In a demonstration nothing short of stunning, Finland's Ambassador to Estonia, Jaakko Kalela, used a small, two-wheeled machine to effortlessly remove snow from Tallinn's Victory Square yesterday. "The ambassador is using only one hand!" shrieked Tallinn's Deputy Mayor Taavi Aas, as several dozen Estonians shouted "witch" and fled the square.
Since independence, Estonia has clung to its Soviet-era practice of snow removal on pedestrian paths, which is to say it employs three old women with brooms made of twigs who are ill or absent roughly three days out of five.
Ambassador Kalela also introduced a substance he referred to as "salt" to the ranks of city government administrators assembled on the square. "If you put this on the snow, watch how the frozen matter melts! And if you don't want to ruin your leather-soled shoes, put these granite pellets down on the sidewalk." The ambassador demonstrated their use by having several pensioners show how they could tread upon the granite pieces without slipping and breaking limbs. Asked whether additional western techniques might be employed to make Tallinn sidewalks safer, Deputy Mayor Aas would make no commitment but did concede that "the magic of this Kalela is truly strong."
Ambassador Kalela (above right) used the two-wheeled machine (above left) to dazzle spectators. Some bystanders said Kalela threatened to "blot out the sun."
The Estonian Society of Literature has named author Alexander Grover's The New Estonian Golden Age: How Estonia Will Rise to Be One of Europe's Five Richest Nations as Estonia's Best English-language book of 2009. "We believe Mr. Grover's book exhibits all the trademarks of an ESL book," said Igor Igav, spokesman for the ESL award committee. "We hope this means that whoever is pretending to be Alex can now stop shamelessly plugging the book on BBN's website," added Igav, "and that the publisher will be able to unload the rest of the copies stashed in his garage at the reduced $8.99 price on Amazon.com." Grover was unreachable for comment.
