Many young people have drowned or perished in traffic accidents this summer in Estonia. The daily Eesti Päevaleht blames the deaths on increased alcohol consumption and calls for stricter laws: “Why must alcohol be available at petrol stations, as if it were just another thing you needed for your car like motor oil or windshield washer fluid? Is the idea to ban boredom from the motorways?
“The typical scenario for fatal motor accidents starts when five young men between 18 and 25 drive up in an old car and want to buy more booze for a party. How many lives could be saved if gas stations simply stopped selling alcohol? Perhaps the odd local petrol station would go belly up, sure, but it would quickly be replaced by part of a more reasonable chain that earns its money with other services.”
Source: Europtopics
Eric Koch’s new book, The Golden Years: Five Stories, was launched on Saturday, March 16. The book is available from the 
They’ll only start drinking windshield washer fluid.
I have passed your wise suggestion to the Estonian press. They might have a job for you.
I know a man who was in a hospital in Estonia for a week. Nobody spoke English and he did NOT speak Estonian. I was a hard week. He is OK now and lives in Santa Monica. I do not think it has to do with drinking.
The closest we got to Estonia in our day was Professor Budge in Riga.
What does drowning have to do with it? Surely those five young men weren’t buying enough booze to drown in?!…
Please refrain in future from asking me such difficult questions.
During a trip to Ireland in the mid-1960s I noticed that the pubs stopped serving locals at 10 p.m. but if you were a traveler, you could drink until 11. This meant that at 10 p.m. all the locals piled into their cars and drove to the next village, thus becoming “travelers.” The narrow roads of the day were sprinkled with white crosses, marking all the accident sites.
I believe they changed that law by now.
My daughter has lived in Estonia for 4 years without speaking Estonian. Most people speak English. They take English starting in third grade. What hospital was the poor man in and was he drinking and getting in an accident.
My brother Robert sends this reply:
Nothing could be said that is bad, except that nobody spoke English, the doctors did speak some slight English. In Estonia about 50% of the population speaks Russian, the rest Estonian, which is related to Finnish.
and Hungarian. I remember a Finnish friend in Vienna who recognized Hungarian on the tram, hearing it for the first time in her life, because of the similarity to her own language.
Your Finnish friend was an exception. All MY Finnish friends have known about this freakish relationship all their lives. And none can explain it.