Inside Darth Vader

“Do you find this work demeaning?” my boss asked me. She owns a relocation company and occasionally employs me because she has a tough time finding Estonians to do the job. She says they often find showing apartments to be demeaning.

I told her I didn’t find it demeaning, though if she made me wear a squirrel costume or something, then it might be another matter.

Actually, since during the 1981-82 recession in Canada I had applied for a job babysitting dead bodies in a funeral home, and since I had also done work climbing into sewers to plug them with a giant cork, I kind of thought standing around in clean clothes while foreign yuppies looked at apartments was pretty cool.

The relocation job pays okay, and another benefit is that you get to see a good number of apartments in Tallinn.

On Viru Street, I looked at an attic apartment, where to enter you have to pass directly by a carnival barker who insists you eat at his restaurant. On the second floor, you are greeted by the wafting chemical odors of a hair and nail salon which occupies an apartment. On the next floor, an apartment has been converted into a torture museum, and features two young girls at a desk who beckon you to enter their lair.

Once you reach the attic apartment you find that it’s designed like a patchwork quilt made by an alcoholic grandmother: disjointed rooms meeting in odd places, bathroom walls covered with alternating granite and cheap plastic tiles, and part of its floor is suspended and fenced in timbers which makes it resemble a dance floor. All it’s missing is a silver stripper poll.

I imagined the tenants running the gauntlet of capitalism every day when they came home from work. Just how much formaldehyde and acetone would they have to breathe? And would the two girls at the desk ever learn to recognize their faces and stop shouting to “Come enjoy torture museum”?

“My company owns the whole building,” said the landlord in a tone which made me wonder if he weren’t in negotiations to put a Mini Cooper dealership in one of the empty apartments or to lease the rooftop to Copterline.

In the Fahle house on Tartu road, I saw a bathroom built so that its door hung at a negative angle – and the rest of the bathroom suspended above you like some Damoclean sword. Seated in the living room you got the feeling like all the heavy fixtures might come crashing down upon you at any moment.

And when seated on the toilet – situated in the very center of the bathroom – you are Luke Skywalker at the helm of an X-wing fighter, ready to launch proton torpedos to make a parking lot of the Sikupilli shopping center, if it weren’t already, mostly, a parking lot.

Down in the surprisingly small kitchen a stove vent looks like it is part of an expensive stereo system. Fashion magazines are fanned across a glass coffee table as if to instruct. It would be only natural to see a dozen lines of cocaine and a golden straw next to them. I wondered if the developer’s brief to the architect had been: Apartment should impress Mexican drug lords.

I also got to tour one of those many houses in Viimsi which resemble Darth Vader’s head. Some are white, some black, but all have dark, imposing windows which stretch the length of the house. You approach cautiously as if a laser cannon might fire at any moment.

The owner of this particular Darth Vader home wore a shirt which read FUBU in huge letters across the front and all the time wore D&G sunglasses while indoors. He kept peering out the window as if he was afraid thieves might be lifting the spinning rims off his Cadillac SUV. Inside, the house was nearly sterile and reminded me of a modern art gallery. I left with the same sensation I’d felt when I crowded in among the throngs to see the Mona Lisa for the first (and only) time: What’s wrong with me? Why wasn’t I as excited as everyone else?

The architect Christopher Alexander has written that the test of a good public park is whether people easily fall asleep in it. Knowing nothing of Feng Shui, including its proper pronunciation, I cannot say the Feng Shui is wrong in these modern Tallinn dwellings, but I can say I don’t feel at ease there. As soon as I sit down, I get the impulse to leave. These are not places which invite me to just be.

Liina’s theory is that architects just can’t stop trying to find new forms. “A round wheel works just fine,” she says. “Why do architects keep trying to make it flower shaped?”

A prominent musician once told me that the two most regrettable periods in Estonian history were “the 50 years of Soviet occupation and the last fifteen years of real estate development.”

I suppose it’s simply the curse of new money and our need to show it off, if only to each other. Had we been thinking, the 1990s and its availability of labor at slave-like rates should have enabled us to build with stone and expand the Old Town to swallow up Kesklinn. Who would object if the Three Penis Towers on Narva road were replaced by a tasteful medieval structure? Or if that giant Methodist Church looked a little less like a circus tent?

But that’s 20/20 hindsight, and none of us is all that clever. For all my talk, Liina says my tastes tend toward American trailer parks.

The people who mostly kept their wits about them throughout history are rural Estonians. Even during the past fifteen years they’ve continued to build simple, human-friendly structures with practicality in mind — the type of places with souls, where worries are shed and not accumulated. And the good news is that city folks are slowly starting to learn from them.

Although thatched-roof cottages may be no solution for the city, a friend of mine and his wife have taken a stab at embracing the natural and used straw bales to construct a house in one of Tallinn’s suburbs.

While the house has been celebrated in a couple of western magazines, it has not been popular in Estonia. The couple stopped meeting with journalists after a camera crew set up on the front lawn and filmed the newsgirl reading the story of the three little pigs, before she produced a local “expert” to say the house was inappropriate for northern climes, conveniently forgetting the fact that there were already several hundred in Finland and Sweden and now even 20 or 30 of them in Estonia.

And there are neighborhoods like Nõmme and Kadriorg, populated by people who apparently saw enough concrete in Soviet times to last a lifetime, and who don’t currently embrace the material as the end-all, be-all of modern construction.

We are exiting our teens, however, entering our twenties as a nation, and I believe we’re on the path to good things. My prediction is that the next generation will have far, far better taste. I predict they’ll dismantle the freedom monument and build a greenhouse in its place using the very same glass. Instead of free potatoes, there’ll be free tomatoes.

They’ll dynamite the Linnahall and the plans for a casino along with it, and they’ll develop a port area even more inviting and tasteful than anything across the bay in Helsinki.

And they’ll save the Three Penis Towers by adding a glans to each tower. They’ll market it as the Second Bhutan, and millions will flock here as art tourists, instead of just for cheap booze and a massage with a happy ending.

I look at my own little boy, and I believe in Estonia’s new generations. They’ll believe that all honest work is honorable. They’ll not only fix the mistakes we’ve made, but they’ll surprise us with their ability to work together and make good things happen, in matters of taste and beyond. It’s a small boat we’re in, and I think they’ll know how to all blow in the same direction.

And we don’t necessarily have to wait, either. There is hope for us now. “I have seen kind things done by men with ugly faces,” the poet Masefield wrote. “So I trust too.”

***

More on penises, thatched roofs, and Star Trek here.

There from Here

“You can’t get there from here,” I used to hear so much it became a mantra when I would attempt to travel by public transport deep in Estonia’s countryside.

I’d be without a car in some remote southern Estonian village with the desire to get to another remote village. To get there I always had to travel through Tartu, or at least Võru. But that was the charm of the countryside, and it was why I often shunned the bus for hitchhiking.

Today, in the larger context of Europe, remoteness is the charm of Tallinn. Wherever “there” is, with the exception of Helsinki, it’s hard to get there from here without engaging in some minor odyssey.

My recent mission: fly to London, discuss a project over lunch, return home the same day.

I soon found out it was impossible from Tallinn. There was the Helsinki option, but the ticket cost 800 euros, and the departure was so early and return so late that I’d end up spending at least one night in Helsinki. Add taxis to and from Vantaa, and the trip hardly justified the price.

So I flew from Tallinn via Riga on an airBaltic deal which gave me one night in a hotel near Hyde Park. All for a little over 300 euros.

The tradeoff for the price is, of course, the Riga airport, still a booming outpost of Eastern European culture. Despite the fact it’s been physically remodeled, one would not be surprised to find its corridors lined with babushkas in housedresses shouting about the virtues of dried fish.

Many of the airport staff speak English with thick, Boratish accents. Passport control looks you over as if you might be traveling with your anus stuffed full of heroin, and then: “Where’s your boarding pass?”

“I don’t have one,” I answered. “Transit check-in is on the other side of you.” The young man eyed me suspiciously. I honestly wasn’t trying to be a smartass.

“You need get boarding pass at transit check,” he declared, as if it were his original idea.

Then he gave me one more suspicious stare and buzzed me through. On the other side, the terminal’s air was filled with the constant din of wannabe disc jockeys making pre-flight announcements which ensure you can’t hear yourself think, much less your telephone ring. In a search for earplugs I found only Rigas Balsams.

A few hours later at Gatwick I was sent packing from the EU passport line when I showed my Estonian ID card. “But I have permanent residence in the EU,” I protested. “Shouldn’t that be worth a shorter queue? And I’m Canadian. Your Queen is my Queen.”

The lady looked at the card as if I were handing her one of my son’s dirty diapers and banished me to the line with Pakistanis, Afghanis, and Americans. There I got a healthy grilling, though the accent was pleasant and the tone polite.

The guard was clearly not interested in the answers to his questions, only that I, in fact, had answers. “And who would you be visiting here, sir?” “Is that a business partner, sir?” “Where are you staying, sir?” I often wonder that if you told them in a confident tone that you were sleeping on a bench in Hyde Park would they carry on in their cheery fashion. “And which particular bench would that be, sir?”

But what struck me most about London is that in the 24 hours I spent there I did not meet a single native Brit outside of passport control and in taxicabs.

The Gatwick Express conductor was Spanish. The entire hotel staff, even the concierge purported to possess supernatural local knowledge, were Eastern European. It was as if I’d never left the Riga airport.

The girl running the pub was Polish. The restaurant I ate in was Lebanese (its waitress Italian). At the entrance to Kensington Palace I was greeted by a familiar accent. “You American?” I asked the ticket taker. “Canadian,” she replied.

It occurred to me that I would have had more interaction with British people if I’d stayed home and driven around Tallinn with my GPS turned on. (The voice I’ve selected sounds like Miss Moneypenny.)

The point of all this is that more and more I find that when I leave Tallinn Airport I start to immediately miss it. I like its Scandinavian silence, its short lines, and free wireless internet, all which somehow serve to mitigate the strangeness of the pat-down man, who just a little too lovingly runs his fingers around the inside the waistband of your trousers.

All this would seem to add up to opportunity for Estonia, Tallinn Airport, and Estonian Air.

A friend has pointed out that the peace and quiet I so enjoy in Ülemiste bears a remarkable resemblance to a graveyard. Because you can’t get there from here, no one does, and the airport’s charm is based on the fact that so few passengers are served.

That may be, but whatever great success Latvia may boast of in air travel should probably be taken in context: all media accounts point to a Day of Reckoning for the Latvian state and airBaltic, which is said will soon lay off hundreds of workers.

And although it’s a popular pastime to make fun of Estonian Air, I’m optimistic now that issue of ownership has been sorted out. Bringing in the pragmatic, bottom-line-loving Joakim Helenius and his hired gun Tera Taskila seems a clear step on the road to profit. Of course it’s impossible to know just how bent on instant gratification and immediate returns the state will be. Will they leave the new team alone long enough to do the job? Or will they meddle from behind the curtain and force sült on the inflight menu, put yellow-vested reisisaatjad in the cabin, or quadruple daily flights to European armpits like Minsk?

May I suggest a daily London route? It’s not just for me: I read somewhere that Skype buys some 2,500 tickets per year to London. (They must surely tire of flying through Riga.)

Tallinn is a wonderful city to come home to. An affordable taxi awaits you, as does the lovely euro. The border guard is efficient and is familiar with ID cards. There are authentic Estonians in the shops and behind counters.

Why not build on that? What if airport walls were covered with soothing Estonian art? What if orchestras rehearsed there? Or choirs? Or what if Tallinn city government members (in yellow vests) roamed the terminal giving free massages to waiting passengers? What if you could get a free sauna while you wait?

There’s plenty of potential to make Tallinn Airport the most pleasant departure and arrival point in Europe. If only you could get there from here. Some day, though, you will.

***

And while you're waiting in that airport...

Cock Ring Ken: the Movie

One deep bow to artist Toon Vugts who has produced a film based on the column "Cock Ring Ken."

Second Hand

Did the writer David Sedaris really get pubic lice from a pair of jeans he bought in a second hand store? Liina and I have debated it ad nauseum, and she says he’s lying. I say pubic lice are inevitable if you try on enough pairs of jeans.

Public lice, the tiny, six-legged critter — “crabs” as they're popularly known — are generally transmitted through the intermingling of pubic jungles during sexual intercourse. And though it’s more rare, they can indeed spread through contact with toilet seats, sheets, blankets, bathing suits, or even jeans.

Thanks to Sedaris, for years I shied away from second hand shops. But thanks to Estonia, recently I returned.

For reasons I should not disclose, I have the occasional need to wear a uniform. Whether one needs to appear to be an Army General, customs worker, medical doctor, airport runway technician, or American TV news cameraman, the second-hand shop USA Today near the Tallinn Väike rail station has an outfit for the occasion. It didn’t take me long to find the toxic waste disposal worker uniform I desired. It was even in my size.

But I discovered other treasures, too. There was a Mossimo corduroy jacket and L.L. Bean lined trousers for winter. Joseph A. Banks dress shirts were abundant in my size. Some were new, some were close to new, and each was something around five euros.

I took some comfort in the fact that David Sedaris never got crabs from a shirt. But just in case, I tried them on with a tshirt underneath, removed them as quickly as possible, and washed them in hot water at home before wearing.

USA Today piqued my curiosity. If the Americans were sending perfectly good Joseph A. Banks dress shirts, what might the Europeans be sending? This led me to Humana where I found trousers in my size, as well as several sport coats which were of higher quality than most of what you find at Stockmann. One of them fit me. And only ten euros. No kidding.

Two weeks later, wearing my new-to-me jacket, I saw my friend Alan at a party. I admired him greatly, not only because he was an intellectual who had tackled Estonian literature’s most massive translation project, but because, sartorially speaking, he had the disheveled professor look down pat.

Perhaps I am only trying to justify my own less-than-neat appearance, but if a man’s clothes have just the right amount of wrinkles, if his hair is such that he won’t get a job modeling for Supercuts, and if he isn’t completely drunk, then you know he is likely a man to be reckoned with, a man who cannot be bought and sold. “That’s a beautiful jacket, Vello,” Alan clapped me on the back. “You think the shop has one in my size?”

I told him I was pretty sure Humana didn’t, but said if the jacket would fit him then I’d give it to him right then and there. (I meant what I said, but I was safe; Alan was at least one-and-a-half of me.) Alan’s approval set me on an even deeper second hand course.

I admit that I first viewed second hand as a chance to reduce the burden of my annual provisioning trip to the west: fly out with no suitcases and return with your maximum allowance. (Why shop Estonia? Buy your stuff in the west, and the savings easily pay for the plane ticket.)

But while the seeds of my second-hand habit may lie in the fact that I’m a cheap bastard, they quickly grew into something Zen. Buying second hand offered instant relief from the burden of things.

If I decide I don’t like the pattern of my shirt, or if it’s slightly too long in the sleeves, then I give it to the Salvation Army. If my son throws up on my Nautica pants, so what? If someone praises my jacket or tie, I may take it off and give it to him in a grand, Gandhiesque gesture.

But despite my Zen level, there is the occasional trauma.

I recently bought a pair of jeans from Humana. I tried them on briefly in the store, but with Sedaris’ words in the back of my mind I removed them as quickly as possible.

When I got home, I washed them at the highest temperature and then proudly showed them to Liina. “Calvin Klein!” I told her, sashaying around the living room as if I were Carmen Kass on a Paris catwalk.

She hardly looked up from her book.

I preened in front of the mirror, tugging at the jeans. Something wasn’t quite right. The zipper seemed a bit high to allow freedom for urination, but wasn’t this how designer jeans were supposed to be? I recalled the credo of Fernando Álvaro Lamas: It is better to look good than to feel good.

The jeans hung in my closet for a week. For some reason, I could not bring myself to wear them. They did not look bad on me, certainly, but they didn’t look good, either.

One day, two gay friends were visiting, and I showed them the jeans and explained my reservations.

“These are women’s jeans,” Martin declared instantly.

“That’s right,” agreed Mattias, “You’re wearing girl’s jeans.” He snickered in an overly theatrical manner.

I was slightly offended. “Just because you guys are gay doesn’t mean you know shit about clothing.”

“Oh, yeah?” Martin countered. “Then why did you show them to us.”

“Look!” Mattias snatched the jeans from my hands and flung them open on the kitchen table. “You think you can get your tool out with that tiny zipper? No way, mister.”

“And look at the hips!” cried Martin. “They’re wide. For women. Are your hips wide, Vello?”

Mattias began prying around inside the jeans. “See? Size 14! Women’s.”

“I’ve tried on the jeans,” I said, “and they aren’t wide in the hips. And the sizing could be because they’re designer jeans. Also, they were in the men’s department.”

At this both Mattias and Martin howled. “Well,” shrieked Martin, “those clothing experts at the second hand store surely know!”

“Wear women’s jeans if you want then,” said Mattias, folding his hands across his chest in a case-closed gesture.

“No one will notice,” added Martin. “Probably.”

I took the jeans from them and told them they knew so little about clothing that they were going to lose their homosexual licenses. Later that night I scoured the internet for information on Calvin Klein size 14 jeans. Everything I found was for women.

I wondered if I might not give them away to some unsuspecting friend. But how Gandhiesque would the gesture appear if I didn’t take them off my own body to give them away? And wouldn’t someone have to first express interest in them? I might be waiting a very long time.

The next day, I quietly took them to the Salvation Army. “These are women’s jeans,” I told the girl working there, so she wouldn’t make the mistake of putting them in the men’s section.

She gave me a strange look. “Of course they are,” she said.

“I washed them, too,” I added. “Just so nobody will get crabs.” Then I turned on my heel and marched out the door.

***

Read Vello not virtual.

Dispatch: Malawi

After a column suggesting suitable debate topics for the upcoming elections, some have suggested I might best serve Estonia as the republic’s envoy in Malawi, with which Estonia established diplomatic relations on July 19. The following is my first report. It is published here with permission of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Arrival

The sini-must-valge now flies above Malawi's rolling plains. Or near them, anyway, as I have duct taped it to the outside of my apartment window in Lilongwe’s Old Town – yes, they have an Old Town – one of many things our two proud nations have in common!

(Note to Minister Paet: Please send more duct tape via the diplomatic pouch – I must replace it daily, as it is popular here for upholstery repair.)

Presentation of credentials

President Bingu wa Mutharika is truly everything our ministry’s reports say, and the two of us have already enjoyed several chess games in the palace courtyard with live Malawian servants as pieces. Our games may go on for hours, and the discipline of the Malawian people is truly incredible. How do they stand still for so long?

Dispatching captured pieces with a high-powered rifle from the palace roof is rather unorthodox, but Bingo (as he insists I call him) has assured me the country’s unemployment rate—listed as “NA” in the CIA Factbook—is high enough to enable this kind of chess. Bingo has asked repeatedly whether there is sufficient room on Mr. Ilves’ lawn to set up a chessboard when he visits. Bingo says he wishes to play several matches in the memory of Paul Keres, and has characterized Estonia’s unemployment rate as “sufficiently high to allow proper chess in your country, too.”

These chess games have provided an irreplaceable forum for our two nations to get to know each other and for Bingo to point out similarities in our countries and cultures. Did you know, for example, that both our nations have an abundance of limestone? And that we are both bordered by a large lake to the east? We both have democracies, too, and Bingo has remarked many times during our conversations that a “multiparty democracy” is only several letters away from a “military democracy.” He has noted, too, that our nations share life expectancies exceeding 50 years, and that our respective infant mortality rates differ only by one single decimal place.

And as with all leaders, Mr. Minister, Bingo is sometimes tormented by the press. Just recently, this July 25, he was forced to deal harshly with the press when he shut down the nation’s radio stations, surrounded churches where journalists were seeking shelter, and delivered severe beatings to them in the national interest. I have enclosed Bingo’s gift of a dozen sjamboks in the most recent diplomatic pouch. If they work on African reporters, he believes they may also find application with Estonians, too.

Let me assure you, Mr. Minister, that I now more fully appreciate the significance of having established diplomatic relations here and the considerable expenses associated with my presence. It is my hope that I will be able to concentrate fully on Malawi and not be distracted by being asked to cover South Sudan, as I hear rumored in the halls on Islandi Väljak. Although if a black Chrysler 300C is part of the package, I could of course be enticed.

The Estoniafication of Malawi

A wise move, Mr. Minister, in dispatching the team of consultants from EAS. In no time at all they have managed to put the headline “Welcome to Malawi!” in red text on the country’s tourism website (see for yourself here!). The Malawians are starting to appreciate it, especially when it is paired with the equally compelling “Come and visit Malawi.”

The consultants are currently working to reduce enthusiasm for the current overly-specific slogan, “The warm heart of Africa.” The EAS men also raised the issue that the tourism business might improve if potential tourists were not informed that Malawi was in Africa. They have also suggested, in light of last week’s 18 dead protestors, that Malawi give consideration to whether they continue to advertise their country as “safe.” (NB! Though there’s perhaps something for us in this? “Estonia. It’s safe.”)

Under coaching from Bingo himself, I have begun “talks” with Estonian Air and instructed them to add daily flights from Tallinn to Lilongwe and Blantyre. I have suggested—and the EAS consultants agree—that these routes may be thematically linked with the airline’s Tallinn-Minsk routes, given similarities in management style of the leaders (both having been known to employ the phrase “I will smoke you out”). Should Messrs. Taskila and Helenius offer resistance, I count on you and Mr. Parts to remind them that profit is, at best, a secondary concern in a state-owned business.

Healthcare initiatives

In the city of Lilongwe, it is estimated that 20 percent of the population is infected with HIV/AIDS, which Bingo touts as an “effective initiative which has significantly reduced sex tourism” in the country. He eagerly awaits the chance to discuss his program as a prescription for reducing the number of British stag partiers in Tallinn’s Old Town when he visits Estonia in the autumn.

Another secret of Malawian healthcare, says Bingo, is the presence of zebra meat in the Malawian diet. Zebra is a deep red meat with a medium grain tasting delightfully sweeter than beef. It may surprise you to know, Mr. Minister, that the zebra can reach speeds of up to 65 kilometers per hour, and has a strong jaw and teeth sharp enough to cleanly bite off a grown man’s arm. I have come to see possibilities here for Estonia, as 100 hectares can easily support one stallion and four to five mares. I believe that we may have found our solution as to what to do with the increasingly de-populated areas in the countryside. I have sent a separate report on the zebra, but please know for now that a zebra can live 25 years, each has its own unique stripe pattern, and its skin is ideally suited for upholstery in Chrysler 300C sedans.

Commercial opportunities

Lilongwe’s Old Town supports a thriving bicycle parts business, and I believe many of Estonia’s out of work cobblers and watch repairmen may be gainfully employed here. Bingo has alluded to the fact that he might be willing to nationalize the bicycle parts business, and I have cabled the owners of Hawaii Express to check their interest in having a part in such a concession.

I also understand that there is growing support within the Tallinn city government to begin to use western-made buses, and Lilongwe is home to a sprawling mini-bus station which may be a source to distribute many of Tallinn’s Soviet-era public transportation. I have been in touch directly with Mr. Savisaar concerning this matter, and his office has also shown interest in a personnel exchange program so that both governments might be enriched by the other’s best practices.

Next Steps

As per our nation’s The More The Merrier policy, I have assured Bingo that he has Estonia’s unconditional backing for membership in both NATO and the EU, and I have duly presented the president with the gifts you sent. Bingo especially seemed to like the Georgia, Ukraine, Malawi tshirt you sent him. (And I note here that our former President Rüütel had spoken publicly in favor of also backing Ishmaelia for membership.)

As per your recent cable, I have begun to form a cozy alliance with Minister of Education Arthur Peter Mutharika, believed to be in line to succeed his brother in 2014. I urge the inclusion of Arthur Peter among the autumn delegation. Under his leadership, tuition at the University of Malawi increased 220 percent, and he will certainly have knowledge and experience to inform our country’s debate on free education.

I am,

Your humble servant,

Vello Vikerkaar

A Point of Pride

Much has been made of how formidable the Estonian language is.

In the 1990s, the American Peace Corps volunteer Douglas Wells wrote both a short story and a song celebrating its difficulty. Flattered by his harmonic salute to their impossible language, Estonian radio listeners rallied and put Wells’ song at the top of the charts for a period of several weeks.

Estonians generally resist flattery, but one surefire method to please them is to talk about how difficult their language is. Its difficulty, in fact, is a point of national pride.

Although most Estonians are unaware of it, historical records show that Jakob Hurt proposed Ardua lingua as the Estonian national motto in a companion piece to his 1886 dissertation on pure -ne stem nouns, Die estnischen Nomina auf -ne purum. “Foreigners may conquer our soil,” Hurt wrote, “but they will never master our language.”

But it now appears Hurt was wrong. Just the other day I set out to prove his thesis to a visiting group of tourists by counting the Americans (the laziest people on earth when it comes to languages) who have learned the Estonian language. I was confident I could count them on one hand, but I quickly found myself needing the other. And a few toes, as well.

There is Greg in Tallinn, who speaks it so fluently his very slight accent gets him mistaken for a drunken native. There is Robert in southern Estonia who can dazzle natives with his knowledge of every growing plant and scurrying critter. There are Jerry, Justin, Stewart, James, Edward, Bill, John, Scott, David and Rufus, whose accents may keep them from deep undercover spy work or limit local acting careers, but who manage quite nicely and are even able to read legal contracts in the Estonian language.

Of course I can name dozens from the European continent who have mastered the language. There are at least a half-dozen from China, Japan, and India who speak the tongue. And I know several fellow väliseestlased who have learned the language, as well.

If so many foreigners are successfully learning Estonian is not a key source of national pride in danger? Is the risk not present of the Estonian language losing its small, elite, club-like status? And so shouldn’t something be done to make the language more difficult?

If any presidential candidate is looking for campaign material, perhaps making the Estonian language more impenetrable might be a worthy platform, a cause around which every loyal Estonian speaker would surely rally.

President Ilves’ word competition Sõnaus is already making headway to drive the offending foreign words from the vocabulary. I have recently noticed the appearance of terms such as taristu, vabasektor, kestlik, and idufirma.

But we can do more. If we dedicated the Language Inspectorate (to which we should seriously consider giving an even more imposing name) full time to the task, we might be able to eliminate other offensive foreign terms such as “telefon” (suggestion: “elektrooniliseisiklikukõneaparaat”), “check-in’ima” (“sisseastumisregistreerimine”), “hotell” (“lühiajutiseööbimisepaik”), “hängima” (“lühiajutiseööbimisepaik”), and “tšau” (no suggestions).

There is of course another camp in this discussion. Some advocate making Estonian more user friendly, basic changes which would form a Pidgin version of the language. This new language would be highly flexible in its written form and pronunciation, something equivalent to the kind of English that my young Estonian friend Mart speaks.

Me to Mart: “Mart, stop capitalizing the ‘Y’ in ‘you,’ unless it’s at the beginning of a sentence.” Or: “Mart, quit pronouncing the ‘L’ in ‘salmon.’”

Mart to me: “I speak British English.”

In honor of Mart, I suggest naming the new language “British Estonian.”

We might go further. Roughly half the case endings could be dropped and few would know the difference. And do we really need two infinitive forms of every verb when much wealthier countries make do with only one? And why not drop the formal “teie” and its attendant verb conjugations?

Despite the obvious virtues of British Estonian, I suspect the simplification approach will find little traction among the Estonian people. To simplify anything runs counter to the culture at large. While e-advances may have theoretically made the workings of the state more efficient, has it resulted in sweeping reductions in the size of the public sector? “Show me the beef!” an American friend often demands of me when I start to praise Estonia’s e-state. Then he goes on to argue that to overcomplicate things is the very essence of being European, that a continent and culture in decline has little else left to do than make rules.

Also lending itself to further complication of the language is the dogged stubbornness of Estonians. Their desire to protect all things Estonian is evident in state-financed programs to keep the culture and language alive, but it is even more visible at the grass-roots level. Purchasing bus tickets at my local R-kiosk, no matter how fluent my Estonian-language request for a pack of ten tickets is, all further matters are handled in English (“Will you pay with a card?”).

Of course it could be insecurity, a need on the R-kiosk worker’s part to demonstrate that she, too, speaks a foreign language. Or perhaps she simply wants to practice. But I prefer the conspiracy theory, and I do sometimes suspect Estonians consider their language a very private matter, and that they would rather make fools out of themselves in English than to use Estonian in the presence of foreigners.

There is the unconfirmed story circulating of an Estonian EU representative who opted to address the general assembly in English. Reportedly, the representative stressed her conviction on a certain matter, noting that she would “give head” if she were wrong.

Having heard the story third- or fourth hand, I am sure my version is likely inaccurate on many levels. But, still, what a difference the omission of a possessive determiner can make. Perhaps she intended to convey that she would bet her life that she was right?

A French interpreter I know who works in Brussels tells me she has noticed that while representatives of big nations will generally don headphones to hear a speech in their native languages, Estonians will often shun the use of interpreters and listen to the speech in English. We may consider here the same theories in the R-kiosk case, but as an armchair scientist I must embrace the conspiracy. Don’t let Estonian out of the bag. Even Americans might learn it.

Which must lead us to conclude that further complicating the language is a natural next step in the defense of the culture. Consideration should be given, as well, to the illegalization of its use by foreigners. What might it do for state coffers if foreigners were fined for every “tere” or “tänan” that they tried out on a shopkeeper? Or if the uttering a complete sentence in Estonian by a foreigner could be considered an act of espionage? I think you’ll agree that I’m on to something.

Consider this fair warning: Allow foreigners to learn the Estonian language and they will soon sink in much deeper roots. They’ll soon start to marry the local women. And by then it will be far, far too late.

***

Visit our lovely gift shop.

White Unicorns

It’s a dreadful scene and no one is permitted unescorted. Wash your hands and disinfect before entering. There’s a sign by the sink offering cheap parking, but that’s going to be little compensation.

There supine on the bed is your nine-kilo, 77-centimeter, one-year-old son: unconscious and stretched out before you with tubes in his nose, hands, and one between two of his tiny toes. His little limbs are lashed to the bed as if he were a suicide case.

You stand on the wrong side of his bed and it only gets worse. There is a roomful of them: a first-birthday balloon floats above the bedpost of one; a box of toys stands quiet on the windowsill of another. Some of them have been here for a while.

***

In the 1990s, there was a saying among foreigners: Get sick in Estonia and the only cure is a plane ticket out. Given the state of the healthcare system, it often seemed justified.

It was said that to get proper treatment a payment was necessary—and it didn’t have to be cash. I imagined Estonia’s top surgeons sipping tea from bone china in immaculately groomed gardens, surrounded by chickens, pigs, and cows which patients had given them in payment.

In case of illness, American Peace Corps volunteers I knew kept their own supply of syringes, so much did they fear rusty, harpoon-like Soviet needles.

A physician friend once told me that it was easier for a doctor to amputate than to set a broken leg. (He laughed when I took him seriously for a moment.)

But personal experience only served to validate the stereotype. In 1993, having taken a fall on the ice and suspecting a broken leg, I visited Mustamäe Hospital. Limping through its unmarked labyrinth, knocking on closed doors until I finally located a doctor. She stared at me for a long while, and I suspect the only reason she did not simply turn away was my accent. She agreed to do an xray, and in excruciating pain I dragged myself up two flights of stairs by the handrail while she led impatiently in front.

Once with Liina in Haapsalu, an emergency room physician, his face beet-red and breath like rocket fuel, was perturbed at being taken from his soap opera which blared in the background. He grabbed Liina’s wrist and twisted it. She screamed in equal parts agony and surprise.

“It’s not broken,” he said, and did an about-face to return to his television. (It wasn’t broken. An xray the next day at a private clinic proved him right.)

Soviet medical care is free, went the joke. And then the rejoinder: But care of this quality is free everywhere in the world. Truly, the plane ticket out was not a bad idea.

Although things have changed, memories like these still flood your mind when you visit a hospital today.

The Mustamäe Hospital, despite improvements to its facade, from many angles still appears from the outside as a horrific Soviet monster which feeds on the ill. Inside, though, and especially the children’s hospital, it’s a case study in how to resurrect an old commie building.

The equipment is modern and the hallways are spotless. The pastries in the children’s hospital café are as good or better than most in the city. The main hospital’s atrium café (in some freak accident of a public tender?) is actually run by Reval Café, a place regular human beings would otherwise delight in eating.

Estonia’s doctors today, in my experience, are superb. Though they may not know me, I have come to know many of them by name, and I am most every time impressed by their professionalism, commitment, and compassion.

And the nurses? As my mother was a nurse, I am probably predisposed to like all nurses. “You will only be allowed to stay home from school if you are bleeding to death,” was a familiar refrain of my mother’s, which perhaps epitomizes the spirit present in all good nurses, their instinctive ability to strike the right balance of taking no guff yet imparting some sympathy.

And beyond the medical staff, in the children’s hospital there are even occasional visiting magician clowns in lab coats, who I have seen make a sick little boy shriek with joy.

“Why is everyone so nice here?” I finally asked an allergist who showed herself to be the talkative sort. I noted that the myths of Soviet medicine sometimes still hang heavily over Estonia.

“It’s great to work with kids,” she said simply, and I wondered how were the state of things across the street at the big hospital. Was everyone there so nice, too? Or was the positive environment at the children’s hospital partly due to external factors, like community interest led by the Children’s Hospital Fund and the republic’s First Lady?

Of course it’s not all roses. Spend enough time anywhere and you start to notice stains on the carpet.

On some days you may begin to wonder if there are any ethnic Estonians left in the hospital at all. It can sometimes seem that Estonian may not be the best language to use when seeking medical care. But you soon realize that nearly everyone speaks enough. You meet a few native speakers, too, and it becomes apparent that, despite what we read in the papers, not everyone has yet gone to Finland.

You meet the wacky resident who delivers a lecture ad nauseum about how to weigh urine in diapers. He explains to you the meaning of the numbers to the left and right of the decimal point on the digital monitor. Kilos. Grams. (Ah, the thrill of science!)

I want to ask him how to know the difference between a “6” and a “9” on the digital thermometer, but Liina stops me. “Don’t make enemies here,” she says. Besides, one veteran doctor has already told the resident to shut up and stop spewing nonsense.

Then there’s the jailhouse food. While it may be good in the cafes, the food brought to your room causes you to wonder whether one of Stalin’s actuaries has conducted a calorie count, and you are being fed the bare minimum in order to keep you alive. This is somewhat mitigated by the very pleasant servers, who seem always in good spirits when they enter your room.

There is the pay parking lot patrolled so efficiently that its proceeds must fund half the hospital. Perhaps Liina and I are not the smartest parkers, but we have been fined three times, and we console ourselves by hoping the 35-euro fines might go to fund a new kidney machine or to fill the canyon-sized pothole at the turnoff to the hospital, and not go to put gasoline in some politician’s luxury automobile.

Once you’ve been there a while you disappear into the woodwork and start to hear private conversations in the elevator. Workers’ complaints about ridiculous bureaucracy. A nurse telling a doctor to stop treating them like dogs. There’s an ear doctor from Soviet era who still thinks it’s the Soviet era. And there are of course still a number of angry babushka types, who, in the words of a friend, are accumulating major karmic debt.

Some floors are run like prisons where the nurses are the guards. “We have rules here,” said Nurse Ratched, after she caught me sitting in the bed. “The bed is for mothers!”

“I thought the bed was for the parental guardian?” I replied. “And that would be me.”

She bared her teeth as a warning and moved on.

But other floors are little Utopias. Convalescing children do cartwheels in the hallways and socialize in the playroom. The staff is happy and smiling. For example, it would not be out of place on the third floor, I think, for a fairy princess to appear riding bareback atop a white unicorn.

***

When your infant son wakes in the ICU it’s the most unsettling part. He wants to cry out but can’t because of the tube in his nose. He thrashes about, pulling at his tethers. You can see the terror in his eyes. You place a hand flat on his chest and another on his forehead. But that doesn’t help at all; it only makes him want to be held.

After a while he steadies, he turns his head and stares you in the eyes. He melts you.

And you are as helpless as he. There is nothing for you to do but trust. Trust in fate, in your god, but mostly trust in the physicians and nurses.

And you do.