Take a break, pack your things, walk away

If anyone was wondering - indeed, if anybody is still reading this blog apart from me - the relative dearth of posts in the run-up to the festive season is due to the fact that I am very busy getting things done before I go back to Australia for Christmas and New Year. That nothing much is happening that's worth reporting on is another factor, too. In any case, normal service is likely to resume in January. Häid jõule ja head uut aastat!

Can you even feel your heartbeat in this senseless city, babe?

In news everyone needed to know, SL Õhtuleht reports that pop tart Charlene has been telling celebrity trash mag Just! that she is so obsessed by high heels that she is never without a pair of stilettos, even at home.

"I know it's not normal, but the first thing I do when I get out of bed in the morning is slip on a pair of stilettos with 10 cm heels and straight away I feel fantastic," revealed the one-time Eurolaul singer, in an article charmingly titled MTV reporter wears fuck-me heels around the house. "People have even said to me I don't know how to walk in anything less!"

Underscoring the wild side of the starlet's nature, and her love of 'extreme experiences', the piece - whose accompanying photo reveals she has as much fashion sense as ever - goes on to talk about Charlene's adventures in the Far East, where she once let an elephant sit on her. "Oh, that was cool! Such an amazing massage. And I didn't break a single rib!"

To witness one of Charlene's (and the nation's) most extreme experiences - her two minutes and fifty-eight seconds of fame during the 2004 national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest - visit https://www.etvpluss.ee/saated.aspx?id=791. Mind, you'll have to pay 6 kroons for the privilege.

Revolting

Edgar Savisaar is to face a mass demonstration outside City Hall on Friday in protest at his proposed 150% hike on land tax. Which is not to say he will address them, but rather that if he happens to be there and looks out the window, he'll see a rather large crowd of people calling for his resignation.

Gunnar Stahl, the organiser of the rally, has been behind a letter-box drop urging residents of Tallinn to rise up against their mayor, albeit in a very calm and dignified way in which their displeasure is expressed through their presence and their placards - which are sure to reflect the general opinion that the plan stinks more than the city's sewers, which any revenue generated through the rate rise would be designed to improve.

Though espousing a peaceful protest, Stahl is using fighting words. "Our demonstration will go ahead as scheduled unless Savisaar scraps the plan by 13 December at the latest - and apologises to the nation on the 9 o'clock news that night for the mistakes he has made!" Here here.

She works hard for the money

In yet another Eurostat report, Estonia has ended up on the podium once again - albeit this time for a good reason. It has taken the bronze in the race to see which member state employs the most women.

Only beaten to the top spot by Sweden and Slovenia, Estonia registered unemployment among 'working-age' women (aged 25-54 for the purposes of this survey) in 2006 of just 14.3%, almost 10% lower than the EU average. The country scored even better in the 55-64 range, coming second.

Unfortunately, on the back of this good-for-equal-opportunities news comes the revelation in a different report of the stark contrast that remains between the amount women in Estonia are paid for what they do and the amount men are paid for doing the same thing: on average, female workers receive 28% less.

Add to this the findings of another report again (this one from Eurofound) that simply working in Estonia doubles your risk of occupational health problems compared to other EU countries and perhaps the country doesn't have all that much to crow about: they might have more than the average number of women in work, but they are likely to receive a third less pay for what they do than the men folk and twice as likely to do themselves an injury in the process.

Borderline

Latvian president Valdis Zatlers and Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves will come together to mark the two countries' accession to the Schengen zone on 21 December at the Valga/Valka border crossing, where they will perform the ceremonial removal of the barrier dividing the two cities and countries.

"Taking into account the shared history of our cities (dating back 720 years - Ed.) and the partnership we share today, removing the physical barrier between them bears enormous significance for the future," said Valga mayor Ivar Unt. "With the border gone, the opportunities for our two countries to interact and work together will be even greater."

Alo vanishing on 21 December will be surly border guards in their boxes at Terminals A through D in the Port of Tallinn for ferries leaving for and arriving from Finland and Sweden (and any other Schengen countries, which in this case is to say Germany). Perhaps they'll all be packed off to the eastern front, where border crossings with Russia are, conversely, to be reinforced.

The Estonian jet-set will have to exercise a little more patience, however, as Schengen passport-free fun times for all at Tallinn (and, er, Kuressaare) Airport are not scheduled to be introduced until March - giving new members much needed extra time to complete the required terminal renovations.

Depressing realisation

SL Õhtuleht today has an interview with Finnish historian Martti Turtola, who claims that the view of Estonia as poor cousin in his country has disappeared almost entirely without trace.

"There may well have been people who looked down their noses at Estonia before, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but not any more. It has come on so rapidly that everyone ought to be green with envy."

The historian says that the Finns have in fact learnt a thing or two from their southern neighbours. "Mostly to do with their lifestyle," he explains. "Finns are a very serious bunch. I lived in Estonia for four years and I realised that while our histories are similar, for some reason Estonians are much happier."

If that's the case, what does it say about Finns?

http://www.sloleht.ee/index.aspx?id=257431

Who's stitching up who?

The Northern Estonian Regional Hospital has complained to Eesti Päevaleht Online that the foreigners who scarper before paying for the medical services they have to keep giving them are causing them headaches of their own.

“The problem with Johnny Foreigner,” says hospital board member Eve Karmo, “is that he's generally shipped to our door by ambulance with nothing on him to tell us who he is and in no fit state to tell us himself.”

Karmo singles out a very particular kind of foreigner as being of the troublesome variety: “These English lads who come here, waste all of their money on goodness knows what kind of 'entertainment', fall arse over tit and get sent to us. We stitch them up, they disappear and the only thing we can put on the unpaid bill is 'foreigner', or at best 'British citizen'.”

Karmo says that even if they do manage to make out a name, very few visitors from abroad who are brought to the hospital have their EU health insurance card on them or anything else indicating that they are insured, assuming they are in the first place. In the case of the other major problem group for the hospital - Estonia's eastern neighbours - they are unlikely to have any, as they are often paid in brown paper envelopes.

While praising embassies for the help they provide in identifying these shameless stealers of health services, Karmo would much rather the assistance wasn't required in the first place. She advises all Estonian travellers (presumably including those planning on spending all of their time getting pissed and ending up in hospital) to stock up on health insurance whenever they go abroad, even if it is within the EU.

“Your health insurance card will cover first aid, but not much else. If you're halfway up a mountain skiing somewhere and take a tumble and have to be airlifted to Estonia flat on your back, things could get quite expensive.”

http://www.epl.ee/artikkel/410335

Please note: translations of direct quotes in this article may be slightly more colourful than the originals.

Haute cuisine

A survey ordered by the Ministry of Agriculture has revealed that the two things tourists associate most closely with Estonian cuisine are meat and beer.

The survey showed that tourists remain pleasantly surprised by their encounters with the nation's food and drink, describing it as "good, tasty and fresh". Daytrippers and weekend getaway visitors are also better informed than they have ever been about - and increasingly interested in - the country's national dishes.

When asked to nominate what they thought most characteristics of Estonian dinner tables, 46% of tourists nominated meat, 22% said fish, and 10% each posited potatoes, cakes and the like (including "it's not cheesecake but we'll call it that anyway" kohupiimakook) and cabbage. Beer was most frequently seen to be the national drink, with the full list almost entirely comprising different types of alcohol.

Many tourists expressed disappointment that traditional Estonian food was so hard to come by on their visits, highlighting the small number of restaurants that offer it. When they found them, though, they clearly spent big: an average of 1457 kroons per person per day on food and drink, almost twice the amount spent in 2006. Mind you, this figure also included money spent on stuff they were able to take home with them as comestible souvenirs; chocolate proved most popular, although one in five also stuck some black bread in their suitcases.

The other four clearly already had them stuffed full of Viru Vodka and Gin Long Drink.

Don't talk to strangers

Postimees has reported on the results of a recent Eurobarometer study which reveal that Estonians are the most parcohial in the European Union when it comes to mixing with people of other nationalities or religions.

Those surveyed were asked whether they had had any contact in the preceding seven days with anyone of a different nationality or religion, from another EU member state or from a country outside of the EU. Out of the 27 countries covered by the study, Estonia scored lowest, with just 43% saying they had.

On the plus side, and bolstering its reputation as 'E-stonia', the country topped the list of the EU 27 for contact made with foreigners via the Internet. Of course, this could also be seen as a bit of an indictment in the sense of Estonians requiring the "look but don't touch" safety of a computer screen for them to make contact in the first place.

Coming full circle, Estonia again came bottom of the pile in another aspect of the survey: designed to gauge how clued-up Europe's citizens are ahead of 2008, the EU's Year of Intercultural Dialogue, it showed that Estonians were one of only two groups in the union to the majority of whom the term 'intercultural dialogue' meant nothing at all.

Perhaps the extra attention that is paid to such issues as migration, minorities and multilingualism in the new year will see them fare a little better in time for Tallinn's adoption of the European Capital of Culture title in 2011.

http://www.postimees.ee/041207/lisad/euro/299510.php?eesti-inimesed-on-elis-teiste-rahvuste-suhtes-koige-pelglikumad

A ladybird never changes its spots

National mobile operator EMT has dropped plans to change from a second-based to a minute-based rate on calls following a media backlash and word of their biggest corporate clients - their core market as things stand these days, in terms of profit - deserting them in droves.

The plan was announced in an understandably not very high profile way with the promise that since the average phone call in the EMT network lasts 58 seconds, the changes would mean very little to the purse strings of Joe Blogs. This little subterfuge backfired on the company though when journalists began filling column inches with their own calculations based on old bills - revealing that Joe Blogs would in fact end up paying upwards of 50% more every month for the same amount (or fewer) calls.

Its unpopularity compounded by big business threatening to walk over the issue, the plan was sunk, and EMT today announced that they had scrapped it. "We listened to what our clients had to say and came to the conclusion that the market is not ready to move on from second-based call rates," said the company's chairman, who thanked EMT's customer's for their [vocal] feedback.

However, the company has not ruled out introducing the system in future, and will be ushering it in through the back door from the 1st of January with competitively priced packages operating on the minute-based system. An anonymous editorial in Postimees today views the inflated costs that such a system would bring with it as inevitable, pointing out that EMT and other operators have reached a point where the market is so saturated with low-priced deals that they will have no choice but to start charging more.

There are 116 active SIM cards in Estonia per 100 people.

Movie magic comes to town!

It was announced at the European Film Awards in Berlin last night that Tallinn has been given the honour of hosting the event in 2010. The city's hotels and night spots will undoubetedly ooze with glitz the likes of which they have never seen before as the cream of European cinema descends upon them in their thousands. The grey of early December will never have seemed so colourful. Etcetera.

PÖFF director and European Film Academy member Tiina Lokk says that winning the right to host the awards is fantastic news. "The event will give Estonia's film lovers the chance to get up close and personal with the film stars of Europe and will bring with it all the glamour of such a gala," she said, or words to that effect, tapping into one of the most virulent commercial obsessions in the country at the moment. (Absolutely everything is 'glamorous'.)

On the practical side, the 'European Oscars' are sure to attract a great number of influential people from the industry to Tallinn as well as hundreds of international press, which if nothing else will see the city and country mentioned in the media for something other than its alcohol and health problems and strained relations with Russia for a change. The awards are also broadcast in more than 60 countries, which will presumably raise Estonia's profile in a way that hasn't been seen since it hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 2002.

The organising committee will undoubtedly be keen to 'exchange experiences' - which they bang on about here all the time - with 2006 and 2008 hosts Warsaw and Copenhagen in order to make the most of the chance being the organisers of the away game offers them (Berlin hosts the event every other year). Given that it will take place less than a month before Tallinn adopts the title of European Capital of Culture, it is, I suppose, rather a big deal.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I guess I should give myself a pat on the back for the fact that Tallinn was successful in its bid: it was yours truly who translated the "please pick us for the following reasons" letters sent to the European Film Academy by City Hall and whoever else. Maybe they'll give me a free pass to the gala ceremony?