Estonia, Out in the Country

During that week of September 2000 that Tanya and I spent in Tallinn and Tartu, I was called upon several times to write something about Estonia. Each time I explained that while I was honoured by the request, writing a short story isn’t just a matter of choosing a country and a topic and taking off from there. I knew nothing about Estonia, and our own experiences of regime change were scarcely comparable. But I was talking to a brick wall. After all, I’d written thirty-three stories about St Petersburg, so surely I could come up with one about Estonia.