day nine we're now in Estonia I'm sure everyone knows that by now and it's now
actually day nine we're heading off very soon to the center of Tartu and we
have a place that's for today so again we're gonna try to bring some big
visibility some some showcase grand ceremonies into the city to talk show
what libraries are about and we're getting close to the end of the road
we still got a long ways to go but people are still liking this we had a
little a library talk yesterday in the hotel conference room and I think a lot
of people really enjoyed that got to get some issues that they wanted to bring
out and and we'll probably get more of that on the bus we have a little short
bus trip today and then the long stretch home to talent
hello we're in Tartu Estonia and our group has stopped today in the center and
we have our one of our first authors or author visits that guests with us and
Mika get an end is your name you're of your Finnish national but you've been
living in Estonia and you write in Estonian is that correct yeah that's
right I was born in Helsinki but after high school I decided to live my life
here in Tartu have you did you learn the local language the Estonian language or
how have you already learned that before you moved here I didn't know a single
word Estonian when I came here so I have learned everything here so and how long
have you been writing in Estonian since 1997 when I started to write poems but
somehow I just noticed that for instance in lightens books are not
translated into in Estonian language which means that young people children
have that kind of exciting literature at all in Estonia so I started to fill
that hole and started to write stories about the five kids and French bulldog
my name is Drew Bidney I'm from State College Pennsylvania most people in the
United States most people would know Penn State University which is where I'm
a student and my wife is a librarian so I am not a librarian but I'm on this
trip regardless Marcy thankfully had enough time foresight to go ahead and
secure a bike and we're actually going to be able to drop it off in Tallinn
they're gonna ship it back to Vilnius where we started and it's all kind of
included in the cost so it's been very beneficial to have that it's been
comfortable it's a tank it's it's gone over all the gravel roads and everything
that we've done and the only thing I've lost is the front fender I was riding
along one day and it just kind of fell off so in that in that way it's been
great
