By Don
First first – Ron Jewula who is on a trip with Dunnery Best posted his first blog about cycling in the Himalayas. Look at the Blog Roll on this post for the link. It is very good, I mean very, very good. We are crowd sourcing to raise money for an oxygen tent and six pack for them. Please e-transfer $ to Dennis or Don and we will ensure they get it 😉
Why? For that you will have to read his blog.
Second first – this post is long, but most of it is appropo quotes from the internet. Come on, suffer through, it will be worth it. Or not.
Don’t even know where to start. Well Estonia, but I think it covers all of the Baltic States. When I wrote A Blue Streak, we really hadn’t done any research on what Estonian people were like. We did not know. The brevity of response that we got from sales people in stores was startling and so, well, one had to comment. Since then we have coined terms like the Estonian Scowl which has been expanded to Latvian Scowl and The Lithuanian Face of Indifference. We’ve said hello and smiled at people cycling by us which gets us a blank stare. (This I must admit is part of our scientific ‘wave’ test. We wave and smile to see if they wave back. We are testing to see if people get friendlier the further south we go. In the Baltic States we are batting around 1% although it did seem to get better, but statistically insignificant, in Lithuania.)
But then came the issues in Riga. First we were seriously insulted for walking in an area where other people were walking and there was no indication we shouldn’t walk. The lady, I guess, had decided it was her job to randomly chastise people for walking in a unmarked ‘restricted’ area adjacent to where they were getting ready for the evenings concert. But the straw that broke the camel’s back, OK, not the straw but the 2,000 pound round bale of hay that was dropped on the camels back and crushed him into the ground was….. . . Dennis broke a shift cable and went to a nearby bike store as he was missing a tool to repair it. When asked about getting it fixed they said they didn’t fix bikes and directed him to a shop 5 miles away and wrote down the address for him. That was nice, you are saying. Well, I knew of one a few blocks away which they didn’t mention. Unfortunately he went there only to find it was closed. He thought nothing for it but to cycle off to the one in the distance they had recommended. Back at the ranch I checked on the internet and found it was also already closed for the weekend. Well now you are saying we can’t really blame the sales person for those two minor indiscretions if they were even that. But this story isn’t over. So I phoned him “Dennis, that shop is closed. Hope you like riding with no rear derailleur.” So Dennis went back to the first store to see if there was anything that could be done, perhaps buy a tool. He got a different sales person who directed him to the repair shop in the back of the store where it was quickly fixed. Now come on. Huh? A small bicycle store and the salesman doesn’t know they fix bikes as part of their business? Your not seeing the pattern?
So we have been talking to Dr. Google trying to find out what causes this. GDP per capita, population density, history of Soviet occupation, rank on the happiness scale, religion, etc. Then we thought, maybe it just us, so rather than statistics we looked for comments on the internet on smiling in the Baltic States to see if anyone else has noticed. I recommend you don’t do this unless you have a few hours to spend. Here are some quotes. Enjoy.
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“You don’t just say hello to the Estonian. You need to have a reason for it. Seeing a friend? Say hello to him! Don’t say hello to his friend though, you don’t know her. In the check out? Say hello to the cashier. If an Estonian says hello to a cashier, he feels like he’s had enough socializing for the day. Though when confronted with a colleague in a corridor walking towards him who he doesn’t know so well, he can say ‘tere’ (hello), but he doesn’t really have to. He’s in much safer hands pretending he got a phone call on his mobile. Or easier yet – he just looks at the wall and pretends to be in deep thought. Now he escaped a possible social contact event.”
I think we know why there are so few coffee shops.
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“Coming to Estonia, you must keep in mind, that this is a small nation, occupied over and over again. It has teached us to keep our thoughts to ourselves and treat every newcomer as a possible threat, at least until not proved opposite. It’s running in our blood and we can’t do anything about it. After that, northern character, which means no talking, no explaining, only what you do, counts.”
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“When speaking to an Estonian occasional eye contact is OK but glancing around is the norm. To annoy someone, hold direct eye contact making them feel very uncomfortable. You can combine this with a compliment, a smile, or general small talk for added effect.”
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Estonia can be found in the modest 94th position (PEI score 64), out of 143 surveyed countries. Like with sports, it can take comfort in the fact that its eternal Baltic rivals are even worse off. Lithuania, according to the poll, is one of the unhappiest nations in the world, on par with Afghanistan (PEI score 55), and below conflict-ridden South Sudan and Ukraine, and Ebola-stricken Liberia.
The PEI score was derived from positive responses that around 1,000 adults from each country gave to the following questions:
- Did you feel well-rested yesterday?
- Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?
- Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?
- Did you learn or do something interesting yesterday?
- Did you experience the following feelings (list not included) a lot of the day yesterday? How about enjoyment?
However, as the organizers point out, it must be taken into account that low positive emotions do not necessarily mean high negative emotions.
“For example, people in the former Soviet Union countries typically report some of the lowest positive emotions in the world; however, they also report some of the lowest negative emotions in the world. Gallup has previously reported that people in this region simply don’t report many emotions at all. An earlier survey on emotions revealed Lithuanian to be the joint second least emotional country in the world along with Georgia and behind Singapore.”
A guy walked by with a t-shirt that said “no feeling”. We thought, what? Now we know.
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Welcome to the culture of Estonia.
Please avoid any form of eye contact with people you haven’t met before. Even then, keep it at a minimum and try to ignore anyone who isn’t in your circle of 3-4 best friends. In case of accidental eye contact it is most important that you turn your whole head away immediately.
You have no idea how often we saw this. “Caught you looking.” “No you did not, I am studying the pavement.”
Even when talking to your Estonian friends, don’t hold eye contact for more than 2 seconds straight. Eye contact longer than 2 seconds, even when talking one on one, will make the average Estonian very nervous. The longer you stare, the more agitated the Estonian becomes. These are the internal thoughts of an Estonian when you’re talking to him and staring straight in the eyes: “Damn he’s one of those starers. How can he stare so long at me? Why is he doing that? Is he trying to dominate me? I’m bigger than this! I can stare too! Damn, I only managed a second or so. He’s still staring. I’m totally confused and don’t really know what he’s talking about. Is he a serial killer?”
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So it isn’t just Dennis and I. I think it is what the people were taught, or not taught, as children.
“Smile and the whole world smiles with you.”? Nope, instead “Scowl and you scowl alone which is how you want to be so why would you smile?”
“A smile is a universal welcome.” To which they respond “How did that work for us with the Germans and the Russians?”
“Your face is going to freeze like that.” For which they would say “and your point is?”.
Which begets the question, do people smile because they are happy or are they happy because they are smiling. Apparently it works both ways, or so some say. Read this, especially if you like cute dog pictures.
For the record the most ‘contact’ we have had while cycling in this beautiful place is with drivers passing us on often narrow roads. They have been incredibly courteous. In cities it is the same as they go out of their way to keep you safe. Now that’s not fun to write about but we would gladly trade that for the occasional smile and “hello”.
Tallinn to Istanbul by Bike 