BONJOUR L'ESTONIE

Estonia hosts Europe's largest gathering of Harley-Davidson motorbikers

Nearly 10,000 Harley-Davidson motorcyclists descended upon the Estonian capital of Tallinn on Friday (June 6) to take part in Europe's largest gathering of the brand's enthusiasts at a Super Rally.

The event, which takes place from June 5 to 9, marks the Super Rally's 40th jubilee. 

The black-leather clad bikers came in full motorcycle gear, celebrating the lifestyle which comes with being the owner of one of the world's best known motorbikes.

"I have a couple of Harley-Davidsons, but I'm a little bit older than the younger guys and, you know, I always said, you buy a Harley-Davidson - it's a lifestyle. It's, you know, not only the bike, it's the friendship, it's everything," said Rudy Wieme, president of the Belgium Harley-Davidson club.

"Everyone puts his own design onto the Harley. You buy a Harley but next day you start changing and building up the way you like," said another avid biker, Kaj Kirkegaard, from Denmark. The roar of a Harley-Davidson may not appeal to everyone, but for those attending the rally the noise which emerges from the bike's exhaust is one of its greatest assets.

"It's music to my ears. I just can't tell that other way, I just love it," said Finnish biker Anne Boujane. Harley-Davidson was founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the first decade of the 20th century.

Bill Davidson, the great-grandson of Harley-Davidson's co-founder Arthur system.scripts.life, gave a speech on the opening day of the event.

Illegal vodka market in Estonia amounts to 20-23%

According to the data of the Estonian Institute of Economic Research, the share of illegal vodka formed 20-23% of the Estonian market last year, due to which the state was deprived of 13.4 million euros in uncollected tax money, Riigikogu Finance Committee roundtable meeting "Excise goods and illegal market" stated on Thursday, LETA/Postimees Online reports.

Head of the Estonian Institute of Economic Research Marje Josing said that buying illegal vodka is clearly related to people's income level – for example, in 2007, during the economic boom, the market share of illegal vodka was only 10%.

"If you have money, you go to the store and purchase a bottle of legal vodka," said Josing. The Institute's statistics indicated it is increasingly possible to buy illegal vodka directly from other people and less from bars and pubs.

While in 1998, one fifth of buyers purchased illegal alcohol in bars or pubs, today this share has decreased almost to zero, while the person-to-person sale on streets has increased from 5% to 42%.

Several prisoners file compensation claims against the Estonian state

The recent ruling of the European Court of Human Rights which found that lack of prisoner space in Tallinn Prison amounts to inhuman treatment has triggered similar claims from several prisoners, writes Postimees. 

Eleven inmates held in Tallinn prison have now sued the Estonian state claiming compensation for their "inhuman treatment", saying that the ratio of prison cells per prisoner is below the statutory limit.

Their compensation claims range from a few hundred to tens of thousands of euros.
One of the prisoners, Marko Kalev, is claiming 90,000 euros as compensation for "inhuman conditions”. Kalev also claims that the state must pay him in addition 6.6 milion euros as he could not protect his interests in court cases linked to his companies.

In April Tallinn Administrative Court ruled that Kalev’s claim should be satisfied in part, but said that monetary compensation was out of the question. Prisoners say that since Estonian courts are likely to rule against these 11 claims, many of them are prepared to appeal up to the European Court of Human Rights.

How did Estonia's frogs cross the road?

Thousands of frogs in Estonia have lived to lay eggs another spring thanks to a battalion of volunteers who carried them across busy roads, organisers said.

After hibernating through the Baltic state's bitter-cold winter, frogs hop out onto roads en masse in the spring as they make their way to breeding grounds to lay eggs.

"This is when the trouble starts and we humans need to help them because they often cross busy roads and many of them get crushed under cars," biologist Piret Pappel with Tallinn's Frog NGO told AFP.

"We used buckets to carry 15,677 frogs safely to the other side of the road or closer to where they lay eggs," added Mariliis Tago from the Estonian Fund for Nature. Around 200 volunteers set up nets in 79 spots across Estonia to catch the amphibians, measuring 8-11 centimetres (three-four inches), where they are known to cross roads.

According to Porsche, Estonia is among the top five richest nations

Estonian Porsche dealer Auto 100 that is opening a new showroom next week in Tallinn says that the demand for Porsches in Estonia is so high that the they have asked the car maker to supply more cars for Estonia, writes Delfi.

Since the summer 2012 when Auto 100 signed a partnership contract with Porsche AG, 160 new Porsches have been bought in Estonia.

Jussi Pärnpuu, board member of Auto 100, says that Estonians like Porsches because of it is value for money.

“We are now negotiating with the manufacturer on increasing the number of cars that will be delivered to Estonia,” said Pärnpuu.

Pärnpuu added that another important aspect was that there is an authorized Porsche service and repair service in Tallinn. “A year ago, Porsche owners had to travel to Stockholm or Riga for service,” he said.

The cheapest new Porsche – 981 Boxter – costs 48,500 euros, with the top price going for electric Porsche 918 Spyder Weissach that costs 846,264 euros.

Toomas Hõbemägi

Nearly 80% Finnish tourists buy alcohol from Estonia

79% all Finnish tourists visiting Estonia buy alcohol from Estonia to take back home; they spend an average of 122 euros per buyer for that, a study by TNS Emor indicates, LETA/Postimees Online reports.

The purchases of Finnish tourists form 34% of alcohol sales in Estonian stores.

"The main alcohol shopping venues of Finnish tourists are ships and port stores," said TNS Emor's research expert Aivar Voog. "2% of Finns buy alcohol to go from Estonia up to three times a month, 7% buy 3–5 times in six months and 32% 1–2 times in six months."

While alcohol consumption among Estonians is decreasing, the sale of alcohol (absolute alcohol amount) in Estonian retail trade grew by 1.1% in 2013 while in monetary value it grew by over 5%. "This growth is contributed mainly by Finnish tourists whose alcohol purchases formed in volume terms 34% of the total alcohol sale in Estonia last year," said Voog.

The purchase volumes of weaker alcoholic beverages by tourists grew over 15% while Finns also tend to prefer strong alcohol less. 10.59 litres of absolute alcohol per capital was consumed in Estonia in 2011, in 2012 the figure was 10.33 litres and in 2013, it was 10.14 litres.

TNS Emor polled over a thousand Finns for the study in cooperation with TNS Gallup.

Tallinners to travel to Aegna for free

The Tallinn Town Council directed to the city council a draft decision to allow all Tallinners to use a vessel on a line Tallinn-Aegna-Tallinn for free, informed LETA the press service of the City of Tallinn.

The free rides are entitled by a common regular transport cards eligible for all residents of Tallinn.

Along with Tallinners, the free rides on the mentioned lines will be given to pre-school children, children with limited abilities, persons above 16 years with disabilities, as well as persons with damaged eyesight and their companions.

Open competition for the definition of a shipping line between Tallinn and the island Aegna that was organized Tallinn Transport Department, was won by the firm AS Kihnu Veeteed. Contract of carriage in this line is enclosed on the three navigation seasons – from 2014 to 2016.

Two dead in truck-train collision in Estonia

TALLINN - Two Estonians are reported dead after a passenger train heading from the capital city of Estonia to Tartu collided with a truck at a crossing on Wednesday afternoon in Harju County, the north of the country, the Estonian Public Broadcasting (ERR) reported.

One of the fatalities was a passenger on the train operated by the Estonian national railway corporation - Elron - when it bound for the second largest city Tartu, and the other was in the truck.

About 10 were injured among the estimated 100 passengers riding on the train when the accident occurred at around 3:30 p.m. (1220 GMT) near Raasiku, the northeast of Estonia, the ERR reported, quoting the Estonian police and rescue officials as saying.

A criminal investigation was opened and underway, the ERR said.

Eesti in brief

In Estonia, Reform Party and Social Democrats who have formed the new government, have agreed on a key issue to increase the current child allowance from 19.18 to 45 euros. ERR reports that the allowance is paid per child for a family’s first and second children. In addition, low-income families would receive further 45 euros per child each month, bringing the total for each of the first two children to 90 euros. The allowance for a family’s third child would also grow under the agreement, from 76.6 to 100 euros, the Reform Party announced in a press release on March 17. The new figures are likely to come into force from 2015.

At Tallinn City Council, the latest motion to hold a no-confidence vote against Mayor Edgar Savisaar has been rejected. Savisaar has been among few Estonian politicians to describe events in Ukraine from a Kremlin perspective. The Reform Party held a vote against Savisaar on March 25, but failed to gather support from Savisaar’s Center Party, which controls a majority in the Council. Lauri Laats (Social Democrats), who initiated the second bill, told it was rushed, ERR reports. The reasons stated for lack of confidence in the Mayor range from Savisaar travelling to Sochi on taxpayer money and speaking against the Kyiv uprising to underfunded education and a lack of kindergarten places.

At the “Eesti Laul” song contest in Tallinn, the singer Tanja, with her song “Amazing” was voted by the public and jury to represent Estonia at the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest.Tanja received 53% of a 57,000-strong vote.

Lingvist raises €1 million to reduce the time it takes to learn a new language

Estonian startup Lingvist, which is developing “adaptive” language learning software that it claims significantly reduces the time it takes to learn a new language, has raised a €1 million round of funding. The investment comes from SmartCap (the investment arm of the taxpayer-funded Estonian Development Fund), Nordic VC Inventure, and several angel investors from Estonia and elsewhere.

Founded just over a year ago by Mait Müntel, Ott Jalakas and Andres Koern, the company’s inception came about after Müntel, who has a background in physics and had been working at CERN for several years, became interested in learning French. As he began researching what online/digital language learning solutions already existed, none of which he found were up to scratch, he reasoned that by subjecting languages to statistical analysis in order to establish frequencies and correlations and by optimising the “memorisation process” it would be possible to drastically reduce the time needed to learn a new language.

Nimeta Bar hires private security to patrol the street outside the pub

Suur-Karja street in Tallinn Old Town that is the town’s party area and home to several popular bars including Nimeta will be patrolled by private security guards over the weekends, reported ERR.

The initiative came from Nimeta bar in response to the city’s complaints over noise and attempts to limit the opening times of Nimeta and another bar on Suur-Karja street.

The city ordinance ordering the pubs to limit opening times effective from February was halted by the Tallinn Administrative Court after the pubs challenged the decision. The city had ordered owners of the pubs to close at midnight on weekdays and 1 a.m. on weekends.

Nimeta, open till 6 a.m. on weekends and almost as late on other days, has long been a favorite drinking hole and sports pub. It was one of many foreign-owned pubs that opened in the 1990s and one of the only ones to survive until now under its original name.

Toomas Hõbemägi

Catch a fish, win a car at Estonian festival

Viljandi — Saturday was ice fisher Meelis Parnamäe's lucky day when his catch won him a car worth 15,000 euros ($20,000) at Estonia's annual Gold Fish Festival.

Parnamäe was among more than 4,000 people who headed to frozen Lake Viljandi in southern Estonia angling for the 50,000 euro jackpot, or failing that, the car, a Renault Duster SUV. The jackpot proved elusive as no one managed to catch the necessary 10 tagged fish of at least three different species. Parnamäe landed the car by snagging a single marked fish.

Festival spokesman Paul Liivoja said conditions were perfect for this year's competition with the temperature just below freezing and a 30-centimetre (12-inch) layer of ice on the lake.

Organisers had released 200 tagged fish into the lake a week earlier. Fishing is one of the most popular hobbies in Estonia.

Copyright © 2014 AFP

End of line for trolleybus service

TALLINN - The trolleybuses that connect several city districts of Estonia’s capital Tallinn with the center of the city face reform of their routes, and in the long-term perspective trolleybus traffic will be phased out fully, reports Postimees.
The city’s public transport services company Tallinna Linnatranspordi manager Enno Tamm agrees that the current trolleybuses have no future. “Trolleybuses that depend only on overhead contact grid wires are a burden to the city traffic. When there is a power outage or some accident, the trolleybus traffic is disturbed immediately. If a bus, a hybrid bus or electric bus was to be used instead of the trolleybus, such a vehicle could pass in such a situation,” explained Tamm.

Existing trolleybuses depend on the contact grid, while newer generation trolleybuses can drive short sections of roadway without direct electric contact. Trolleybuses are more than twice as expensive as ordinary buses and maintaining the route network is also expensive. “It is clearly more reasonable to maintain trams and buses besides Tallinn’s trolleybus network.”

Tamm thinks, though, that the share of electric transport in Tallinn’s traffic should not decrease, and that the proportion should stay the same and grow in the future either due to trams or new types of trolleybuses. Tallinna Linnatranspordi uses 91 trolleybuses currently, 51 of which are new Solaris trolleybuses. Around 30 trolleybuses are old Skodas which will be phased out of the city traffic over the next two years, said Tamm. The company manager added that the city is working to replace the old trolleybuses with new, environmentally friendly vehicles, either hybrid or gas powered buses, but no new trolleybuses will be bought for now.

Tamm estimated that the share of electric transport in the center of the city should increase due to more active tram traffic – the city intends to extend its tram lines to the airport, at one end, and hopes to extend it to the port in the future, too. The city will receive its first new modern tram at the end of this year, and in 2015 and 2016, 19 more new generation trams will serve the city.

Police may liquidate notorious taxi stop in Old Town

Police are considering whether to liquidate the taxi stop near the nightclub Hollywood at the corner of Suur-Karja in Tallinn Old Town because of a large number of conflicts between competing taxi companies fighting for customers, reported ERR.

Tallink Takso, a taxi company owned by Tallink, has filed seven complaints this month alone.

Alger Holzmann, board member of Tallink Takso, says that, for instance, two men sit in a Tallink Takso at Suur-Karja and give a suburb address. Then they start chatting to the driver, saying that they recommend not to stop there any more. “They then vandalize the car, for instance by cutting up the back seat with a knife, or puncture tires, and make threats made against drivers and their families by competitors,” said Holzmann.

Tallink Takso points its finger at one competitor, taxi company Global. The company’s CEO Juri Pjatnitski, however, refuses to comment saying that he knows nothing of this and has not been contact by the police.

When interviewed by ERR, no taxi driver working for Global claimed to have seen or known anything. The two official spots in the taxi stop seem to be reserved for Global because no  other taxi is allowed to stay there.

The police are now considering whether to liquidate the taxi stop altogether or expand taxi stops in the vicinity.

Bitcoin ‘Ponzi’ concern sparks warning from Estonia bank

The central bank of Estonia, where Swedish banks dominate the lending market, urged consumers to steer clear of Bitcoin and similar virtual currencies, warning such software could prove to be little more than a “Ponzi scheme.”

Bitcoin “is a problematic scheme,” Mihkel Nommela, head of the Estonian central bank’s payment and settlement systems department, said in an e-mailed reply to questions. “All risks are assumed by the user, who has no one to turn to for help.”

Regulators and banks are escalating warnings against Bitcoin, and other digital currencies, amid concern such software lends itself to financial crime. Bitcoin enthusiasts suffered a blow this week when it emerged Charlie Shrem, vice chairman of Bitcoin Foundation, was charged in the U.S. for attempting to sell Bitcoins to narcotics traffickers.

SEB AB, the largest Nordic currency trader and the second-biggest bank in the Baltic region, is rejecting requests from clients seeking to set up accounts to manage Bitcoin. No Nordic regulator recognizes the software as money and Nordea Bank AB (NDA), Scandinavia’s biggest bank, is telling clients to think twice before touching Bitcoin.

The share of smuggled Byelorussian cigarettes increases in Estonia

According to the so-called empty pack study of market research company Nielsen, the share of smuggled Byelorussian cigarettes is increasing in Estonia while the share of illegal Russian cigarettes is falling, LETA/Public Broadcasting reports.

According to the regular "empty pack study", 20.7% of packages of tobacco products found in Estonia have foreign tax labels and health warnings on them. The majority of the cigarettes that lack Estonian tax labels originate from Byelorussia and Russia.

The share of illegal goods has decreased evenly though in all problematic towns and the pan-Estonian illegal market has decreased by 3.3 percentage points as compared to an identical study in the first half of last year.

Illegal cigarettes are consumed most in Kohtla-Järve (48% of empty packs), Narva (43.5%), Sillamäe (41%), Maardu (40%), Valga (39%) and Jõhvi (38%). The study took place in September and October last year in 14 Estonian towns and cities.

Russian arms trafficking ring raided

MOSCOW – Russian security officers have seized a cache of weapons and arrested 15 people suspected of trafficking in small arms, the Interior Ministry said on its website Friday.

The group allegedly smuggled the weapons into Russia by car from the Baltic countries for delivery to the Moscow Region.

The suspects were arrested by police and Federal Security Service officers during a series of raids in the Pskov Region along Russia’s western border with Estonia and Latvia and in the Moscow Region.

Over 90 firearms were seized in the raids, including machine guns, rifles, shotguns and pistols with silencers. Officers also found equipment for producing ammunition and several thousand live rounds, as well as counterfeiting materials including fake blank law enforcement badges.

The suspects have been charged with the illegal manufacture of weapons and arms trafficking.

Nimeta Baar and Shooters told to close doors at midnight from 02/2014

Kalle Klandorf, Deputy Mayor of Tallinn, has elaborated on the decree of the Tallinn City Government by which two popular Tallinn Old Town Bars – Nimeta Baar and The Shooters – were ordered to shortern their opening hours.

Klandorf said that in an interview with Kuku Radio that the two bars would have to close at midnight on weekdays and 1:00 in the morning on weekend nights starting from February.

Nimeta is currently open till 6:00 on weekends and almost as late on other days, has long been a mainstream favorite drinking hole and sports pub, one of many foreign-owned pubs that opened in the 1990s and one of the only ones to survive under its original name, reported ERR.

Both bars are located in the area that is sometimes considered old Tallinn's noisiest street in the Old Town. Tallinn central district governor Mihhail Korb said earlier that the city was considering similar actions with regard to other Old Town establishments' closing times as well.

Toomas Hõbemägi

There are nearly 500 empty or half empty apartment buildings in Estonia

A study conducted at the request of the Estonian economy ministry indicates that there are nearly 500 empty or half-empty apartment building in Estonia, LETA/Public Broadcasting reports.

The aim of the study was to map the state of problematic apartment buildings. Apartment buildings that have three or more apartments and where at least 25% of apartments are empty were considered problematic.

The poll was conducted in 72 towns and parishes. The amount of such buildings is the biggest in the South East Estonian town Valga and in North Eastern Lääne-Virumaa county. The study recommends supporting local municipalities financially to move people in the buildings that are in a better state and demolish the empty buildings. The state could help renovate the buildings where people move to.

Economy ministry construction and housing department head Margus Sarmet said that the biggest problem is that all apartments are privatised and thus it is difficult for local municipalities and the state to make changes.

Eesti Päevaleht puts the number of such buildings at 476 and says that the study recommends demolishing around a half of them and renovating the rest. The study also makes a proposal to pay a compensation of a thousand euros to people who agree to move out of the half-empty buildings so that they could be demolished.

Biker gang ordered large drug deliveries via Estonia

Estonian and Finnish police say they have broken up a major drug ring that brought large volumes of drugs into Finland from Central Europe.

At a press conference in Tallinn on Tuesday afternoon, police from the two countries said the Estonian gang had smuggled in at least four batches of drugs including 76 kilos amphetamines as well as ecstasy and hashish. One of the recipients of the drug deliveries was the Bandidos motorcycle gang, authorities say.

Last May, the organisation hid some 30 kilos of amphetamines in the forests of Espoo and Kirkkonummi, west of Helsinki, police allege. They have recovered some 20 kilos of the drugs.

Operations run from behind bars

Finnish and Estonian officials believe that the imports, reception and distribution of the drugs were coordinated from within Helsinki Prison. There are 25 suspects, including five Finns, who are all members of Bandidos MC or its affiliates. However it remains unclear how many – if any – have been detained.

Court proceedings against the five Finns are to begin at Espoo District Court in late January.