Foreign perspective

Saturday's Arter, the weekend magazine supplement to Postimees, featured an article entitled 'Do foreigners love us?' in which seven international students at the University of Tartu were interviewed about Estonia and Estonians and how their ideas and preconceptions about them have changed.

It made for interesting if slightly predictable reading, with most of the seven giving responses you might expect of people with their backgrounds - the Caucuses, Central Asia and the Far East - who have been in the country for a short time. The most amusing (qv scathing and on the mark) came from the only female respondent, Brazilian Helena de Mesquita da Silva (pictured with the caption that accompanied her snapshot in the magazine). What follows are the questions submitted to the group and Helena's responses to them.

What has surprised you most in Estonia?
The looks I get, affronted and rude, because I'm black. And the fact that the teenagers get around in expensive clothes but spend most of their time in parks smoking and drinking and their parents don't seem to care at all.

What was the most interesting thing you heard about Estonia or Estonians before you came here which turned out to be a myth?
I hadn't really heard anything about the country or the people. I asked some Brazilians who knew a bit about it, and they said everything was OK, but when I got here I felt quite uncomfortable. I expected more from a European country. I'm from a Third World nation, so I was shocked when I saw that in some areas Europeans can be just as bad off or even worse off than we are.

How would you describe Estonians?
Cold and closed. Polite to the point of being impolite. They're easily intimidated and vulnerable and probably because of it paranoid about their privacy.

Estonian men consider Estonian women to be the most beautiful in the world. What do you think?
I guess Estonian men don't travel much. Men everywhere say the women in their country are the most beautiful. Some of these ideas cross borders, but before I came here I'd never heard that Estonian women were meant to be the best-looking in the world.

Estonian men often come across as male chauvinist pigs. Would you agree?
Perhaps that's why more and more Estonian women are marrying foreigners, at least statistically. Estonian men ought to think more about the way they behave towards women.

http://www.postimees.ee/230208/lisad/arter/313412.php?kas-valismaalased-armastavad-meid

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