ESTONIA - FACTS & FIGURES....

For the statto's amongst us, of which we are many, here are a few hard and fast facts about Estonia:

Population:

1.4 million in Estonia: it is the smallest of the Baltic Capitals.
Capital city is Tallinn with 430,000 people.

Size:

45,200 sq.m, so similar size of Holland, but with only 8% of its population.
Over 3,700km of coastline and 1,521 islands, some of which are UNESCO protected due to their outstanding beauty.

Where:

Most notherly of the three Baltic States. Tallinn is on the same latitude as Orkney, off the northern coast of Scotland.
It shares its borders with Latvia and Russia. Map...

Distances:

Tallinn is 1,770km from London, and only 85 km from Helsinki

Time Difference:

2 hours ahead of UK, CET + 1hr

Ethnic Groups:

Estonians 68%, Russians 26%.

Language:

Estonian is part of the Finno-Ugric language group, which includes Finnish, and bizarrely, Hungarian.
Russian and English are widely spoken.

Currency:

Estonian Kroons (Eek). £1 = Eek 22

Other useless facts:

81% of the population has a mobile
Tallinn is the operational headquarters of Skype, the internet telephone company.
In the middle of summer, there is a whopping 19 hours of sunlight.
Estonia has the lowest population density in Europe.

National Holidays:

1st January:	New Year's Day
24th February:	Independence Day - Estonia declared its independence on this day in 1918
March/ April:	Easter
1st May:	May Day
23rd June:	Victory Day - marking Battle of Vonnu in 1919
24th June:	St John's Day - Midsummer Day
20th August:	Restoration of Independence - when Estonia split from the USSR in 1991
25th December:	Christmas Day