No-one is guilty...

When I first came to Italy, I received a phonecall - my Volareweb flight had been cancelled. "So when is the next flight?" I asked. "Oh, well, actually we cancelled the whole line..."
I was some of the first Volareweb passengers to be stranded as they eventually cancelled the whole airline.

As exceptional as this example might be, chances are that anyone who has spent a longer amount of time in Italy will know how easy it is for trains, buses and flights to just stop moving. Transport services go on strike so often that no-one hardly pays attention anymore.

This is probably why Alitalia made a big one this time. Not only were all the national airline flights cancelled, but so were all the others, as the general flight monitoring and radars and all that were offline too. Approximately 40 000 people stranded, up to 400 flights affected. No prior notification. According to the column Italians of Corriere della Sera, neither the early-morning flights from Stansted, scheduled to arrive well before 10 o'clock - before the official start fo the strike - wouldn't fly anywhere. Nice.

My mom got her share of distress as well. She spent a great well-earned holiday here with me, but had a pile of work waiting for her back home. We arrived in the airport 2,5 hours before the flight to make sure that everything would go well. Instead we got to wait for someone to tell us that there is a strike (but we already knew it from the newsstand) and that there is no reimbursement for any costs.

Indeed, they are all waterproof - the Czech Airlines who were supposed to operate the flight said that they don't pay for expenses because none of this is their fault. Alitalia is not covering anything either, because: a) it's "unforeseen events"; and b) it's not their fault, but the government's. The previous government, lead by Silvio Berlusc*ni, apparently made some reforms that make the transport employees unhappy. So should he pay? Even though he most likely is able to, apparently it's not his fault either...

My mom had an insurance for any disruptions in the travel, but the contract doesn't mention strikes, only weather and traffic accidents. That must be because the North-European customers don't know better.

Open Space

News off the 451 website:

[11.05.07] From 7 - 12 May, a youth conference "Young European Parliament" is meeting in Mestre, Venice. 451 has been giving the organisers a hand for the last 3 days by setting up a series of Open Space Technology afternoons. The participants, among Italians including people from Norway, Sweden, Greece and Bulgaria, discussed their positions and possibilities as young people on substance abuse, immigration and integration issues, and international development. The feedback from the participants has been very positive, expressing surprise at the Open Space as an incredibly dynamic and involving group working method that enables everyone to express their opinion on topics that are most important for them.


The Open Space sessions were conducted by my colleagues Riccardo, Giorgio and myself. We were asked to give the organisers a hand with holding the afternoon group-working sessions after each morning of presentations by experts. We had 50-70 youngsters, most of them arrived directly from school and expecting something quite the same as school. They were surprised to find that they were free to discuss what was interesting for them, only as long as they wanted to and - most importantly - without an expert in sight. We got back surprising reports on drug abuse, immigration and integration issues and a group of very inspired young people.

Some of my favourite lines from discussion groups:
"But you don't have to take drugs to have fun - I'll tell you a joke and you'll have fun anyway..."
"So if you go on a bus and it's full of Albanian guys, what do you think?"
"You know, this is the first time someone asks us what we think about it!"

What's (been) happening in Estonia?

Disclaimer: the following piece of writing may contain subjective statements on history and politics. All specifications and counter-arguments are welcome.

Ma che cos'é successo in Estonia? - This is the sentence I hear so often in the last days that I have even developed a fast-talk-version of the happenings from my point of view:

"OK, so there's this monument that for the Russians is for those who fought against fascism in WW II, but for Estonians is for the Red Army who occupied Estonia in the end of the war; so now the monument was moved from the city centre to a military cemetery and some young people got drunk and went to the streets to riot and Russia is using the chance to develop its own interests from the affair."

Seems simple, does it? Maybe not. This is what a friend of mine emailed to me a week ago:
"Did you here about the riots in Tallinn? For my own luck I haven’t been here when it started, but my colleague and friends said that they felt like in a war. There were 60 injured and 1 dead and they destroyed a lot of shop windows and houses and cars were burning… And now we have a prohibition for alcohol… already the 2nd week… And now everybody waits for 8th and 9th of may to start all over again as it is the end of the war for Russia. So I don’t really feel comfortable at the moment…"

The riots themselves took place in the end of April. The story around the Bronze Soldier has been going on for a year now, after some Estonians talked up against having it in the city centre (or after having the Russian population waving Russian flags around the monument? Which came first?). From then on "patriots", or, more specifically, bored young people from both sides have been going around the monument to pick fights and the police set up a watch for avoiding any further problems. In any case it seemed to be something that young people spent their time with in the lack of better things to do. The riot agitators used this available energy to create thousands of euros worth of damage - cars, windows, shops, bus pavillions, anything one could find to break in a city centre. The police is certain that the riots were organised at least to some extent by individuals supported from Russia. Oh well. There is no love between the states, none at all.

Obviously the affair has brought up the issues between the Estonian and Russian population and the history of the past 100 years. They didn't have to have anything to do with the monument. Initially. But people have been fast to create the connections. As the history of the Baltic states is rarely a strong spot for people who didn't study there, here are some ideas for those who think that they know what's happening in / around Estonia:

- sometimes the Kremlin comes up with statements that suggest natural right of Russia over the Baltic states (I'll add a reference as soon as I find some of them), as the area has been theirs for such a long time. This sounds completely unreasonable to Estonians.

- some Estonian history: pagan and ununited until the early 14th century; then occupied by Germans and Danish during the Northern Crusades; from then on dominated by Baltic Germans as landlords up to WW I, as the country was occupied in turn by Germans, Polish (partly), Swedish and Russians. Russian domination lasted from 1710 - 1918, though the cultural life always belonged to Baltic Germans (apart from the Estonian cultural awakening of the 19th century and 15-20 years of russification from 1890 onwards). The Russian influences on the Estonian culture were neither strong nor deep-rooted before the birth of the Soviet Union.

- Russian politicians (and their young sidekicks, the Nashists), have repeatedly accused Estonia of being neofascist in the last months (no reference, read any public statement). In WW II, Estonians were fighting on both sides because hardly anyone could choose the army to which they were conscripted. At the present point, Estonians are anti-Communist more than anything else. Fascist ideology, insignia and literature is internationally forbidden. There is no reason why the Soviet ideology, insignia and flag shouldn't be as well.

- the Russians make up about 25% (other minorities 5%) of the Estonian population of 1,4 mln. That's a lot of people, but most of them were immigrated as a part of the Soviet demographic politics after WW II. Most of the Russians living in Estonia today are first- or second-generation residents. See also the BBC article from Narva, northeast Estonia.

- (The other side of the same policies was the deportation of 30 000 people from Estonia to Siberia by the Soviet authorities in 1941 and 1949.)

- the Russian Federation has refused responsibility for this and other human rights violations, as the Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union. This is understandable. At the same time they claim credit for the victory over fascism with the end of WW II, though the credit should go to the Red Army - the Soviet Union. Double standards?

- to date, the Kremlin denies the Soviet occupation of Estonia and claims that the state joined the USSR voluntarily.

- a large part of the Russians living in Estonia have no citizenship, neither Russian nor Estonian. This is because in 1991 the Estonian citizenship passed directly to the descendants of the Estonian citizens before WW II (or at least before the Soviet occupation) and everyone else had to apply for citizenship. A part of the process was a language, culture and history exam that is said to be unreasonably difficult. This is the main reason why Estonia has been accused of discrimination of the Russian minority.

- the discrimination that the Nashists refer to exists on gossip level only. The European Commission DG Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities and the Council of Europe conducts research on the matter: link 1: EC and link 2: CoE. The main problems have to do with the lack of sufficient legislation for preventing discrimination and the lack of effective governmental integration policies. At the same time, no serious issues are reported. Some discrimination has to do with language skills - Estonian is not an easy language and the Russian population has little motivation to learn it, but no knowledge of Estonian can still hinder a person from finding a job. I know that something needs to be done to solve this, but - honestly - in which country don't you need to know the official language in order to work?

- the Russians were the majority nationality of the Soviet Union. This granted them a number of advantages over other nationalities, starting from Russian-language schools and other facilities in each member state, guaranteed jobs, right up to shorter queues for applying for accommodation (because one couldn't just buy a flat at that time, one was given when it was free - but it could take any amount of time). At least this is what my mother tells me. These rights have been cancelled after 1991 and the contrast will at least to some extent look like discrimination.


Now, all this is politics and history. It gets me angry easily, as the historic memory is strong in me too and I can't stand hearing Kremlin asking for the Estonian government to step down. But it's only politics. I don't care if a friend of mine is Russian. I have great respect for the Russian literature and I'm sorry for my poor command of the language.

I'm already used to having to explain to well-meaning foreigners that Estonians don't speak Russian as a first language and consider themselves very different from Russians both in language and character. Their innocent question "so do you speak Russian in Estonia?", even though it intends to show nothing but interest, and is probably emerged from the only bit of information they have (that Estonia is next to Russia), will hardly make any Estonian shine with appreciation. Usually the reasons for it are too long and complex to analyse right there on the spot, so I merely give the impression of picking on details too much. Seeing from outside it's all the same anyway, I guess.