Friday, August 21, 2009

Independance Day, err.. again


Funny thing happened here the other day, actually it was more odd than funny.

Estonia celebrated its Independence day on August 20th, the odd thing about this is that they had already celebrated it back in February when we were still knee deep in snow.


This second celebration marked the collapse of the old Soviet Union and its withdrawal from the Baltic states twenty years ago, whereas the earlier Independence Day commemorates 1919 when Estonia broke free from Russian control for twenty short years.



In Ireland Independence from Britain isn't really acknowledged, yet over here there is a bank holiday for a day that surely lost all relevance after the Russians came back for another fifty years after world war II. Then again anti-Russian feeling still runs high here and celebrating this day in some small way is a slap in the face to the Kremlin.



After two years of construction a central plaza was completed on this very day, to much cheering and crowd waving, with politicians making speeches, bands playing and fireworks exploding. Appropriately the square is called Freedom Square. The central point to the square is a large glass cross, this was a rather bizarre choice as this country is far from religious, but apparently its not meant to be religious but some ancient Estonian monument. The cross has aroused as much debate and differing of opinions just as the Spire did in Dublin, hopefully it'll grow on us before it collapses.

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