One of the performers, Valev Laube, performed on February 24, at the Estonian Embassy in Washington, DC.    Photo by Embassy/FB

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Published: March 07 2016

Karl Altau and Marcus Kolga

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Published: March 07 2016

People all around the world are working to push the boundaries on what it means to be a modern city. The website culturetrip.com lists ten cities that have used their forward-thinking and innovative efforts in technology, architecture, city planning, and social issues to become models of modernity.

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Published: February 22 2016

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are small, open economies on the Eastern edge of the European Union and NATO. For understandable reasons, these countries are not often talked about (they collectively have a population smaller than Massachusetts) but when they are talked about it is usually to highlight their dynamism, innovation, and impeccably capitalist credentials. Estonia, for example, attracted a lot of media attention with its e-citizenship initiative, while the Baltics have generally gotten  high marks, at least from conservatives, for their embrace of austerity and extremely tight fiscal discipline.

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Published: March 07 2016

A fantastic reklaam (advertisement) for its witty play on words. Not Tere hommikust (Good morning), but Tere ummikust (Hello from the ummik).

If a drain is umbes, it's clogged.

If it's umbne inside a room, there's a lack of fresh air.

An umb/sõlm is a knot that's really hard to untie; it's umbes.

If there are a lot of vehicles on the road, which are hardly moving, it's a liiklus/ummik (traffic jam).

A few of my Estonian friends, who lived in Toronto for a number of years before returning to Eesti, did a funny direct translation and referred to the fenomen of the never-before-witnessed Canadian big city traffic jam as a liiklus/moos; moos being the jam you put on your pannkook. But you won't hear that in Eesti.

Since words beginning with an H almost always lose it in spoken Estonian – hobune (horse) sounds more like obune and herne/supp (pea soup) like ernesupp, then Tere ummikust with no pun intended is basically what you can hear in many parts of Estonia, especially in places where there is a more distinct regional dialect.

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Published: February 15 2016

Photo by Mariann Aroson

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Published: February 22 2016

From the left:  Hilja Martinez, event coordinator; Kristina Shatuho, sophomore at AZ State Univ; and Jean Rice, US host family for Kristina

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Published: February 29 2016

Janae Barrett, Hannah Weinstein, Grace Sullivan, interviewee Kaja Weeks, Emma McAvoy, Alex Mendez, interviewee Karl Altau.   Photos from Kogu Me Lugu facebook page

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Published: February 15 2016