Estonia

The Festival Song Grounds in Tallinn mean freedom to a million Estonians. This is where choral music helped bring down the USSR. Enlarge photo

It’s amazing what a stretch of water can do. The Baltic Sea separates Sweden and Finland from Estonia. And the struggles of the last couple of generations couldn’t be more different on opposite sides of the Baltic. Traveling to Estonia spices up any Scandinavian visit — especially if you connect with the people and let them tell their story.

My guide, Mati, spent his time in the USSR military driving Soviet officers around the Crimea. Estonian boys got this plum assignment because they were considered smarter (and therefore safer) than village boys from the interior of Russia.

With Finland within rabbit-ear distance, Estonians were the only people in the USSR who got Western TV during the Cold War. Mati remembers when the soft porn flick Emmanuelleaired on Finnish TV. No one here had seen anything remotely like it. There was a historic migration of Estonians from the south of the country to Tallinn, where they received Finnish TV. Nine months later, the country experienced a spike in births.

Estonia gets jerked around a lot. It hopes to get the euro in 2011. While I can’t imagine a change in currency, for Estonians it’s no big deal. Mati’s grandmother lived through seven different currencies.

When Mati asked his grandmother where his grandpa had gone, she said, “He’s a tourist in Siberia.” That was the standard answer to shield little kids from the hell they were living in. After freedom, Mati learned that his grandma had a bag packed under her bed for the surprise visit from the local police that she dreaded but half expected. We all live with stress and anxiety…but imagine living fifty years with that fear, as she did.

In Mati’s youth, one-sixth of the world was technically open to travel (the entire USSR), but there was no way to get a plane ticket or a hotel room. In an age when all Estonian recreational boats were destroyed (1950s and 1960s) because they were considered potential “escape vehicles,” one-sixth of the world was a prison.

After independence, in the early 1990s, Mati and five friends built a business importing classic American cars and selling them to rich Russian guys. One day, four of Mati’s friends went to Russia to collect payment on a car and were killed — riddled with machine-gun bullets.

Mati said, “The Russian mob makes Sicily’s mob look like a kindergarten. Putin directed the KGB. If someone thinks Putin doesn’t understand, forgive me, but you are a fool or you are blind.” Mati decided to drop his car business and become a tour guide.

Tallinn’s huge Song Festival Grounds looks like an oversize Hollywood Bowl. Standing overlooking the grassy expanse, with the huge stage tiny in the distance, my guide explained that when Estonia was breaking away from the USSR, a third of the entire country — over 300,000 people — gathered here to sing.

Imagine little Estonia, with less than a million people, free for 20 years from 1920 until 1939, but lodged between Hitler and Stalin. Mati said, “We are so few in number we must emphasize that we exist. We had no weapons. All we could do was be together and sing. This was our power.”

And that spirit of song led to Estonia’s stirring Singing Revolution. I’m embarrassed that my guidebook coverage completely missed this aspect of a visit here. I’ve visited Tallinn several times, and the thrill of this phenomenon (and the historic importance of the Song Festival Grounds) never hit me. With this visit, I was so inspired, I purchased the documentary movie The Singing Revolution online. This marked the start of a new age in tourism for me: be inspired, go back to the hotel, buy the movie on iTunes, and enhance my experience by watching it right there. In the future, this will be commonplace among engaged travelers. (Curious? Visit www.singingrevolution.comto watch the movie’s trailer.)

The Soviet Union was good at wiping out cultures. The USSR intentionally moved people all around to destroy ethnicities and make their citizens simply Soviets. The Livonian culture died out in the 20th century. They tried to wipe out the little Estonian culture, too. They moved in Russians. They drafted Estonian boys, sent them to far corners, and gave them incentives to marry into other regions. Mati recalled how Russian girls swooned at boys in uniform — especially Estonians — and there was plenty of opportunity to marry.

But there’s something resilient about Estonian culture. Mati said, “I’ve been in most of Europe and what I miss when I return is this black bread. I cannot live one week without it. I spent one week in Thailand, and we forgot our black bread. We were very unhappy.”

Having traveled with Mati, Estonia will forever be a more vivid place on my globe.

I’m livin’ large in Estonia…and marveling at the exciting change this region is undergoing. On a visit to the Baltic region back in the 1980s, labor was cheaper than light bulbs…when touring museums, an old babushka would actually go through the museum with me turning on and off lights as we went from room to room.

Those days are long gone. Estonia’s thriving capital, Tallinn, is like a Petri dish of capitalism. Since Estonians won their freedom in 1991, it has blossomed. The country has the strongest economy, most freedoms, and highest standard of living of any republic that was part of the USSR. (Locals claim that, by some measures, they are now one of the freest countries on earth.)

While traveling here, you can’t help but ponder the great irony of Russia’s communist experiment. Statistically Russia–once the supposed champion of radical equality (as far as Leninism and Marxism was concerned)–is now infamous for having the worst equality. Estonians are much better off today than Russians not because they have more money per capita (they don’t), but because the wealth in this country is distributed much more evenly. Observing the differences between societies, it seems that the distribution of wealth, if you honestly get right down to it, is what much of politics is about.

Today, for my mid-morning coffee break, I stepped into a courtyard. At the entry the landlord hung a photo of the place in 2000…it looked recently bombed out. Today, it looks much the same but inhabited by thriving little businesses. I wanted to sit at the courtyard’s trendy little cafe with its wicker chairs rocking on the rough cobbles. The seat I wanted seemed empty but it had a vest hanging on it. So I looked for another empty spot…it had a vest too. I really, really needed a coffee. Then I realized every chair had a different vest hanging on it. Estonian chic. Tallinn is thriving with little creative businesses.

After traveling in Norway and Sweden, it’s refreshing to be in a cheap country again. Being able to order without regard to price stokes my appetite. And with the fierce language barrier in non-touristy eateries here, it’s good the economic stakes, when mis-ordering, are not high. (Imagine, there are only a million people who speak Estonian–a language related to just about nothing, yet spoken with a noticeable gusto. It occurred to me, I don’t know a single word in this language–making it a strong contender for my worst language in Europe.)

It poured down rain today…locals claim they really need the rain. But it makes my research so messy–balancing a goofy little umbrella on my head and shoulders, hovering over my treasured notebook, trying to keep it dry. I have a pocket sized black notebook (Moleskine…I’m evangelical about Moleskine books) and the part of my guidebook I’m currently working on (ripped out of the big book with the cover stapled on–so it’s both pocket-sized and official-looking). When my border scribbles and notes get wet, I get very anxious.

By the way, many travel writer’s pride themselves in not taking free rooms thinking that might corrupt their assessment. I take free rooms all the time and–don’t tell the hoteliers who host me–this is, ironically, not in their best interest. I must sleep in 70 hotels a year (140 nights, average 2 nights each). I can’t begin to actually sleep in each place I recommend. By sleeping (for free or otherwise) in a place, I catch things you wouldn’t catch otherwise. Last night: thin walls (persistent snorer), no dark window covering (big problem especially in the north, he “ran out of steam” in the remodel), and lumpy pillows (you don’t appreciate a good pillow until you sleep on giant cotton balls). His listing took a hit.

I was noticing how, for the first evening and morning of my time in Tallinn, I didn’t meet one American…no one recognized me. I was a little disappointed. There were lots of tourists…but nearly no Yankees. Then, the cruise ships unloaded their day-trippers. Wow, it was one big PBS love fest…old home week. I had travel buddies on each corner. There must be 50 Americans visiting via cruise ship here for every over land traveler. Estonia is being discovered and it’s about time.