Abdul Turay

Go West, Follow-up article Martinson: in up to 90 percent of business regions, we are in Eastern Europe. Fir st published Postimees 21 June 2010 In risk capitalist Allan Martinson's evaluation, we are for most people, generally, an Eastern European country and to become a Nordic country will take at least a generation. Abdul Turay wrote in today's Postimees an opinion piece that in Europe, Estonia is beginning to be considered separately from the rest of Eastern Europe and is becoming more a part of the Nordic countries. In Martinson's view the firms' structures and ownership relationship are on the one hand structurally Baltic and on the other hand leaning to the side of the Nordic countries. “We have very many important firm still with a Baltic structure. Managers go between Riga, Vilnius, Helsinki or Stockholm. “In economic thinking we are a part of Eastern Europe. In Europe we are to in business regions, as far as 80-90 percent of people are concerned, an Easte...

Go West By Abdul Turay Published Postimees 21 June 2010 Some people, when they go abroad, are ashamed to tell people they are Estonian, even when it is clear that the person they are talking to is sophisticated enough to know such a country exists. A person I knew once told me about a girl he met in a wine bar in London. On spotting that she had a slight accent he asked her which country she came from. Instead of saying the specific country, she paused a little and finally said she was from... well..... em......“a country in Northern Europe”. This guy who has pretty good detective skills thought about this for a while and then said without any embellishing remarks: “You must be from Estonia.” This guy described how the girl blushed and looked round uncomfortably, like he had found out a guilty secret. He explained if she were from a “real” Northern European country like Denmark or Sweden she would have said I'm Danish/Swedish end of story. Therefore she must ...