Features archive
Ant saulele vel nuo mus atstodama ritas
Irgi palikusi mus greita vakarop nusileidzia.
Vel kasdien daugiaus ji mums savo spinduli slepia;
O seseliai vis ilgyn kasdien issitiesia.
Look yon, the sun again is rolling down the sky:
Each day shows less and less of its majestic rays,
Stre...
Meri annab, meri võtab (The sea giveth and the sea taketh away)
Today the sea brings a stringer, a joist-like structure which supports a ship's decking. It is knee deep in water and half buried in sand, not more than ten paces from shore. We remove our clothing, get on our knees, and begin caref...
Bumper sticker on a beat up Honda: Question Reality
Four men work on muddy ground in front of a pyramid-shaped
home. They lay firewood in alternating directions over a five-meter stretch of
ground. They fill gaps with newspaper and begin a second tier. When complete,
it will be near a meter wi...
Kuldar Morel carries
the world (and a local paper, too)
Estonian Kuldar Morel could be a real estate agent, a
political candidate, or even a rally driver.
Real estate
agent: "This house just sold," he says, pointin...
Too often, the political
situation in Belarus is glossed over, forgotten, or simply ignored. Tourism
agencies offer excursion packages where visitors may gaze upon the Soviet-era
wonders of decayed concrete architecture and relative regional poverty. Too
often, with so much democratic progress...
Scott Diel tries to
remember he's just a guest in this country.
2005
"What's this 'McKee?'" asked the
Estonian immigration official to whom I presented my living permit application.
"It's my middle name," I replied.
"Why's it have a lower case 'C?'"
"I don't know. It's Scottish.
Th...
Enter two women. The first, a brunette, has a ski-jump nose and wears black pants with leopard skin cuffs. She's in her mid twenties. The second is in her fifties. She's a chemical blonde with short hair and a white polyester suit. She could be a secretary from New Jersey. The two do not take drinks...
It's said the best way to learn a language well is to join an army. The other way, it turns out, is to go to prison.
Meet Venda, Tõnu, and Marko. Prisoners, polyglots, and City Paper readers. Of course not only City Paper. If it's a word on a page, they read it.
Tõnu sorts through a stack of...
It's a different sort of lifestyle, I told myself when I set the alarm clock for one a.m. Not the gay thing. The early morning thing. In the last twenty years I'd risen this early only once, and then to go fishing.
"There is no teaching," says Viesturs Luis Aiagarš, about his failed attempt to t...
I found this hard to believe, I said, that someone could consistently tell if another were gay from appearance only.
"Well," she said, "come see for yourself."
And so I did.
Tallinn night, for our older or stay-at-home readers, is an experience in itself. The roads are full of taxis com...
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 ha...
Soon, when Heino gets his documents from the state, he will
begin a new life. He has been officially dead eight years. Until a few weeks
ago, he hadn't seen his daughter in twenty. He loved the bottle. The
Missionaries of Charity, Order of Mother Teresa, took him in.
&n...