Fifty Up!!!

When I started this blog four or five months ago, I was thrilled when I started getting visitors from outside the UK, because it meant I knew that it wasn't just my mates checking in out of politeness. The excitement mounted as the number of countries grew, particularly when they were somewhere small and exotic like Swaziland or St Kitts and Nevis, and I decided then that I would produce a special post when we reached the fifty countries mark.

That mark was reached yesterday. So thank you and welcome aboard Estonia.

I spent a few days in Tallinn in 1993 as part of a grand tour that took in Moscow (where my Dad was working at the time), St Petersburg (where I was interviewed live on Russian television - remind me to bore you with that story some other time) and Tallinn before ending up in Copenhagen via two ferries and a train through Sweden.

The only music I bought while in Tallinn was a cassette of Estonian cover versions of Beatles songs which had its moments - if you thought "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" was odd in English you should hear it in Estonian - but has long since gone the way of all flesh. So I found myself without any Estonian music to include in this tribute.

But thanks to the wonders of Googling I did not remain bereft for long. I came across the website of a band called Vagilased (I think there is an umlaut in there somewhere) who perform souped-up versions of Estonian folk songs, including this cracking little number: "Hobusemang" ("Horse Game" in English).

http://www.box.net/shared/ql6ndlo2kl

If you like that - and who wouldn't? - there is more of that sort of thing on their website: http://www.vagilased.ee/eng/. It does not seem to have been updated for a couple of years, so I'm not sure if they are still going or not.

To finish off this Eesti-Fest, here is Estonia's winning entry from the 2001 Eurovision Song Contest:



Next target: 100 countries or someone from Chad, whichever comes first.