rely on the mercy of the security guard to get out.**

One of the three rotating security guards at the Raadiomaja seems to resent me. I'm not sure why. Maybe she generally dislikes "outside people" who eat at the canteen, or is tired of hitting the button to let people out and thinks the rules should be changed but doesn't have the power to change them.

She wasn't at her desk when I tried to leave the building today. No one was around. One of my pet peeves is being locked inside rooms and buildings. How strange; I know. But there you have it.

Since there were two switches on the wall next to the door I tried to operate them, as if this were your average apartment building entrance hall. Nothing happened, but just as I expected, it was then, as I was slightly mistreating one of the switches, that the security person returned, and gave me grief, telling me in a very nasty tone that the switches were not to be touched under any circumstance, as if they would cut the live feed from the studio upstairs or something.

When I inquired as to the possible avenues for leaving, especially if there was an emergency and no one was at her desk, she told me in a nasty voice that she didn't think she had to tell me that.

Something about the wording struck me, perhaps the way this withheld info from me while making her seem like a bit of a tool at the same time.

I decided to confide in her. I told her a funny thing that had happened several months ago after one of the first times I ate at the Raadiomaja. I made a wrong turn coming out of the canteen, and spying another exit, found myself trapped in the courtyard, a vast triangular area with some parked cars and no one around. The doors were electronic.

This being a radio station, I guess a lot of areas are soundproof. In any case, I pounded on the doors, but no one came, I signalled to passing cars on Gonsiori, and finally had to climb over an eight-foot metal fence at the vehicle entrance.

"Imagine if it had been someone really impatient," I said, shaking my head slowly, knowing well that no one gets more impatient than me in such a situation and that on that occasion I was that close to throwing a chunk of limestone through a window. "They could have done some real damage to the compound, yes, indeed."

She was nonplussed and wanted to know why I had gone into the courtyard and trapped myself there behind the electronic doors, as if this had been my cunning plan all along.

"Maybe you shouldn't eat at our cafe," she went on. "Maybe people shouldn't eat at our cafe."

Now she had gone too far. "Are you thinking of changing the policy?" I asked. "What would the cafe think? I think they have a lot of outside customers."

She admitted that she was not the one to make policy, which, feeling a bit nasty myself, is what I wanted to hear her say.

"Aha, OK, you should have told me that earlier. I'm sorry to have wasted our time, then," I said, walking out.

I don't like ending exchanges on such a superior note, but I like being trapped even less.


** There is some precedent for this in local culture -- a decade ago, cinema doors during screenings used to be...I don't want to say "locked", as that would sound criminally irresponsible on the part of the cinema. Let's just say they were "inoperable from the inside". If a movie was a total bomb, you couldn't indicate your displeasure by storming out. You had to get the attention of the attendant who would unlock the doors. It's fortunate nothing disastrous ever happened, like a fire.

REVIEW: Singing Revolution

I am fairly well-steeped in Estonian restoration of independence lore, but this moving documentary nevertheless prompted some spine-shivers and tears in my eyes.

Well-organized and edited, structured chronologically and paced well, it is also balanced -- not only Estonian Independence Party, Heritage Conservation, Popular Front leaders but the era's top communists are interviewed.

Though perhaps guilty of a little dramatic exaggeration here and there (or maybe we just no longer realize just how close to "eradication" Estonia was) it never oversimplifies things. For example, it manages to explain the meaning of individual key songs ("Land Of My Fathers, Land That I Love") in surprising depth without losing any perspective for laymen.

I learned something new, too -- the story of Joost and Milli, the two policemen who kept the Tallinn TV tower from being taken by Soviet forces during the Moscow putsch, buying enough time for Estonian legislators to finally take the ultimate step (unanimous) of declaring independence restored.

Incidentally, does anyone know if a decent live version of "Koit" from before 1990 exists? Not that we really need one -- the studio take with the snare and horn intro is definitive. But it is such a moving song that surely Tõnis Mägi belted out at least one live gem in his prime.

New alert issued

Fatherland Security Czar Michael Chertoff will be in Tallinn on Wednesday to sign phase one of Visa Waiver Program, sort of where the US finally starts paying Estonia back in real scrip for participating in its dirty war against Iraq.

In connection with the visit, Blue Black and White Alert will be on Bright Blue, Jet Black and Snow White Alert for the remainder of the week.

GENEALOGICAL GEOLOGY: Cousins

I've had shamefully little recent contact with my blood relatives in Estonia who lived through the Soviet era. Most of them are third cousins on my mother's side, various times removed. There are two first cousins a little younger than me on my father's side who are my closest relatives -- of the folks with whom I have never lived under one roof, that is.

I have some good memories. When I was in Estonia for the first time for 17 days in July 1991, I spent a week with Ivar, a third cousin who is the relative closest to my age, on his grandmother's farm in Sürgavere, central Estonia. I think it was the second-to-last time I ever drank unpasteurized milk. I remember that the smell of chicks in an incubator in the kitchen was nauseating, or maybe it was the general sweet fecundity...in any case, I couldn't eat eggs for a while afterwards -- but haymaking was fun, backbreaking fun. The farm was surrounded by collective farm, but it retained the appearance of a 1930s smallholding. We climbed into a abandoned meierei chimney. There was that high Montana sky with cumulus clouds that has absolutely no business being in Estonia. We ran 5 km across unfenced fields to Sürgavere station to make a train on the day of our departure. If the stay had been any longer I might have written something like a Dirk Bogarde childhood memoir.

In my "first life" in Estonia from 1993-1999, I would still go to relatives' Mustamäe apartments occasionally for birthday parties and on holidays. Another third cousin Evelin, then a young girl, would come stay with us at Keila-Joa in the summers, along with her grandmother Elga.

Since becoming a yuppie homeowner with workaholic tendencies, though, the amount of time I spend outside the centre of Tallinn has dwindled. The only time I am in Mustamäe is when I run a loop there, usually late at night.

No doubt life has changed and become busier for my relatives, too. Apartments have been Eurorenovated, summer cottages have become year-round homes. Evelin has graduated Tartu and is immersed in non-academic life for a while. I've lost track of how many kids Ivar has, but I know that he has merged his dairy degree from TPÜ with Buddhist beliefs and is living a sustainable lifestyle -- and the kids get unpasteurized goat milk.

And the older generation is fading. All of my maternal grandfather's cousins, who played together in Rakvere in the first Republic (where their home language was Russian, incidentally), and were scattered from Montreal to Stockholm to Virginia, who all lived well into their eighties and it seemed unbelievable that they would ever go ...are now finally gone.

I have one second cousin twice removed (great-aunt is the easier term but with Olga, terminology has a lot of meaning) in the DC area -- and Olga is just as unique as her relational status. Now near 90, and finally retired from medicine, she was still downhill skiing into her 70s. We have looked her up in the DC area during our travels. Now I am probably again not corresponding enough to be deserving of great-nephew status.

In 2003, I met cousin Harlan, with whom I share Viktor Rikken as paternal grandfather. I never knew that much about Viktor; by the time I was born, both he and my grandmother had remarried on their respective sides of the Iron Curtain. And my own parents divorced and remarried just before Estonia regained independence, so that also contributed to downed communciation lines; in the manner of all divorces, the arguments rage about why the lines are down while the fact remains that the lines remain strewn on the pavement.

In any case, Harlan and his half-sister (their father Viktor's son died young) are my closest cousins. In some ways, Harlan is like my Estonian doppelganger, with a fondness for the open road. He has a resourceful streak with a degree of craftiness and keeps his cards close to his chest, though -- well, I don't know if that is me. I don't see Harlan much nowadays as he is always off temping in offices from Porto to Dublin.

Harlan has spoken about remembering Grandfather Viktor. The tragedy, like that of so many Estonians, was that he fought on the "wrong", which is to say Soviet, side in WWII, and when he came back his wife and son had emigrated to the West.

A number of people have noted that this was a blow to him.

Unlike, say, my maternal grandfather's Ukrainian father, who went MIA in World War I, and no one knows very much about, Viktor came back to Estonia, finished his education and (being an exceptional case among the Rikkens, as we are notoriously slow to get our degrees) became a well-regarded figure in academia.

A former colleague of his recalled in an e-mail forwarded to me:

"He came back from the war with the 'liberating' army and quickly defended his degree in oil shale chemistry and became deputy research director of the Chemistry Institute. Part of the job was liaison with state security. He was actually a fabulous person and I understood later that that the reason our relations with security seemed non-existent was that Viktor was able to steer us away from the shoals..."

Anyway I will be contacting her to find out some more.

I know Harlan has gone out to his grave regularly. Here I'd say it isn't so much my busy life or not making time. I'm not much one for memorials or graveyards. I've never even understood the See That My Grave Is Kept Clean sentiment in American country blues. Certainly when I die, I could care absolutely less about what happens to my remains; anythnig that would seem to expedite the process of rejoining the cosmos would be welcomed (i.e., scatter away). Let My Grave Be Overgrown.

But I would be more interested in uploading these folks into cyberspace... Viktor Rikken only has one or two Internet hits -- a recollection of him from fraternity days. As does my other grandfather Kirill Dotsenko, who looms larger up to this point in family legend. So here's another one, until I get some time to do some more genealogical geology.

Back on the Charlottesville, VA, folk hero scene, Sidney Tapscott is 85 today! A guy who sweeps the streets of storefronts in this town who was adopted by a lot of the bluegrass kids and hipsters as a sort of unlikely guru. Dave Matthews may have moved on, but some things never change. Happy birthday, Sidney.

Freedom Cross wins in a landslide!!

The results of the most politically charged poll of the year (upper right) are in.

In the process, I noticed some minor irregularities which indicate that it is probably too early to organize referenda through the Blogger interface, or at least that the results should not be binding, at least not until the mandatory 20 vote threshold is crossed.

But rather than being concerned about the equal rights issue (the poll being slanted toward laptop and multiple computer owners), some foreign observers incredibly grumbled that I had provided only two stock answers -- yes and no.

"It's multiple choice, not a poll," one complained.

But then one of the foreign observers was caught voting himself -- twice.

Some women in their 70s refused to vote, despite being rather Internet literate, because they were offended by the word "erection" in the question. Yet their letters to me revealed that they actually supported the obelisk -- how's that for hypocrisy!

Yes, voter turnout was low. Or that's my official line, anyway. That way I can continue to claim that readership of this blog is high.

Luckily I have one reader whose average site visit time is high.

Luckily for everyone else, the reader is also an excellent writer, and persuasive.
It was still close at 5-4 with five days to go in the poll, but then the yes people ran away with it. Is it coincidence the spurt occurred when it did? Because this was oratory, people. These were the Patriot Papers.

Of course everyone knows the obelisk and cross ensemble is going to be built anyway, and we can even guess the date two months from now. One night we'll go to sleep and the next morning your car will have been towed from Freedom Square to a junkyard outside the centre and there will be an glowing obelisk and cross on the square. You'll say, even if you voted no and maybe even if you voted yes, "how could they?!!", but then you will remember the true meaning, and you'll be glad you buried your snobbish aesthetic objections, and it will be nice, and you'll forget all about it, just as you did with the Freedom Clock.

But even with the lack of suspense, this poll was good for business. I had more than a couple requests from advertisers. One proposed various hypothetical questions as future polls: "If you wanted to enjoy great glow of the monument and the Old Town home of your dreams, where you would want to live". Which I'm not sure is actually a question, but OK.

I'm not sure about the request for "logo presence" (ON the actual monument) from one local company, especially considering the openly monarchical nature of that logo. But, judging from the readiness to spend on the monument, this indeed is a buyer's kingdom.

Northeast

Nice meditations on the southern Estonian countryside abound right now in the Estonian-American blogosphere. And some other mestizo friends of ours bought a house in Veriora way down by the southern border.

Someday I hope to visit again, too. (With kid #2 coming in..whoa, probably next month...we have been looking for countryside property, too, but without leaving computer.)

Meanwhile, I have a working-reporting trip to Virumaa planned. The eastern part is the "Northeast", which to Estonians does not conjure up winter storms, Pilgrims and densely populated Atlantic seaboard, but rather drab things like cement, oil shale and fur hats.

In this grey expanse there are occasional dots of culture and light like besieged city-states, and the nature is fairly unspoiled. But I won't be hitting the oases such as the "Roman baths" at scenic Toila -- the northeast's most popular commercial tourist location. It'll be a more rough outing to places like Narva. To see if the tchebureki (scallion and meat pastries) are just as good as they were in 1997, see what's going on behind the brick walls at Kreenholm. Sit on a bench and look across the river for signs of military buildup and radioactive clouds from Russia.

I visited Toila in 2004, before it was renovated into a fully Western spa. It was pleasant. But because of an unrelated mishap, we also visited an ER in Kohtla-Järve.

It was days before my wedding. We were walking back up the steep trail from the beach when I stepped on a rusty nail trying to pick some hazelnuts. Kohtla-Järve was the closest place to go for tetanus shot and to make sure I could walk down the aisle without limping. It seemed like a sleepy place. I happened to be wearing a "Cuba" baseball warmup jacket. A guy outside the clinic made a comment in Russian about Fidel. The on-duty doctor was Korean (North?) and neither he nor the nurse spoke any Estonian.

It'll be interesting to see what has changed.

Perhaps more has changed in Cuba. Perhaps the same guy will be sitting outside the doctor's office and say something about Raul.

On the way, I think I will take in Rakvere, where my grandfather was born but which I have never visited, and Jõhvi. New cultural buildings in each of these places to check out.

**

Sometimes too much work and coffee produce unfortunate literary syntheses in this blog. If you tuned in yesterday afternoon, you might have got a taste of it. D&D creator Gary Gygax died on Tuesday, you might have heard, and it started some pachinko balls rolling in my mind. I took the piece down because it seemed too elaborate and forced.

Still, you should check out Edward Lucas's tight, complex piece on Medvedev which incidentally betrays an intimate knowledge of cinematic narratives. I can't resist the D&D allusions after all, in homage to Gygax -- Lucas, who is a kind of Gandalf to Baltic halflings, seems to have recovered most of his hit points with this piece (it is so open-ended that he seemed true neutral for a second). I had been afriad that the Cold War rhetoric was starting to verge on hyperbole, giving snipers like Ames and Zaitchik too many easy targets to pick off from their Playboy- and cigarette-strewn Moscow dungeon. Their latest piece is hilarious and savagely written as usual but you know, once you go the way of criticizing copy editing, you make a fundamental mistake. Especially if you have sentences like this in your own work: "Lucas assumes none of his readers will know that when he was Poland's deputy foreign minister in the late 1990s..."

I did not know that Ed Lucas had been deputy foreign minister of Poland...

No, it's not my proposed design for the Freedom Monument in downtown Tallinn. (have you voted in the poll to the right?)

It's snow, as opposed to sleet, and it fell on Tallinn last evening -- beautiful and serene, clean...

But maybe not so clean, after all. From NPR, today:

Snow Flurries, Bacteria Likely

The news** that bacteria are using snowflakes as parachutes reminded me of the old aphorism, maybe from Vonnegut, that water developed life as a way to get from one place to another.

It's interesting to reflect how ubiquitous bacteria are. A related NPR piece says that bacteria outnumber the cells in your body. Key quote: "A visitor from outer space might think the human race is just one big chain of microbe hotels."

It's also humbling to realize that the structures responsible for fuelling my body have nothing to do with my genome, but a protobacterium's DNA. I knew there was something odd about mitochondria evolutionally, but I wasn't prepared to see it laid out in the encyclopedia quite so succinctly.

Regarding the snowflakes, my "what if" question is, does the bacterium's structure determine how the snowflake forms? Could this, along with temperature, be the basis for symmetry and "no two alike"? Just a hunch.

And of course, the dark side: the potential for use of snowflakes as a biological weapon. The general staph of the 23rd Airborne Division?


**

NPR's coverage of Medvedev (the new Russian president, for non-Balts -- that's right, Gorby's gone) featured a minute long "soft offbeat" segment on the pronunciation of his name, and how three soft "e"s will stymie the tongues of poor Americans. (There was a news story, too.)

I fear it was overearnest cross-cultural curiosity on the part of NPR, a prelude to a love affair with this latest Russian. But it could have been ultrasubtle mockery --umpteen people saying the name "Myidvyeeeydyiv" over and over again...rather than emphasizing a noble ursine quality, it had the effect of reducing the individual to a snippy little person.

(The segment, at All Things Considered for Mar. 2, is also interesting in that one of the people asked to say Medvedev's name is named Edward Lucas, but it isn't that Edward Lucas, it's some bloody American and he runs roughshod over the Russian like an extra from Red Dawn.

Suprisingly, Hillary pulls a Bush, unable to get the name spat out in two tries. Very disappointing. I'll bet Obama can even say "Ahmadinejad" three times in succession.)

You can do amazingly nasty things with pronunciation of names in the Eurasian cultural sphere. You can give a innocuous Russian word a very Mordorian quality just by emphasizing the guttural aspects, even though at full speed and at its best it can be a very lovely language.

I remember also Johnny Carson, or maybe it was Dana Carvey doing an impression of Johnny Carson, dispensing with a then-new Caucasian republic in one pinched nasal word: Azeerbaizhyaaan - it's like the sound that Joan Rivers makes when her underwear is too tight...

But that's the way it is; the joke is usually on the Zhans and Stans.

Steel breeze in Tibet

The International Campaign for Tibet has released a downloadable pdf of its new report, Tracking the Steel Dragon, which examines how the railroad to Lhasa may spark a new wave of exploitation and colonization.

This should be required reading for anyone who remembers the effects of Russification in Estonia and the spectre of phosphorite mining in the 1980s (even though, yes, the 1960s were a time of cultural thaw, and there was a jolly Olympic regatta in Tallinn in 1980).

At a time when our most talented minds focus their razor intellect at Russia, let's not forget this very real threat either.

Call it, not whataboutism, but furthermoreism -- a positive thing.

Running on empties

"Physically, I almost never enjoy the process of exercise, but I feel naturally tougher when I finish. Most important, running lets me eat anything I want, and it allows me to drink every day (if I need to)." --Killing Yourself To Live

Chuck Klosterman is on to something here in this book of his which I picked up a while back in an airport book store. I immediately developed a greater liking for the guy after reading the passage. Here's this gonzo rock journo with various complexes who purports to smoke much more cannabis than I could really respect in this day and age, or even did myself when I was Obama's age, and yet...he runs! A runner.

I wouldn't recommend it for metabolizing alcohol that is already in your body of course, but running does confer an perceived immunity to physical ills. Whatever is to prevention as panacea is to cure, that is what running is, at least in your head. And as for burning calories, it's not limited to the time you are actually pounding the pavement and flailing your arms. Especially if you run in the morning, your body will be like a furnace for the rest of the day, and whatever you feed it will go up in a burst of white flame.

(Of course, as famous runner and later casualty of running's small but present acute cardiac risk Jim FIxx once pointed out, it also confers a sense of false moral superiority over non-runners. From there, it's just a short step to despising the weight-challenged.)

A good Estonian senior runner Jevgeni Kaljundi once told me about a peer of his who had competed at every race around Viljandi Lake, whose training was fuelled by beer, pretty much pint-for-km. He was mid-60s like Kaljundi was then and it was said that if he gave up either running or drinking that would pretty much be the end of him. But the guy was very successful by any measure -- and a popular training partner. Uninhibited.

I usually run in the evening, and since I never drink in the morning, it's easy -- the days that I run, I don't have anything alcoholic. But those days are becoming fewer. In December, I was still running every other day at least. Once I get lazier than that, like now, it takes an effort each time to "get up for game", especially if I eat well on the off-days.

I haven't reached the point where I "need to" drink (as Klosterman puts it) every day for either biochemical or professional reasons (both of which happen to be compelling reasons for drinking every day). I am hearing voices, though -- they are saying "Hibernate! Hibernate!"

Actually, what am I saying -- the quantities I drink are laughably small by any standard, let alone journalistic or Baltic ones.

But I just came across an "everything you wanted to know" book by an Estonian country doctor. He said 50-100 mL of wine was OK< with a meal, but no more than that. One-quarter cup of wine? If I split a half-bottle with a friend -- what's that, pushing 200 mL? I'm a goner.

I put a lot of stock in pop medicine, so I am vigilant for signs of maintenance drinking -- the most insidious evil.

I've seen too many Estonians who seem just fine, but then...the sun starts going down in the winter sky and... We had a drywall hanger -- a young guy, just a sell -- it got to be around 5pm and he got really irritable and he couldn't do the job anymore, his poise crumbled. He fell apart, and he had to adjourn to spackle himself up, so to speak.

Well, it was time for a post on this local pastime. This has been the all-time shittiest, darkest winter. It's been five months of late November. Did you ever read descriptions of atmospheres on the outer planets -- usually something like "thin atmosphere with frozen crystals of ammonia and methane, highly corrosive", that's what the air reminds me of. I'm not saying Tallinn air is dirty, but it's not crisp and icy or invigorating. And some kind of slop is usually falling on a carpet of grit.