When I was a child I was obsessed with geography. As I started becoming a teenager, I became interested in languages. No wonder I soon became a Eurofan.
I remember I was quite obsessed with Baltic states, especially Estonia, and I didn’t even know why. I remember I did a PowerPoint presentation about Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania at secundary school. I was the only one interested in these states. I still have the map I tried to draw:
After my presentation my interest in Estonia (or, as some call it, e-Stonia) began to grow and I wanted to visit it some day. However, the flights costed too much.
In 2016 I became a Eurofan and I began to watch videos of the performance of the entire decade. Estonia soon became one of my favourite Eurovision countries. When I first listened to Kuula by Ott Lepland (2012) I really felt blessed by Estonian language (and his voice, of course):
… And that’s when I really fell in love with Estonia.
Estonia is my favourite Eurovision country of the decade. They amazed me every year (however, 2017 and 2019 are an exception) and I consider them my winners in 2012 and 2015. I really love Kuula and Goodbye to yesterday.
Thanks to a low-cost flight from Milan, I visited Estonia last year with a friend of mine. We arrived on 30th August and left on 4th September. I loved it, I loved Estonian people, landscapes and how technology works there. I even bought a Ott Lepland cd. One of the places I liked the most was Lahemaa National Park:
I really felt at home and we received a warm welcome in every restaurant, shop and other places. I was wondering: do Estonians love Eurovision? When I was in the airport I found a postcard with some stereotypical things Estonian do: Are you Estonian? It is true if you …. Of course I immediately noticed the third point:
Well, I can say that I walk a lot (and usually fast), I worship potatoes in almost any form and I don’t believe in God, but I believe in Eurovision. Guess I’m Estonian, then.
However, Estonian language is really hard to learn: I tried to learn it on my own with the help of some good websites. I gave up soon but then I received good news from my University last year: a Estonian course had been activated. Unfortunately it wasn’t suitable for my lessons schedule but I attended some classes and I hope to try it again as soon as possible, because I had good results at the beginning.
Many people can’t understand my love for Estonia because they consider it a “small country with nothing interesting”. That’s not true. I hope they will abandon those prejudices soon.
This is just an example of how Eurovision can make us fall in love with a certain country, culture, language. I notice that many people started being interested in some countries thanks to Eurovision (for example Georgia, Sweden, Italy, etc.). And that’s how Eurovision works. We build bridges. Every country is important.
12 POINTS TO EUROVISION 