Yep, the forecast was right and it turned out to be a wet day. Disinclination and sloth meant that I didn’t make it to the KGB museum or any other museum. I did go out to get my laundry done to avoid the higher prices in Italy. And while waiting I went into a mall to keep dry.
In the mall, I stumbled upon a bookshop. To my surprise, for a small country speaking a rare language, there were lots of books in Estonian. It must be quite expensive to translate or write for a relatively small audience.
As I approach the end of my stay in the Baltics, here are some thoughts:
- It is a nice part of Europe that’s still affordable and I can easily have a good time. It gets more expensive from west to east.
- Some countries and some people value an education system based on English language as the medium of instruction, more so than their national language. The three Baltic nations (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) demonstrate how they can have education, government, public signage in their own language but still have nearly everyone but the oldies speak good English (plus a third language). Some would have argued that their respective languages are spoken by only thousands of people and are quite useless. On the other hand, they are languages that could disappear.I think language is an important part of one’s identity, national identity and even sovereignty.
- The weather is very fickle. Summer is like an Auckland winter.
- There seem to be quite a few people with walking impairments on the streets. More in Lithuania and Latvia and perhaps less in Estonia. Anyone know why?