The Ketchup Curtain

“You vant ketchup?” Sergei asks, positively glowing in the light of Old Town’s newly-remodeled hipster McDonald’s. Actually, I do want ketchup but not enough to pay for it, so I take my fries without. It’s just too humiliating to pay for ketchup. Because there is nothing which says We don’t trust you, you dirty Eastern European more than McDonald’s selling ketchup. It’s like letting them spit in our faces every time we eat there. Nowhere in the developed world that I’m aware of does McDonald’s sell ketchup. In Helsinki, you can take as much as you want. And they don’t even hide it behind the counter.

I’ve often wondered what McDonald’s thinks I would do with free ketchup. Would I take two thousand packages, open each individually over a sheet-metal funnel in below-zero temperatures, and bleed them for their alcohol to make samogan? Or do they think I’d steal enough to fill a bowl, dilute it with water, and make ketchup soup, the dietary mainstay of American heroin addicts and poor college students too proud to donate blood plasma? What exactly does McDonald’s think? (I wrote them with that very question, but they didn’t reply.)

In 1992, I was invited by a visiting foreign Estonian to dine in Tartu’s Püssirohokelder restaurant. At the time, it still had its Soviet doorman who looked you over to decide whether he would deign to let you in and pay for the food that paid for his salary. We were allowed in, ate a meal that was probably the best you could get in Tartu in those days, suffered through the obligatory varietee show, and finally were presented the bill by the tuxedoed waiter. Jüri, the foreign Estonian, glanced over the check as one would do anywhere in the world, just to make sure it bears resemblance to what you ordered. Eyes halfway down the check, Jüri smiled broadly, laughed, and summoned the waiter. “Butter?” Jüri asked. “You’ve put butter on the check.”

“Yes,” harrumphed the waiter. “Butter.”

“You are charging me for butter?”

The waiter said he was and by the look on his face he saw nothing strange about it.

“Just to be clear,” Jüri confirmed, “you’re charging me for butter?”

“You had butter on your bread.”

“I also put salt and pepper on my food and had sugar with my coffee, but I don’t see those on the check.”

The waiter stared at his shoes. He’d indeed been bested by logic but had no answer for it other than that’s the way things had always been.

Jüri paid the bill, and we walked into the night air discussing how long it might take for things to change enough where restaurants wouldn’t be charging patrons for butter. As far as I know, nobody charges for butter anymore, but I don’t think either Jüri or I could have imagined that almost twenty years after independence, McDonald’s would still be charging for ketchup.

My wife Liina and I often have the discussion about when Estonia will stop being thought of as an Eastern European nation. It won’t likely happen in our lifetimes, but it someday surely will. Norway was once considered a festering backwater, and I can remember having Norwegian friends in the 1970s who had emigrated to Canada to seek better lives. Around the same time period, Finland had such a low standard of living that its citizens were pleased to live elsewhere in Europe. And now it’s Estonia’s turn to rise from the ashes and build a genuine economy which isn’t based on buying and selling real estate to each other. It may be harder to do without Norway’s oil, natural gas, and coal, or Finland’s timber-related industries, but I believe Estonia will do it. If I didn’t, I’d get the heck out of Dodge. There may be no shame in poverty, but it’s definitely not much fun.

I’m not so sure there’s much more Estonia can do as a nation to accelerate growth, which is, once the incentives and structure are put in place by government, largely an organic process. While we have the groundwork laid, what many Estonians lack is a worldview similar to that of their wealthy neighbors. Finland, Sweden, and Norway, arguably having been spared some of Estonia’s ugly history, simply see the world through a different prism. While I don’t know if Estonia will be among Europe’s five richest anytime soon, I don’t believe it will linger long among Europe’s poorest. Estonia’s fix will be a generational fix, and the fruits of a truly free society are already noticeable on public transportation. While the older generation often sits silent, heads locked forward and frowning, the younger generations leap about and talk as excitedly as a busload of Canadians on their way to a hockey match. They seem to be energetic little optimists, and it’s a joy to know they’ll one day occupy the seats of government.

Part of Estonia’s problem, of course, is Russia, and by this I don’t mean Russia’s schoolboyish need to torment Estonia. The problem is Russia’s reputation as a feudal society. “CIA Believes Russian Scientists Have Discovered the Technology of Fire,” read a satirical newspaper headline in the early 1990s. Funny, yes, but it’s also a fairly accurate portrayal of how the world views Russia: a bassackwards place full of peasants who shit where they eat, and corruption so endemic that even native Russians themselves can lose their way trying to figure out who to bribe.

Recently, Russian banker Vladimir Antonov—who wants to own Saab (and probably will own it one way or another)—lamented about that reputation in the New York Times: “It is obvious that European business has strong prejudices against investors from Russia. There is a fear of Russia itself, of the increase of the influence of Russian businesses in the international market place.” Antonov then called on Europe and the world to “trust Russian business.” Trust is probably too much to ask, but Antonov does have a point about how the world sees Russia.

President Medvedev has publicly recognized Russia’s image problem, and so maybe Russia will do something about it. What exactly is hard to say. It’s not like even a well-financed Welcome to Russia advertising campaign would do much good. But if Russia is able to improve its image a bit, then Estonia will surely benefit. Despite Estonia’s EU- and NATO membership, much of the world doesn’t differentiate between Estonia and Russia (does McDonald’s?), and Estonia will benefit from any improvement in Russia. Maybe Medvedev can make the world stop seeing Russians as only either oligarchs or serfs. Probably not, but even a small improvement would be good for all of us.

In the meantime, though, while we’re waiting for Russia to solve her problems, and while we’re trying to leave the future generations a decent structure they can use to build the Estonian Nokia, I think the folks at McDonald’s could end the humiliating practice of charging for ketchup in Estonia.

Tartu’s Püssirohokelder long ago stopped charging for butter. The cafeteria Amps gives away free bread (and butter) with its soup, and I haven’t noticed pensioners sneaking out the door with burlap bags full of dinner rolls.

I have often wanted to mount a dais at the Viru Gate with McDonald’s as a backdrop and utter a challenge to Jim Skinner, the Vice Chairman and CEO of McDonald’s: “Vice Chairman Skinner, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity . . . come here to this gate. Mr. Skinner, open this gate. Mr. Skinner, tear down this wall!” The Wall was dismantled years ago, and the Iron Curtain along with it. Let’s gather our virtual pitchforks, join together, and march on McDonald’s. Isn’t it about time someone tore down the Ketchup Curtain?


P.S. Why not write McDonald’s Jim Skinner and ask him to end this humiliating practice? Contact jim.skinner@us.mcd.com (cc: Walt Riker walt.riker@us.mcd.com, VP of Corporate Communications).

***

Illustration by Hilde Kokk De Keizer.
Read it in Postimees, too.

Bardakk

Ivan Ivanovich was everywhere. In the parking lot of Pae High School he had parked four deep amongst a sea of taxis, drivers abandoning their cars in the middle of the parking lot, perhaps assuming that everyone else was here for the same reason. A few of the drivers, boxed in and going nowhere, shouted in Russian at the rest. There wasn’t a word of Estonian to be heard, so I knew I was in the right place to take the state’s Estonian-language exam.

Inside it was chaos as well. Hundreds of Ivan Ivanoviches were pressed together tighter than a rugby scrum, all jostling for position to find their names and room assignments on thirty A4 pages taped to one wall in the entry way. A woman with an administrative mien stood quietly by, observing the shoving match.

“Is there anywhere else I can find my room assignment?” I asked her, not really in the mood to behave like a football hooligan so early in the morning.

“No,” she replied, and gestured to the scrum. Men were elbowing women, women elbowing men, everyone pushing forward like they were trying to get to the front row of a rock concert.

“What a bardakk,” I said calmly in Estonian, making note of the mass of people crawling atop one another.

“Ei olje bardakk,” she disagreed loudly with a thick Russian accent, clearly offended that I’d criticized her work. Surely, in her mind, our e-state was functioning at its finest, firing smoothly on all pistons.

This may sound arrogant, but so be it: There is normally nothing in Estonia I want badly enough to join in a shoving match with one hundred ethnic Russians. On any other day I would have turned away and sought more civilized ground. But I had been refused the right to vote in the past local elections due to the status of my living permit (temporary), and I was determined to rectify that by passing the B1 language exam. To my way of thinking, if you don’t vote, you have no right to bitch. And sometimes I really do enjoy bitching.

So I threw myself into the scrum. Instinctively, I covered my pockets with my hands to guard my wallet. This left me unable to elbow anyone, but I bounced back and forth from body to body as if in a mosh pit. Occasionally, someone gave me a dirty look, which I met with a sheepish smile, the international sign for “Don’t blame me for your culture.” Five minutes later I was standing in front of the papers, but I still couldn't find my name. One Russian woman had taken it upon herself to call the room numbers and then read the twenty or so names out loud. I heard lots of Nataljas, Natashas, Viktorias, Veronikas, Tatjanas, and Tamaras, as well as a few Sergeis and Ivans. But I heard no Vello. I heard not a single name not Russian. I could see only six sheets from where I stood, so there was nothing else to do but change position. I pounded forward and bounced off the wall much like a hockey player checked against the glass. I bounced left and could see several more sheets, and among the Russian names, I saw a Paul with an English surname. Rejoice, a fellow foreigner! But still no Vello. Knowing the military maxim that to advance is to conquer, I did not give ground. I fought forward again and then to the left. If my name were not on this side of the board, I would interpret it as a sign from God, that He, in connivance with the Republic of Estonia, did not want me to vote. But there I was. A proud student assigned to Room 209.

When I struggled from the line, Ms. Ei Olje Bardakk was present to assist me, and she pointed me up the staircase to the second floor, where proctors Mihael and Piia welcomed us to a sunlit room. Piia greeted us in snail-speed Estonian and explained the ground rules for the exam. I was told to put away the notes I was making about the bardakk downstairs. As I looked around the room it was clear that the only thing Estonian in this school was the language exam: even the exam proctor spoke with a slight accent. All the signs on the walls—inside the classrooms and in the corridors—were all in Russian. I hoped I would understand enough Russian to complete the exam.

The essay portion required us to fill out a survey about a moving company we had employed, which I gladly did, noting my dissatisfaction with the company since they’d broken a large portion of the items they were paid to move. Immediately, the young man in front of me removed a crib-sheet from his pocket and began to copy something from it. But it wasn’t enough, for after another minute he turned in his seat to me and asked in English, “What means ‘firma’?” Thinking that Mihael and Piia would only miss this if they were blind, I suggested he ask one of them. In principle, it was his business if he wanted to cheat, but I had not fought through the rugby scrum in the lobby to get thrown out of the testing facility for helping the biggest fool in the room.

The next assignment required me to write a letter to my good friend Kaido to tell him how I spent New Year’s Eve. “Do you remember, Kaido?” I wrote, “How you got so drunk last year that you puked on the mayor of Tallinn's car?” I often pity those who must grade standardized exams, so why not entertain them? I continued to explain to Kaido that I had gone to Moscow for this year’s celebration and that “Mr. Putin sent his limousine to meet me at the train station.” I described my wonderful holiday to Kaido, adding “As a souvenir, Mr. Putin gave me a grocery sack stuffed with American currency.” I finished the exam before the others—how could I not if they didn’t know what “firma” meant?—and handed it in. I noticed Mihael reading it over front and back, but he didn’t crack a smile. I wondered if smartasses were penalized. At the very least, my mention of vomit and the mayor’s car would surely elicit closer scrutiny, which might result in points deducted for incorrect grammar which might have otherwise passed unnoticed.

Exercises followed where we learned about the beauty of Estonia’s winter capital of Otepää, how Otto Kubo, Kalev’s Grand Old Man of Chocolate, studied chemistry in university and speaks ten languages, and how much a young Estonian named Raili loves and respects her aging grandmother. In general, I felt Estonia’s standardized test was less silly than those I’ve taken in Canada and the United States, and I had to give positive marks to Mihael and Piia for their diligent administration. Everything was clear. Everything moved smoothly. And, so far, the test had focused solely on the Estonian language. The morning’s rugby scrum appeared to be the only cultural assimilation test I would be required to take. I felt palpable relief. Perhaps I would not be asked to spit sunflower seeds great distances or fire a Kalashnikov from a speeding vehicle.

For the speaking portion of the exam I was partnered with Katarina who in her self-introduction said she was an unemployed mother of one. Katarina’s toughest verbal challenge came when Piia asked her to remove the chewing gum from her mouth so that I might better understand her. Katarina struggled, yes, but in my opinion she managed her part of the simple tasks presented us quite well. She had only to pretend she was a consumer, while my job was to sell her an overpriced book with 600 color photographs from TEA Kirjastus. But Piia was not satisified, and she told Katarina she would score only four out of ten. Me, I would get eight, which I shrugged off with the refrain that “Estonian is grammatically impossible,” which generally is guaranteed to make an Estonian smile with pleasure. Piia laughed and said that I’d done fine, which I wasn’t sure I had. I hadn’t really had a conversation with Katarina. I’d just made brief telephone talk. But if the state was happy, then I was happy. There was no scrum near the door on the way out—the papers had been removed—and I stepped into the light of the first warm day of the year, hoping that when it comes to voting in Estonia I won't have to push and shove to cast my ballot.

***
Bardakk = бардак = (literally) whorehouse = SNAFU = big mess

Inherit the Family: Marrying into Eastern Europe now in English from Amazon.com

Read Bardakk in Postimees.

British English

“We speak British English,” proclaimed Vesta, an Estonian woman, aged sixty, with whom I was trying to have a discussion about an essay I’d written for her firm’s corporate magazine. She refused to speak Estonian and insisted on English, though the whole process would have gone faster had she deigned to suffer through my halting Estonian. Instead, Vesta attributed our difficulties in communication to my Canadian English.

I often receive comments from Estonians about the superiority of British English over Canadian and American English. On a certain level I agree: When spoken properly, British English is indeed more beautiful than American or Canadian English. And although Vesta might not agree, I find Irish- and Scottish English even more pleasing to the ear. Canadian English, however, falls somewhere in between British and American—more American, but with the preservation of British spellings in a nod to Her Majesty The Queen, who is, indeed, still our Sovereign.

When a “British English” speaker likes Vesta gives me the speech about the inferiority of my brand of English, I often want to ask her why she pronounces the “L” in "salmon" and why, in written communication, she capitalizes the “Y” in “You” when it isn’t at the beginning of a sentence. I once pointed this out to a class of English students at a Tallinn high school who claimed that’s just how they’d been taught. I told them to go find their teachers and demand their money back. Whatever kind of English they’d been taught, it certainly wasn’t British.

Vesta will want to strangle me for saying this, but I think Siim Kallas is a great example of how Estonians can communicate well in English. Kallas’ English is what is termed “halting” in the true definition of the word (hesitating, faulty), as well as in the fact that it stops you in your tracks. His English is bad, but he’s loud. Add the shit-eating grin he constantly uses, even if he’s just repeating some tired old bromide, and he somehow really reaches people. It’s not self-confidence his technique emanates, but it’s a very believable proxy, ideal for non-native speakers who simply need to communicate in order to get what they want. Mr. Kallas is not a bad one to model, especially for “British English” speakers like Vesta. Loud is often good. We may not like to admit it, but the world loves loud.

Recently, I was witness to a British book salesman attempting to sell books at one of Estonia’s largest bookstore chains. The meeting between the salesman and the bookstore’s buyer took place in the bookstore café, and I happened to be sitting nearby. The buyer expressed her distaste for American English and noted that she wanted to buy products in British English—she particularly disliked American calendars which begin the week with Sunday. The salesman, who also clearly represented some Yankee publishers, attempted to defend the Americans and noted that most English spoken in the world among the young tends to be American. The buyer was unimpressed and replied, as if channeling Vesta, “We want British English.”

I can understand that some Estonians don’t like American English since it is seen, at least in part, to be in the vanguard of American hegemony. Critics routinely hold Hollywood, MTV, and other culprits responsible for poisoning young minds with trash culture and trashy English. But I’ve lived in America, and I can say I never met a single person who spoke like he was a gangster in a Hollywood movie; I never met anyone who drew his nine-millimeter to blast away at Al Qaeda attackers; nor did I ever meet anyone who’d been in a car chase—all events which any amount of American TV watching might lead one to conclude are daily occurrences in the States. The majority of Americans speak an English which is actually quite attractive to my ear (perhaps because it isn’t so different from mine). Educated Americans speak a quite normaalne English which employs interesting syntax and diction and draws from a wide lexicon, and I even find the uneducated ones charming—from the South in particular—for their wonderful accents and colorful expressions they bring to the language.

Americans are certainly accustomed to taking abuse for their language and culture. Recently, Horace Engdahl, permanent member of the Nobel jury, took up the cause by accusing America of not participating “in the big dialogue of literature” and saying Americans’ “ignorance is restraining.” Mr. Engdahl, as even many British English speakers quickly pointed out, was talking out of his ass, but he still found many to cheer him on for his anti-American remarks.

But this is not to defend American English, nor is it to suggest Estonians take up the American brand of English. In defense of the brand of English Estonians speak (not to be confused with Vesta’s brand), I am favorably impressed with many students in Estonia’s English-biased schools. I have accepted invitations to visit both the 7th and 21st Secondary Schools, where I encountered remarkably good English spoken with a variety of accents, a few even British. The Estonian accent is strange to my ear in that it seems to be a transitional accent, which the speaker eventually loses as his language improves. While I will always have my accent when speaking Estonian, Estonians who speak English, if they practice enough, actually do move into a realm where their accent is slight and not easily placed. When non-natives speak English—Chinese, Russians, Germans, French, Italians, Mexicans, to name a handful—many have accents which allow them to be pigeonholed. Estonians are tougher to place, and not only because it’s a small country (Latvians, for example, have a very distinct, annoying, childlike, sing-song accent). Estonians just seem to have some natural facility for languages.

But despite what Vesta would like to believe, Estonians don’t speak British English. They speak Estonian English: a fact I wish they were no more ashamed of than I am ashamed of my Canadian English. Sure, there are some bad habits Estonians might break when they use English—stop trying to write Faulknerian sentences (Hemingway is plenty good); avoid the overuse of idioms when you want to make a serious point (better to be yourself); and exercise caution in the humor department (practice jokes before attempting to dazzle your foreign audience)—but in the end Estonians are pretty talented.

To Vesta’s credit, I wish I could speak British English. But I don’t. And it would be terribly pretentious of me to try. I cringe every time I hear Americans throw around British terms like “spot on” or “kitted out” or when they want to ride the “lift.” Even worse is when they pronounce “schedule” like the British or note that something is not their “cup of tea.” One cannot be what one is not. And it’s very unappealing when one tries.

Vesta and I never did find a common language. She heavily edited my text, inserting all sorts of passages she thought were both clarifying and British, which I argued were neither. In the end, it didn’t closely resemble what I’d given her, and I suggested Vesta replace my name with hers, which she gladly did, and then released the publication to a print-run of some five-hundred copies as well as to the ether where it now lives an eternal but ephemeral existence, a contradiction only made possible by the internet: present forever, forever ignored.

The reality is, however, that a freelance writer who works abroad happens upon many Vestas who insist on their own sort of British English, and so I have learnt, when writing, to add the gratuitous “u” to colour, to travel by aeroplane, and to greatly exaggerate my use of the impersonal pronoun, “one”. (Note that one must also place punctuation outside the inverted commas.) If a small, humbling gesture on my part is all that’s required to pay the mortgage and feed the kids, then I suppose I can manage to adopt some “British English.” It’s such a charming little language after all.

***
Read the Estonian version in Postimees.

Survivors

There are periods in a summer’s day when entire Old Town cafes are taken over by Americans. As if Baghdad isn’t enough, they have to have Tallinn, too. I was there—there being the second floor of the Viru Street Apollo bookstore—one rainy afternoon, when a group of seven American cruiseboat tourists held us all briefly hostage. It might have ended peacefully, but then one of them couldn’t find a letter on Apollo’s internet keyboard:

“There’s no ‘W’!” he proclaimed. “How can you have a keyboard with no ‘W’?”

The girl working behind the counter kept her cool. She’d clearly been in this situation before.

“Don’t you have a ‘W’ in your language?”

“We have a ‘W.’ It’s there on the keyboard where the ‘W’ is usually kept.”

“Where? I don’t see it. And there’s no ‘at’ sign, either!”

“We have both symbols, sir.”

From a woman at table nearby: “Hey, I’ve got 36 pictures on my camera so far!”

A man in a cowboy hat: “Does it rain all the time here?”

“Oh, hell, I give up.” The old man at the computer sounded near tears. “This just isn’t worth it.”

“Let me try, dad.” A man in his fifties wearing bright white tennis shoes, crowded in at the keyboard. “Watch me work, pop. It’ll be like watching a painter paint.”

“Do you take American credit cards?” asked 36 Photos.

An obese man in a baseball cap and Bermuda shorts roamed the café photographing plants. “Hotitye smotrit?” he asked an Estonian, thrusting the camera’s display in the man’s face. The man worked hard to not look up from his book.

“I like books, too,” the photographer said in English. “I’ve learned a lot from books, believe it or not. And not just technical things.” He moved on to another plant and the shutter clicked away.

“Hey, I’ve got a hundred emails!” announced the white-shoed son. “And they’re not all for penis enlargements.”

“Have you seen my lens cap?” 36 Photos asked the room. “I was just holding it.”

“I’ve got the exact same telephone you have,” said the roaming photographer to a pretty Estonian girl, her mouth full of cake. She nodded in acknowledgement. He moved in to photograph another plant. How many plants were there in this café? I wondered. “Hotitye smotrit?” He held the camera in front of the girl. “No thank you,” she replied in English, choking down her cake.

“There it is!” shouted 36 Photos. “It’s under that chair.”

By this time, every Estonian customer in the café had found a book and all were concentrating deeply on their reading. One elegant elderly man—he could have been Endel Lippmaa’s doppelganger—studied Women with unusual intensity. Another pretended to be asleep when the photographer turned toward him. Another pulled his legs to his chest, assuming the fetal position. I wrinkled my brow and squinted deep into my computer screen. The photographer circled, feigned a move into the bookstore, and then pounced.

“Hotitye smotrit?”

He was upon me, and so I gave him my best Borat: “Me little English.”

“That wasn’t English, little buddy. I was speaking Russian.”

“I no understand.” This ruse had worked in the past.

“Where you from, pal?”

“Ontario,” I fumbled.

“Well, I like your country” he answered. “Seems to rain a lot here, though. See the quality of this camera? That’s eight megapixels.”

I nodded politely at the camera’s resolution. I could see photography was his social icebreaker, much like a Russian might ask for spichki. All around me Estonian eyes peered over the tops of books, not attempting to conceal delight that they hadn’t been selected.

“Whaddya do here?” He spoke in a Midwestern vernacular.

“I read.”

“Yes, I can see that. What do you do professionally speaking?”

“Me little English,” I repeated.

“Look, little buddy, I can see you’re reading English on your computer screen. So you must understand something.”

I was tempted to break cover and ask him in perfect English if he considered me his little buddy because he weighed three times what I did, or if it was some genetic, hegemonic tendency. But that would have led to me explaining to him where Ontario was, and making a speech about how speaking Russian to Estonians wasn’t the most culturally sensitive gesture. Instead, I looked to the Estonians as a model: speak little, be polite. “Yes, me read much good.” I put about four ‘Rs’ in the word read. “Very nice camera. You are rich man.”

“Well, photography is just one of my hobbies.” There was clear pride in his voice.

“Hey, Dave, now here’s a photograph!” called Whiteshoes from the computer. The photographer must have been Dave, because he raced to the terminal.

“Now I’ve got it!” came the voice of 36 Photos.

To be fair, most Americans who visit Tallinn do not terrorize the local population. The cruisers, in fact, are the top of the tourist food chain, generally highly-educated, wealthy individuals who have often done their reading on the countries they’re visiting. They’re the kind of tourists Estonia should want to return and spend real time, in a five-star hotel instead of on a cruise boat. But this group who had wandered into Apollo to get out of the rain behaved like certified morons—even if one did know some Russian—and I wondered if they weren’t stowaways on the cruise boat, living unobserved on the lower decks where they played dice games and danced on tables with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Fortunately, before I had a chance to ask, they became silent and rose as one, as if pulled by some lunar force, and began to exit the café. Perhaps the stowaways were performing a large-scale Dine and Dash, the time-honored American teenage prank of ordering a big meal and slipping out of the restaurant without paying. But I looked at my watch and it was close to five, so they were more likely slipping out so as not to miss their boat. Despite Dave’s obvious knack for plant photography, he probably had a real job waiting for him somewhere in America.

The retreat of the Americans, however, did not bring silence. English was immediately replaced by German. The group of four krauts at a neighboring table easily matched the Americans for volume, but their conversation was limited to their own party, and they made no humanitarian forays to other tables. Since I speak no German, I could only imagine what they were saying:

“I’ve always thought Euclid was more math journalist than mathematician.”

“Ah, yes, but Archimedes, he was the real thing!”

“You both read too much Stephen Hawking. Let me tell you about math…”

Then they all laughed their sophisticated European laughs.

I know it’s discriminatory to place Europeans on a higher intellectual plane than Americans. There are dumbasses on every continent and making generalizations will inevitably bite you in the ass. One time, dining with French friends in Paris, an entire restaurant became silent to eavesdrop on one family’s conversation. “What’s so interesting?” I whispered to my friend. “Does the father work for Sarkozy?” My friend shushed me. Later she explained that the father had chosen the restaurant to announce that he’d been sleeping with his secretary and his wife didn’t quite react the way he’d expected, treating the entire dining room to dinner theatre.

I know plenty of bright Americans, genuine intellectuals who can name the countries that border their own, who know that Mexicans don’t speak Mexican, and even a few who can credibly hold forth on the Lisbon Treaty. Sadly, this group of cruisers was not the country’s greatest ambassadors. It would take years of PR to make up for their damage.

As the Americans neared the exit, the photographer turned to the room once more. “Hey, little buddy!” he shouted. There was no doubt he was talking to me. “You’re okay with me, pal. Your country is A-okay.”

What do you say to that, a reader may wonder? But I knew exactly what to say. “George Bush!” And I thrust a thumbs-up high into the air. “Hooray, America.”

Several of their party returned the thumbs up. The photographer locked his bare, tree-trunk legs, snapped to attention, and threw me a crisp, almost military salute.

As the Americans disappeared down the staircase, the Estonians slowly put down their books. Each looked around and rare eye contact was made. No words were spoken, but it was clear we were now all connected in a special way by the experience. Like those who walk away from a plane crash or successfully flee a burning building, we were bound together for life. We had lived through the Americans. We were survivors.

***

Read "Ellujääjed" in Postimees. Feed Vello here.

Turn Your Head

Text printed on a tip jar aboard Tallink’s M/S Star: The more you tip, the nicer we are.

Perhaps there wasn’t enough space on the jar to fit what the bartender really wanted to write: I’ve had a bad day. All my days are bad. The esprit de corps around here rivals that of the Gulag crews who dug the Belamor Canal by hand with shovels made entirely of wood. Won’t you, please, thirsty consumer, go away and not trouble me with your business?

I used to think it was worse in the USA, where the old rules of tipping have been thrown out the window, and even Starbucks employees (with health benefits!) expect tips after you’ve stood in line twenty minutes to wait on a long-haired philosophy major change his order three times and finally decide on a caffeine-free double grandé latté sprinkled with protein fiber powder. In America, there are tip jars in places like bookstores and movie theatres—as if twenty-five bucks for a hardback and twelve dollars for a movie isn’t enough. Tipping is such a part of life that the Internal Revenue Service taxes waitresses on tips whether they actually receive them or not. After Broadway performances, where tickets can cost hundreds of dollars, actors appeal to the audience for additional contributions. Bloggers have “Feed Me” buttons with express connections to PayPal. Tipping in America long ago stopped meaning a little something added for good service. It’s become an institution in itself.

Which is why I prefer Estonia. Like this country’s tax code, the rules for tipping are more simple and straightforward. If you are pleased with the service, you tip a little bit, often just rounding up the bill or not waiting on your change. Servers don’t yet feel entitled to tips, and I’ve even had instances where a waitress chased me out the door to return money I left on the table. “No, that’s for you,” I’ve had to explain, though this happens less frequently now that cruise boats full of Americans regularly dock in Tallinn. Damned Americans. They’ve gone and ruined this country, too.

But even in America I’ve never seen a tip jar as cheeky as Tallink’s: The more you tip, the nicer we are. Just how nice could the bartender be? What is the upper limit of his niceness? Would “nicer” mean a smile? Eye contact? Would he give me free salted nuts with my beverage? Would he carry my bag to shore and pay for my taxi home? Somehow, I suspect “nice” for him means not sharing the negative aspects of his job with the passengers. “Nice” means he’ll keep “nasty” in check.

I don’t expect their workers to be nice to me; I just expect them to do their jobs. Which most of them do, in fact. But the tip jar goes too far. It reads like a Christmastime message from UNICEF: Just a few cents a day can change the life of this starving African child.

I know the M/S in the vessel’s name means Motor Ship, but the bartender’s message makes me imagine shirtless, sweating Estonians shackled twelve to an oar beneath the auto deck, driven by a whip-wielding Soviet-era manager. He lashes at them to shut up about positive reinforcement in the workplace and row faster, those who slack off or die at the oars unceremoniously rolled overboard.

If I’m to believe what I read in the papers, then Tallink may not be the most employee-friendly place to work. The looks on their employees’ faces would seem to confirm that. I understand they work long hours for little money, but so do school teachers and shopkeepers and nurses. And, even in America, when’s the last time you saw a tip jar in a hospital?

But if a Tallink employee is dissatisfied, why can’t he reserve expressing his displeasure for when Enn Pant or Ain Hanschmidt are on board? Why hold it against me? I’m only guilty of buying a ticket.

And isn’t it, in principle, supposed to be the other way around? Isn’t—especially in this economy—the customer king? It might be equally tasteless (and might earn you a gob of bartender spit in your beer), but it would seem more appropriate for the customer to hold a sign reading The nicer you are, the more I tip.

But I understand. I once was chained to the oars in the service sector. I was a stock boy at Kmart, one of North America’s megastores. My job was to clean up the aisle when a mother emptied the contents of her baby’s diaper on to the floor (which, surprisingly, happened about as often as a Tallink passenger vomits in a deck passage). When I wasn’t on diaper detail I had to clean the grease off the store’s restaurant’s hamburger grill, all the while dressed like a Mormon missionary in a white shirt and necktie. When I was lucky enough to be allowed to sack groceries, company policy required me to look every single customer in the eye and say, “Thank you for shopping at Kmart!” My boss, Mr. Siegel (I was not permitted to address him by his first name) allowed no shorter version. A simple “thank you” did not suffice. I got out of there fast and went into the plumbing business. I still had to pick up turds, but I didn’t have to wear a necktie while doing it.

My advice to the Tallink bartender: You’ve got to get out of there fast. Like Huck Finn, you got to light out for the territories ahead of the rest. Before Aunt Polly in her sailor outfit gets ahold of you. But in the meantime, while you’re waiting to make your getaway, try to pretend you’re not unhappy.

When I lived in New York I knew a 24-year-old girl who married a 70-year-old gazillionaire. He was a shriveled up, bitter old guy who was downright mean. “How can you stand the sex?” she was once asked at a table with friends. She raised her left hand to show us the three-carat diamond on her finger. “When he climbs on top of me, I just turn my head and stare at this rock.”

That’s what you’ve got to do, Mr. Bartender. Turn your head. And if your rock isn’t motivating, then you might, perhaps, look at the door.

***
Read it in Estonian in Postimees.

Under the Radar: Saving the English-language Press

“Where else in the world,” the young American asked me, “can you walk into a newspaper office and get a job on the very same day?” This was several years ago, and he’d just got a job at the Baltic Times, the region’s only English-language newspaper. The young man had done some writing for his high school newspaper, but beyond that his chief qualification was English as his mother tongue. Before he arrived in Tallinn he’d worked a year pouring concrete for shopping mall foundations. His university diploma was in physical education.

“Does it worry you that you don’t know anything about journalism or Estonia either one?” I asked. He had been candid with me. I wanted to return the favor.

“Just a bit,” he replied. “But I figure they’ll start me out with movie reviews.”

The very next week I saw his byline under a story about Estonian politics.

The economic crisis has certainly bitten the Estonian-language press. Journalists are being let go or forced to take reductions in pay, magazines are merging, and publications are dying. But you never hear about the English-language press, which is completely under the radar. English-language journalists are being paid late or not at all, and the good old days when you could walk in with zero skills and get a job on the same day is, at least let’s hope, gone forever. So when it concerns the local English-language press, a little bit of crisis isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Despite some bright points in Estonia’s English-language journalism history (projects associated with Edward Lucas, Michael Tarm, or Steve Roman, for example), local English-language publications have mostly served as an embarrassment. Headlines like “People Having Less Estonian Babies,” “Health Board Closed Recipe Factory in Tallinn Downtown,” and this century’s pièce de résistance, “Economical Crisis,” make English-speaking Estonians wonder if the publications are not parodies or if all foreigners residing here are illiterate.

Part of the problem lies with the local owners of English-language publications. Some of them do not speak English at a level much above what’s required to read a candy-bar wrapper, or if they do, they believe there is a direct path to ad revenue, ignoring the causal link between good content, readers, and the El Dorado of advertising gold.

One of my favorite English-language media moguls is from Vilnius. He has the habit of calling his employees peasants and kicking their chairs out from under them—a rather strange motivational strategy which, despite poor results, he continues to believe in. He is such a tyrant that no foreign editor has ever lasted more than six months working for him. I used to make a tidy sum sitting in his editor’s chair for the two months it would take him to find a replacement. He wanted copy fast and I didn’t mind producing it as long as he permitted me to write under pseudonyms, which I eagerly did, working my way through characters in the Snopes Trilogy. Few readers, I suspect, knew that Faulkner’s lower-class rural laboring family could produce such readable copy.

Part of my job was to interview new editorial candidates. I would tell them directly that their life span on the job would be only slightly longer than a freshly-commissioned American First Lieutenant behind enemy lines in the Vietnam War. Most still couldn’t wait to sign up.

What allowed me to keep the job? I think the combination of knowing I’d only be there as long as it took him to find his next whipping boy and the fact that we Canadians are tolerant and flexible enough we could probably work with Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Mussolini, and rest of the previous century’s top baddies and still find something nice to say. Plus, I needed the money.

Oddly, this tyrant is also a very good businessman whose only indulgence seems to be a slick car, and his publications are indeed weathering the “economical crisis.” Western news bureaus could learn a lot from him. He gets a phenomenal number of pages per employee, not that many of them are readable. It won’t surprise me, though, if someday Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., owner of the New York Times, hires him as a consultant. Western media appears almost that desperate.

What those of us who like to get the local news in English are left with is BBN, the English-language arm of Äripäev. It’s staffed—as far as I can determine—by one well-meaning woman who has the unenviable job of translating tiny bits of stories and then suffering the abuse foreign readers throw at her in the comments section. In addition to a glimpse of the news, BBN’s website provides a source of therapy for foreigners as a place to vent, and often they rant tediously about how stupid Estonians are (and, by implication, how smart they are). One reader has gone so far to write all his comments in short non-rhyming stanzas resembling haikus, though their random structure would not suggest he does it consciously—I suspect his burning anger somehow causes his pinky to wander and repeatedly strike the return key.

The Baltic Times is still around, but since Steve Roman left the editor’s chair I’ve assumed that in their zero-budget quest to make ice-cream from feces they’d replace him with retired, albeit highly-trained, circus dogs. But mostly I don’t read it because I can get the news from Estonian papers, and because of my firm belief in the computer science axiom, GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). If one aspires to write like Shakespeare, he won’t get there by reading Danielle Steele.

I’m rooting for someone to succeed in English-language media, because I really would like to read intelligent commentary in English on the Baltic States. As it stands now, I’m left waiting for whatever occasional Edward Lucas piece touches our region. Although Edward occasionally fires an unqualified broadside (as he did recently in Foreign Policy: “It is a scandal, for example, that [Baltic] higher education…is so second-rate”), I have to forgive him, as he’s the absolute best we’ve got.

Of course, towering high above all others is my English-language blog, but the silly names of our two-man news team (mine, plus photographer Imbi Imetore) don’t lend a lot of credibility, plus we have a news budget entirely financed by Google Ads ($11.35 earned last year). Since Google doesn’t cut the check until you reach a threshold of 25 dollars, both Imbi and I are still working on credit, which I suppose puts us neck in neck with every other publication in the world. So when you stop to think about it, we could come out of this crisis ahead.

But Imbi’s let this crisis get her down. She hasn’t made a photo in weeks. She could use a little motivation. Maybe it’s about time I walk over to where she’s sitting and kick her chair out from under her.

***
This story first published in Postimees.

Europe Imitates Bollywood

Eurovision is usually a trashy spectacle and perhaps this year is no exception. But since the Russians do trashy spectacles like no one else can, maybe that explains why I like it so much this year. A couple of questions and a few observations:

What I don’t get about Eurovision:

1. How does Israel get invited? Since when were they in Europe? And why isn’t Palestine included?

2. Why did France send Patricia Kaas when everyone else sent amateurs? Is this like the Russians attempting to beat the Americans in the Olympics by pitting their pro hockey players against the Americans’ collegiates? (And note that UK brings out the big gun, Andrew Lloyd Webber.) Shouldn't there be a rule against this?

3. Why did Germany not have to compete in the semifinals? Does this have to do with their special relationship with Russia and the pipeline?

My favorites, by the way:

Moldova. Great dancing, singing, catchy tune. I wouldn’t buy the album, but almost. They’re my pick to win, and I’m publishing this story before the winner is announced just in case (23:53, Estonia time).

Estonia. Thank you, Sven Lõhmus, for not giving us English-language drivel this year. You’ll probably get a riigiorden for this one. In the future, may your country be punished by me writing a song in Estonian for every one you write in English.

Denmark. This Eurocountry holds some appeal to me. They might open for Kenny Chesney or play a NASCAR event.

Russia. Bravo. Not afraid at all to be Russian. (This is my second choice for Eurovision winner.)

Norway. That kid is going to get a lot of votes for simply being the cute enough that every woman in Europe will want to take him home. And his song is okay, too.

Channeling Amy Vanderbilt

“I’m in a meeting and can’t talk. Call me back in an hour.” That’s what I got when I called a woman I'd never met who wanted me to edit her ten-thousand-word academic thesis for free. My response: “Up yours.” Of course I didn’t say it until after she’d hung up. And my answer had nothing to do with her wanting me to do it for free.

I’ve never thought of myself as a crusty old timer, but I am baffled by mobile phone etiquette. To my way of thinking, the woman answering the phone was doubly rude: first to those in her meeting, and secondly to me. If she didn’t want to talk, why’d she bother to answer at all?

“But people expect you to answer,” a friend explained after listening to my rant. “People know you’ve got the phone with you, so it’s rude not to answer.”

“What if I’m in the shower?” I countered. “What if I’m urinating? What if I’m on the table in the emergency room with a doctor carving out my appendix?”

“Well,” he said sheepishly, “I’ve answered the phone in the shower.”

And what’s with this “Call me back…”? Wouldn’t common courtesy dictate she call me back? After all, she was the one who wanted the favor. So now I was supposed to remember to call her back so I could be inconvenienced for her benefit? The whole situation smelled Soviet. Like in the Estonian government office I once worked where an unwanted phone call was silenced by raising the receiver a few centimeters from its cradle and letting it drop.

Up yours, indeed.

When I was a child—in the pre-mobile phone era—I was required to answer the telephone this way: Vikerkaar residence, this is Vello speaking. My brother and I hated it. As teenagers, it seemed completely over the top, like we were Canada farm kids pretending to be royalty. Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth speaking. We had to take detailed messages, too, writing down the caller’s name, number, and exact time of call. In the chaotic world we live in, it probably was reassuring when one of the Vikerkaar children answered the phone. But as with kids from any era, we were too focused on our own navels to care. But we did it anyway, because bad manners in our household just weren’t tolerated. And dad wasn’t afraid to enforce it with a belt.

In those days there were three doyens of manners. Emily Post, Miss Manners (Judith Martin’s pseudonym), and Amy Vanderbilt. Our family’s manners were guided by Amy Vanderbilt’s New Complete Book of Etiquette. Published in 1952—and seriously out of date in our household 25 years later—there were chapters titled “Employer-Servant Relations,” “Ship Launchings and Visiting a Naval Vessel,” and “An Audience with the Pope.” But Mrs. Vanderbilt wasn’t too out of touch. She knew that some people who bought books weren’t rich enough to employ a butler and so included the chapter “Gracious Living without Servants.”

Even though there weren’t mobile phones for Mrs. Vanderbilt to write about, I think we’d concur on a few etiquette basics. I believe she’d agree that the man who answered his phone and carried on a five-minute conversation in the second row of the opera was not acting with consideration for others. She’d agree my neighbor who constantly talks on his phone while driving his Audi Q7 endangers fellow drivers. And she would note that if you indeed take calls while using the toilet, it is considerate to wait to flush.

With new technologies like the mobile phone where etiquette isn’t yet formed, it is indeed our duty to challenge the devices, to consider what they contribute versus what they disrupt. The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recently posed two questions to the inventors of Twitter: Did you know you were designing a toy for bored celebrities and high-school girls? and Was there anything in your childhood that led you to want to destroy civilization as we know it?

Lucky for us all, Edward M. DelSole of Scranton, Pennsylvania, posted a solution in Dowd’s comments section: “Don’t ‘Tweet’ passively. Ensure what you’re saying has purpose.” I do believe he’s channeling Amy Vanderbilt. I haven’t been able to reach Mr. DelSole, but I think he’d say Mrs. Vanderbilt would have excoriated the woman who answered her mobile phone in the meeting. Mrs. Vanderbilt—an extremist to be sure—might have gone so far as to suggest the woman turn her phone off. What a concept! Off!

Several years ago, I was laughing with my brother over the way our parents forced manners upon their children. When he raised the subject of our long telephone greeting, we broke out Amy Vanderbilt to review what she had to say. “A maid employed in the home…answers the phone by saying ‘Mr. Greer’s residence’…A member of the family merely answers ‘Hello.’”

What fools we’d been! The long, excessive polite greeting was reserved for servants! Had we not been too lazy to read, we would have been well within our rights to answer the phone Hello like all of our friends. Of course, our jackbooted parents’ logic was that answering hello led to soon answering Yes?, which led to swearing, which led to sex, which led to teen pregnancy, which led to your entire life being ruined forever. So I guess my parents had a point.

Maybe after reading this, the woman who answered her phone in the meeting will change her behavior. Probably not. Appeals for good manners rarely work without a belt. Which, come to think of it, I’ll happen to have when I tell her I won’t edit her thesis. But then comes the small matter of telling her why. There I’ll just have to hope I can be as polite as Mrs. Vanderbilt.

Moving the Peanut

Sitting in an airport bar, my boss Ted shelled a peanut and put the kernel on the countertop between us. “I push it to you,” he said. “You push it back to me.” I nudged it back his way. “Now,” he said, pushing it my way again, “we’re moving the peanut. If we wear neckties and do this ad infinitum, this is called a career.”

And that was how Ted, fifty-eight years old and owner of one of America’s most successful advertising agencies, viewed the office grind. His theory was that ninety percent of the work we do is meaningless and that many of the people he employed were there for largely ceremonial purposes.

Working freelance in a crisis economy has stripped away the fat from my work life and shown me which jobs were simply peanut moving. Editing and writing for local English-language magazines? Gone. Despite my best efforts to create quality, advertisers seemed to only want something cheap. The Moscow jobs where I was paid good sums to stay awake through hours of market research presentations? Gone, too. You don’t need market research to sell soap to Russians: paint the package gold and say it’s “lux.”

I’ve been reading lately in the Estonian press about saneerimine, which I understand is the equivalent in laymen’s terms of getting protection from creditors while you fire a truckload of people and make the survivors work harder.

Like the receptionist. She gets fired and they put the youngest, least valuable employee closest to the door. He’s too inexperienced to see the writing on the wall and so he’ll still smile at guests. The company drivers are the next to go. These are glorified deliverymen, and all the company bigshots drive their own cars, anyway. Next go the boss’ mistress and his various friends, relatives, and pinginaabrid still on the company payroll. Then goes the blonde bombshell marketing manager, the Estonian CEO’s ultimate fashion accessory. After the staff is reduced, the socialist trappings are cut. The company starts charging employees for coffee. The order for corporate-logoed ski jackets is canceled and the company ski event in Otepää is rescheduled—for July. Employees are made to pay for personal calls. Finally go the company cars. After much hand wringing, the board of directors decides that an employee doesn’t need a BMW 7-series to drive from his apartment in Kesklinn to the office in Kesklinn. And then so much for underground parking…

Ah, the crisis. It can turn a job into work.

I was stopped on the street the other day by ETV and asked if I was suffering because of the crisis. Was I cutting back on my cultural caloric intake and attending fewer plays and shows? Damn right, I said. I explained how I now see everything in its fully-taxed splendor. That coffee in Old Town might be priced at 25 kroons, but as both employer and employee, it will cost me enough in taxes to make it a 40-kroon cup. And I told the interviewer I also didn’t have the several thousand kroons anymore to take the family to a Saku Suur Hall “Broadway” production of Phantom of the Opera, which would turn out to star the understudies of the understudies of the understudies. I’ve become so suspicious of any heavily advertised show, that if Kivirähk, Tüür, or Pärt hasn’t written it, my wife Liina has to both pay for my ticket and promise to buy me a half dozen Byeli Aist brandies at intermission. For my money, I’d rather see Chalice’s Phantom. Though I still don’t understand why a grown man would go by the name “goblet.”

See what happens when you take away my peanut? Fog enshrouds the soul. A foul mood sets in.

But I have faith. I read somewhere that the Estonian state employs nearly 160,000 people, an astronomical percentage of Estonia’s work force. The state is currently thinking, reflecting, coming up with a plan. One hundred and sixty thousand is a lot of peanut movers. And that movement requires the tax money of those who really do churn the wheels of industry. Hopefully, that’s you and me, my friend. So cross your fingers. And keep your peanut ready.

***
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Portrait of an Immigration Office

2007

“What’s this ‘McCormick?’” asked the Estonian immigration official to whom I presented my application for a residence permit.

“It’s my middle name,” I replied.

“Why’s it have a lower case ‘C?’”

“I don’t know. It’s Irish. That’s how it’s written.”

“But it’s not that way on your passport. Your passport has an upper case ‘C.’”

“I didn’t realize that.”

“Look!”

“You’re right. On my passport it’s written with an upper case ‘C.’”

“Why?”

“All of the letters on my passport are written in upper case.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Do you want me to call the Canadian Embassy and ask? Is it that important to you?”

The official frowned.


2005

“Where’d you get that chair?” the official asked.

“From the desk next to you,” I answered. There had been no chairs at her desk, and I wanted to sit.

“What if someone needs it?”

“No one needed it. I asked.”

“Oh, you asked, did you?”

“I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“You should not take chairs from there. Someone might need them.”

“Okay, from where would you like me to take a chair?”

“I said he could take the chair,” interrupted the official’s colleague at the next desk. “No one was using it.”

“You take chairs from the big table,” my official shouted. “Not from smaller tables!”

I returned the chair to my official’s colleague’s table and selected one from the large table behind me.

“There,” I said. “I now have the correct chair. Shall we proceed?”

The official frowned.


1998

“Do you have the additional documents required?” the official asked.

“I do.” I presented him an envelope.

“I see here that you’re HIV negative.”

“Yes, I went to the state clinic and they administered the test.”

“But how do I know you don’t have AIDS?”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Estonian state needs to be certain you do not have AIDS. How do we know you don’t have AIDS?”

“Because I’m HIV negative,” I offered, still not sure what the man wanted.

“Yes, but how do I know you don’t have AIDS?”

“If I’m HIV negative, then I don’t have AIDS. Scientists tell us that to contract AIDS you must first have the HIV virus.”

“Well, I’m not a scientist.”

Until recently, residence permit applicants were required to provide the following: an original university diploma, certification by a state psychologist that they were not insane, and a certificate from a state clinic proving they were HIV negative.
***

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Striptease

“Ignore the girl upstairs in the bed. There’s a friend who’s staying with me and she’s his girlfriend.” My French writer friend, Guillaume, was sitting in my car and talking on the phone to his Estonian landlord. He’d finally had enough of our dark northern days, and I was driving him and his boxes to the post office. His landlord was, at the same time, en route to show the soon-to-be-vacant apartment.

“You don’t have a friend staying with you,” I pointed out to him.

“Yeah, but I can’t tell the landlord I’ve got a stripper in my bed.”

“A stripper?”

“I met her at a club and we kind of hit it off.”

“OK.” I didn’t ask what kind of club. I mean, strippers have private lives, too. Maybe he’d met her sipping vintage Bordeaux in Gloria’s wine cellar.

As we pulled away from his apartment, Guillaume started having second thoughts. “Estonian strippers don’t steal, do they? Maybe I should have taken my laptop with me?”

“Why don’t you just kick her out?”

“Oh, I don’t want to be rude. She’s a really nice girl.”

I told him I wasn’t an expert, but from what I’d read in the papers, strippers frequently steal.

“Prostitutes steal. This girl is a stripper.”

“She doesn’t take money for sex?”

“God, no.” He thought a bit and then added, “Well, not from me.”

To make him feel better, I suggested that since she hadn’t drugged him and left in the middle of the night, the odds were good she might not rob him. Guillaume decided we should drive back, and he ran in to get his computer.

“She’s still asleep,” he said, relieved.

“Did you take your cash, too?”

“I don’t have any cash. There are only books to steal, and she doesn’t read French.”

After we finished at the post office, I returned with Guillaume to his apartment. I wanted to get a look for myself. We passed the landlord on the staircase, and he mentioned nothing about a naked pole dancer asleep spread-eagle in the master bedroom.

She hadn’t stolen anything from Guillaume. In fact, she was seated at his kitchen table, sipping coffee, typing away on her very own—and very expensive—laptop.

“This is my friend, Julia,” Guillaume introduced her. She was tall and attractive. She was sluttier than a post office worker but less so than most of the high-booted girls you’ll find prowling the streets of Tallinn.

I was pleasantly surprised. I’ve been to a few strip clubs in Tallinn and am always disappointed. The “dancing” is generally of a quality lower than a grade school ballet class, and often there’s a shirtless male with a python who effectively douses any desire whipped up by the girls. And if the snake dance doesn’t do it for you, the girls will often ruin the experience by rubbing their bodies against you and saying in a thick Russian accent, “You give me money now, da?”

I admit it’s been several years since I’ve been to the clubs, and it’s possible EU regulations have improved the dancing. But I doubt it. The strippers I’ve seen in Estonia were even lazier than construction workers. Since their clients were mostly catatonic Finns and undersexed Danes, they hardly had to do more than show up and get naked. The Finns we get in Tallinn don’t expect much, don’t speak much English, and so “give me money now” may really arouse them.

But Julia seemed different. She spoke British-accented English, was conservatively dressed, and had a contagious smile. We discussed politics and Europe, and she said she was getting ready to go to Barcelona “on business.” She finished her coffee, closed her laptop, and kissed Guillaume on the cheek. She offered me her hand and wished me good day.

“See,” Guillaume said when the door closed. “See what a judgmental ass you are?”

He was right, of course, but I wasn’t going to admit it. “I’m not the one who ran back for his laptop,” I said.

Guillaume and I drank coffee and talked about the sun-filled cafes of Paris. I told him I’d miss him and all his crazy adventures with people like Julia.

“But we can go see her dance before I leave,” he said.

I told him I thought that was a fine idea.


***
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Code Breakers

“Sometimes I feel like I’m writing the same column over and over again,” I said to my wife, Liina. “Like I made the movie 101 Dalmatians, got good reviews, and so decided to remake the film using Labrador Retrievers.”

Liina just stared at me.

“You know, when I write about Estonian consumers allowing themselves to be screwed. Do you think that people notice the similarities or get tired of reading my pieces?”

“Well,” she said. “For one thing, you don’t have many competitors for your column. And secondly, the columns come out two weeks apart.”

That was not the answer I was after.

Estonians often brag about how straightforward and honest they are, how they’ll speak the truth even if it hurts. And how this is somehow a positive attribute.

When I was a kid, my mother had a cardinal rule for dealing with others: If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all. I still think that most of the time this isn’t a bad rule. Ask yourself: In most instances, is there anything to be gained by saying exactly what you’re thinking? Fools almost always know—or at least strongly suspect—they’re fools. You telling them so isn’t going to make them less foolish; it’s only going to put you on their shitlist.

Liina believes that if you tell someone directly he’s a shithead that he’ll benefit and might even be grateful. “Hey, yes, you’re right. I am a shithead. Thanks for pointing that out. I wouldn’t have known it had you not said it. And since you’ve brought it to my attention, I’ll now rethink my shitheadedness and take constructive steps to be a better human being.”

Would other cultures be better off if they adopted the Estonian model and spoke the raw truth? I’m not convinced.

If you happen to disagree with someone, it’s more fruitful to get him talking, make him think you’re listening, make him think you care. Then, after you’ve softened the beachheads with some nodding, a few “ah hahs”, and a little pretend listening, you very gently suggest there might perhaps be another way of seeing the issue.

Liina claims it’s a simply difference in languages. A direct answer to a direct question is not rude in Estonian, she says, but it can be in English. She calls English a coded language. For example, if an American is asked how he liked the food and he answers “It was interesting,” this probably means he disliked it. (It at least suggests the host should not probe further.) If the same question is posed to an Estonian and he answers in his language that “Toit oli huvitav,” then you know the food challenged his palate. Liina admits an Estonian wouldn’t describe food with the word “interesting,” but it’s the best she could come up with on short notice.

“Raw honesty gives you a new point of view,” she says. “How could you not be happy about it? Isn’t that the whole point?” Well, Liina, thanks. That’s very, uh, interesting.

But what’s wrong with my coded language?

Estonians tend to attach gravity to the question, “Kuidas läheb?” I respect that, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a major achievement. For centuries, people in other cultures have asked “How’s it going?” (Comment ça va? Qué tal? Wie gehts? Kak dyela?) as a form of “hello,” and their civilizations haven’t yet collapsed. When I answer “fine”, I communicate that I’m grateful you asked but that I also understand you don’t want to hear the answer. Because Estonians eschew that perfunctory exchange doesn’t make them special. It makes them contrarian.

“Stop shitting on the Estonian soul,” Liina shouted when I read her that last paragraph. (The reader may decide himself whether Liina benefitted from my directness.)

But if the “how’s it going?” question is the mark of a coded language, then are not most languages coded? What then is Estonian’s code? Is it really not coded? And if yes, is the fact it’s not coded the very code itself? Maybe some sort of code might lend to more self-expression in Estonian society and therefore healthier living?

Liina argues that if I want honey from her lips that I shouldn’t ask her opinion. In one respect she’s right: I get good columns from arguing with her.

But maybe there’s a happy medium between the two extremes, Estonian and western. Maybe Liina does happen to have a point about my coded language. When an American friend tells me something is “just terrific,” I’m of course skeptical. Though when an Estonian friend tells me something is “pask,” I am also filled with doubt—it’s surely not that bad.

An old friend of mine used to wear a t-shirt that read: If you don’t have something nice to say, then come over here and sit by me. A wonderful sentiment, I think, beckoning those with nothing nice to say to vote with their feet, yet still protecting the optimists from a verbal haranguing. I ought to look into printing up several million of those for distribution in Estonia and the USA.

Liina can have the very first one.