and finally.... to ESTONIA!

I know, random, huh? Who goes to Estonia? Is it really a country?

Well it is. And I did.

This small little country is located right at the top of the "Baltic States" (Estonia actually prefers to be included as a Nordic state, not Baltic... but usually people group them with the Baltics), just West of Russia and South of Finland. It also had a coastline on the Baltic Sea (naturally). We flew there from Prague and got put up in some pretty nice hotel rooms. It rained pretty badly the first night, and everyone was a little jet-lagged, so we all crashed. Woke up the next day and went to some briefings which were pretty cool.

We talked to a couple of senior officials in the Estonian ministry, mostly about economic affairs (Estonia is doing verrrrry well for itself - actually has the highest growth rate over the last couple years, even higher than China). We also met up with a retired Estonian MP.... who was also a Member of Parliament under the Soviet Union. I was under the impression that the USSR really didn't bother with representative legislatures... but this guy was in it! He was very fun to listen to. He actually worked with Gorbachav when the USSR was considering how to dismantle the empire and give sovereignty back to the states. The "Baltic" states were actually sort of freed from Soviet rule, rather than given it by default like much of the other Soviet satellites after the fall of the USSR. This guy really harped on why Estonia is so great and wonderful, talking about their liberal market structure and tax policies and what not.

After that we had the rest of the day to walk around the city. There was a large square in the center (like all the cities we hit on this trip) that was the hub of the city, and from there different streets spoked out and had all kinds of restaurants and bars. We had dinner and then all met back up to attend an opera in the city opera hall (naturally) and our last speaker actually came and joined us there. That night a bunch of us when out and ended up at a karaoke bar.... I was a little disappointed that they didn't have "You lost that lovin' feeling" or "Freefallin", those are my staples.

The next day we walked around some more and a few of my buddies and I made our way to the Baltic Sea. There was a huge monstrosity of a building there that looked like something out of "1984" but was run down and spray painted everywhere. We later learned that it used to be the provincial seat of government for the city. There were punk kids running all over the place and there was actually some sort of night club in the back where people were in line (mind you, this was 2 in the afternoon!) - So that goes to show a little about how the population still hasn't fully recovered from the Soviet era. We checked out more of the city, including some fortress ruins after that, and then had to make our way home at 5am the next day, which wasn't fun. But overall I thought this last leg of the trip was awesome. Oh yea, the girls were pretty cute here too... seems like the further East you go the better they get, I dunno ;-). Estonians were pretty nice people over all and I was really impressed with how everything is going over there - with a name like Estonia, I thought they would be a little less developed!

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