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Saturday, January 7, 2012

Fun facts about Estonia.

Tere! That`s Estonian for hello. I was reading a blog post about South Korea earlier and that gave me an idea to start writing about interesting and exciting places and countries in my blog as well. I`m gonna try to keep it short and fun, rather than bore you with long sentences you could easily read on Wikipedia instead.
I`m gonna start with Estonia. I live in Estonia. I have lived here all my life and so have my parents and grandparents, therefor it`s not actually that easy to think of the things others could find exciting about our country and culture. But I`m gonna give my best.


Estonia has two Independence Days - we achieved independence from the Soviet Union on the 24th February 1918 and had to do it again on the 20th August 1991 after 51 years of occupation.

Estonia was the first country in the world to introduce online political voting.

Our roads are traffic jam free.
Estonia has a population of just 1.3 million but is larger than Denmark or Holland.
Therefor there just isn`t enough cars to cause traffic jams. There is pretty intense traffic on morning rush hours in our two most largest cities, but no real traffic jams.

Estonia is almost 50 percent forest.
There is a picture moving around on Internet showing that our flag is just a picture of our landscape in a winter period. It does look like that in hear. Although, not on this year. We are having a surprisingly warm winter this year.

By the way, the colours really represent all other things. Blue is still sometimes said to represent sky, but also faith, loyalty, devotion, sea and lakes. Black symbolizes the dark past and suffering of the Estonian people as well as the traditional black jacket of the Estonian peasant.
The white color represents striving towards enlightenment and virtue, hope and freedom.

In 1994, Estonia became the first country to institute the flat income tax.

Estonia is the world’s least religious country. Only 14% of the population profess any religious beliefs. That is so mainly because of our history full of occupations and slavery.

There are no high hills or mountains. The highest point of Estonia is 318 meters, that`s about 1043 feet. Not very impressive, right?

That`s all for now. Head aega! That`s Goodbye in Estonian.

24 comments:

  1. The highest point being 318 meters is mind blowing, it's nothing really, and being the first country with online voting is both surprising and awesome.

    As a sidenote, I'd love to get a link to that post you read about South Korea if possible. :D

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  3. We like to think that we are a true e-country or whatever. We are all really proud about Skype and some municipal officials are thinking about supporting paying Internet service bills of those families with low income.
    http://mis2pesos.blogspot.com/2012/01/10-misconceptions-about-south-korea.html

    Here you go.:)

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  4. Interesting. Didn't know much about this country at all. Thanks for sharing so much info!

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  5. really nice blog , keep it up +following

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  6. Ooo, didnt know any of this stuff!

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  7. Cool blog following :) And neat title its original lol

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  8. I'd love to live there!

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  9. Estonia sounds awesome! I never knew much about it before, but now I think its one of the coolest places!

    50% forest sounds like fun! Do a lot of people go to the forested areas to camp out? Or is it too cold?

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  10. Sounds intriguing. I want to go there.

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  12. Bersercules, our country lies in the northern part of the temperate climate zone and in the transition zone between maritime and continental climate. It basically means that on a average year, we have cold winters (offical cold record is –43,5 °C that`s about -49 °F) and warm summers. Spring and autumn are also strongly marked. So it really depends on the season. Mushroom-gathering is very popular here, so in summer and autumn forests are packed with people.

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  13. Wow it sound amazing, had no clue about the place. But now I really wanna go.
    50% forest? That's a lot of trees xD

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  14. Nice facts!
    Great blog.
    +Follow

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  15. I couldn't imagine living somewhere with 50% forest. That is insane!

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  16. @Kristjan Is there a lot of different types of mushrooms there?

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  17. Interesting, weird as when I was in school we were asked to pick a place to study about and I chose Estonia, no idea why but enjoyed looking at a different country for my studies!

    Following you :)

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  18. OK, I won't lie, the ice and snow will probably kill me, but I SO have to see your beautiful home one day! I sounds and looks AMAZING!!! :)

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  19. Peaks mainima, et toredad faktid ja nagu ka näha siis huvi Eestimaa vastu aina kasvab.
    Keep it up! :D

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