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.

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Read it in Estonian 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.

DIY Estonia

Want to make a good country better? A little "remont" where you don't have to get your hands dirty? Now's your chance. The whizkids behind Estonia's legendary countryside cleanup (50,000 volunteers, 10,000 tons of crap, one single day) have put together what may be the world's largest brainstorming event. Over 100,000 Estonians will come together on May 1st to discuss how to make the country better--and they want to hear from everyone. This means you.

Here's one appeal to foreigners by my American friend Scott:

Won't you join the effort by taking part in an English-speaking group? (Estonians are also welcome in the English groups--how much fun would it be with only foreigners?) To sign up, write Ms. Liina Parve (liina.parve@minueesti.ee) and tell her you want to take part in an English-language group. It's a can't-go-wrong email. At best, you'll help change the country. At worst, you'll make a few new friends.

***

Incidentally, groups must obtain their own meeting space, and the English group is no exception. If you have access to a space which could accommodate forty people or so (preferably somewhere where we can sit in a circle--but beggars can't be choosers) please write me at v.vikerkaar@gmail.com.

The Best Man for the Job

In Estonia, the best man for the job is a woman.

If you want to hire someone who’ll show up on time, take pride in his work, solve problems before they arise, then don’t hire him. Hire her.

The average young Estonian man has the grooming habits of a zombie. He appears mornings in the office having slept in his clothes. What was once a Caesar haircut has hardened to a protective crust. Dandruff carpets the shoulders of the dark suit he’s never bothered to dry clean. His once-black shoes are gray and caked with debris from last night’s party to celebrate the invention of the Zippo lighter.

Fashion-wise, he eschews a tie. Perhaps he sees himself as more the bank robber than the bank employee. Or perhaps he plans to join a British pop band. More likely, since he won’t change clothes for the next 72 hours, he must be suitably attired for all activity. Milk the cow in the morning; go to work; go clubbing. He’s a bit overdressed for the cow and a bit underdressed for the office, but neither party voices concern.

The average young man doesn’t rate high in the savoir faire department, either. In job interviews he has the gall to ask about money before talking about the job itself. He begins with questions about what kind of laptop or ergonomic chair he’ll get. “And my company car won’t be Korean-made, will it? What’s the mobile phone allowance? And can I have the chrome-plated model with the built-in laser pointer?”

He is manly to a fault. Like an American teenager, he likes to smoke and drink and “invest” in a car stereo worth more than his car. He loves to drive and can prove he’s an excellent driver: “I can make it from Tallinn to Tartu in under an hour.” He can also open a beer bottle with any object at hand. “Wanna see?”

Women are lesser creatures, and he would not be dissatisfied if Estonian women adopted the ways of the east and walked ten paces behind their men. Being lucky enough to live in a time of shrinking population, society allows him two or more families. And if family cramps his style, simply spreading his seed is accepted, too. Birth control is a woman’s issue. He’s just doing his job.

All the above considered, if you’re in the hiring mode, who will you take? The woman, of course. She shows up on time for her interview, makes intelligent observations about your business, and doesn’t put her feet on your desk even once. Her suit is appropriate and clean, and she rides the bus to work. Says she’s never considered a car stereo. She’d rather spend the money on her kids.

Of course not all Estonian men are such Neanderthals. My friend Jaanus has the manners of a Florentine Cardinal and dresses like an old world count. Most importantly, his behavior goes beyond mere studied manners: he shows deep, genuine consideration for others. This doesn’t mean only stopping for pedestrians in crosswalks and holding the door for ladies—it manifests itself in small gestures too numerous to count. But Jaanus isn’t the norm. He’s a true gentleman, of which there are too few in any society.

It’s the raggedy-assed multitudes we must improve. They’re the ones we employ. The cogs in the let's-hope-soon-to-be-hungry-again European Machine. But as a society, we can’t count on having women around forever to do our work for us. Women have babies, and many move out of the workforce to take on more important roles in the world. It’s unfair to ask them to do the work of men, too.

For now, in Estonia, the best man for the job is a woman. Men take note. This is your wakeup call.

The Boring and the Beautiful

Brand Estonia strikes again. This time, Estonia’s marketing arm gives us: “Estonia. Positively Surprising.” It’s a slogan that’s, well--and forgive me here--surprisingly unsurprising.

I’m willing to pardon the bureaucrats for not knowing much about international marketing, but they could at least take a lesson from the movies. In Crazy People, Dudley Moore stars as an advertising executive who’s reached his breaking point and, when committed to an insane asylum, starts to produce the best ads of his career by telling simple and compelling truths. Ads like these:

“Jaguar. For men who want hand-jobs from beautiful women they hardly know.”

“Metamucil helps you go to the toilet. If you don’t use it, you’ll get cancer and die.”

Moore also dabbles in tourism: “Forget France. The French can be annoying. Come to Greece. We’re nicer.”

But we can’t blame Brand Estonia entirely. Give most of us tens of millions of euros and the responsibility to promote Estonia, and we too might buckle under pressure and choose the most cautious route. Positively Surprising.

But there is still hope for Estonia. Brand Estonia may not get it, but others do.

Janek Mäggi recently wrote in the daily Postimees that Estonians want to be “the beautiful and the boring” and so offered some better slogans himself: “Europe’s most beautiful women.” For Finland he suggested “Northern Europe’s Cheapest Beer.”

Sadly, Mäggi doesn’t happen to run Brand Estonia. Nor do I. But since my income is connected to the success of this small nation, I’m not above telling them how to do their job. So in the spirit of Dudley Moore and Janek Mäggi, I offer a handful of highly targeted slogans to carry Estonia abroad.

For Russia: “Estonia. The continent’s closest flush toilet.”
To the Italians: “Estonian women are too reserved to slap you.”
For India: “Feel right at home—our taxi drivers will cheat you, too.”
To the Swedes: “Europe’s cheapest breast implants.”
For Africa: “Come be stared at. But not necessarily in a bad way.”
To Americans: “Estonia is Europe’s low-calorie Russia: All the excitement with only half the danger.”
To the Dutch: “Come touch a real live tree.”
For Finland: “Vodka 9 euros per liter.”
For men under 25: “A place where it’s permitted to drive like in Hollywood action films.”
For the French: “After you leave, you’ll appreciate your own food more.”
And to zee Germans: “Welcome home to the land you used to rule.” Or for after the freedom monument is unveiled: “Europe’s Biggest Balkenkreuz.”

Of course you think I’m kidding. Actually, I’m exaggerating. But only slightly. My tasteless slogans may not be as suitable as Mäggi’s, but there’s a grain of truth in every one, a starting place from which a marketing message can be crafted.

In fairness to the marketing wizards at Brand Estonia, we shouldn’t be so naïve to think one sentence is going to cause tourists and investors to come flocking over the border to see what Estonia is all about. Even one sentence plus a lot of money. Seventeen years is a very short time for a country to have formed any sort of identity, to know who it is and what it wants. When I was seventeen I was beset with conflicting goals: I wanted to drink beer and chase girls and show the world what an adult I was. As I later realized, I was bad at drinking beer, worse at chasing girls, and no clever slogan could ever have improved things. It wasn’t that I was a bad guy. I just hadn’t yet understood why I was a good guy. So perhaps we can forgive the shortcomings of a seventeen-year-old Estonia.

Still, though, if we’re going to spend the money, why not get that one sentence right? There are plenty of good case studies. Recently, India greeted guests at the Davos World Economic Forum with a “Dream Team” (to quote Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria) of India’s most intelligent and articulate government officials. There were Hindi tunes, Indian dancers, and free iPod shuffles loaded with Bollywood music. Somehow they even talked the forum’s chairman, Klaus Schwab, into wearing a turban and shawl. Their slogan? India Everywhere. “And it was,” wrote Zakaria.

Good advertising presents a product much like a self-confident person presents himself: as he is, not as he wishes to be. Age seventeen is about the right time for Estonia to look in the mirror and see who we are. To get comfortable in our skin and learn to be ourselves. And then advertise that. A big country with a big budget can get away with forgettable ads—put enough money behind even an inane slogan and it will eventually register. But Estonia doesn’t have that luxury. When your budget is only a drop in the bucket of international media, you actually have to say something memorable.

Every time that Standard & Poor’s or Moody’s Investors Service drops its ratings on Estonia, some government official appears on camera to whine, “But they don’t even know where Estonia is!” Of course they don’t know where Estonia is. And at the rate we’re going—“Welcome to Estonia” and “Positively Surprising”—they’re not likely to know anytime soon. To them, Estonia is no different than Latvia. But hey, there’s an idea in that: “Estonia. The Baltic State that Isn’t Fucked Up.” (Knock on wood, of course. Loudly.)

***

As an exercise in Estonia's image via the web, try googling "Welcome to Estonia." In a normal text search, the fourth entry generated (above the fold, as they say) was a photograph from a porno shoot in a building across from Stockmann. What this says about Estonia's image I'm not quite sure. Maybe it says more about search engines. Thoughts?