there first of all the country has about 1.3 million people and has seen a 19
population decline in the past two decades the country is made up of
how do you decline up how do you decline the population by that much
what up youtube it's your boy g boss you're back with another reaction video perform reacts it's
gonna be another geography now you know we're gonna do estonia right now so uh leave a like
in the video subscribe anything from estonia like music culture artie's whatever leave those
in comment section down below suggestions and i'm gonna check those out for you guys this is foreign
reaction y'all know what we do about here we do everything that is outside of america so let's
get it guys once upon a time there was a nerdy girl in school who's always getting picked on
one day the school had a talent show she took off her glasses and sang with a passion beyond
all comprehension every guy asked her out after that that's basically estonia
everyone i'm your host barby welcome back to europe and we have reached
our first country in the baltic estonia this is gonna get good trust me but first
estonia is without a doubt europe's little wild card you never know what you're going to get
with these people but they always seem to surprise you first of all estonia is classified as a north
european country do not call them eastern as it has former ussr connotations that they do not want
to be affiliated with located on the baltic sea just a short ferry ride south below their brothers
in finland bordered by russia to the east and latvia to the south the country is divided into
15 counties or macronut with the capital tallinn located in the north just on the gulf of finland
in the baltic however it's been said that the country kind of rotates capitals around the
year as tartu is considered the cultural capital with its juxtaposition of classic and postmodern
architecture and a myriad of conceptually abstract statues and then there's pardnu considered this
summer capital with its rocking beach and bonfire parties these three cities also host the largest
airports the country owns over 2 200 islands and islets and the largest ones being saurima and
huma which act as their own counties when it comes to their borders with russia things get a little
weird to this day many maps of estonia in estonia still include the areas of east narva or ivanograd
with the two opposing castles facing each other on the river and the south petseri or petserima
region which were respectively annexed by russia technically but there's still an ownership dispute
kind of it's it's weird not only that but there are also some strange border disparities like
the narva river waterway exit into the largest lake lake pepos or pepsi pepsi the largest trans
boundary lake in europe and then there's the satse boot a part of russia that overlaps the
estonian 178 road for only 900 meters drivers from estonia are not required to carry permits when
passing through on car but they're not allowed to pass on foot or stop by and pick any of the
mushrooms the latvian border is pretty simple and straightforward until you get to the town of valga
in which you get another haskell library incident in which the entire town is split in half by
the border running straight through streets and roads speaking of roads in the winter time when
the baltic freezes over a charming little miracle happens estonia gains the world's longest ice road
that travels from the mainland to hiyuma island in the west the road is about 26 kilometers long
and operates between january and march when the ice is just thick enough to carry the weight of
most vehicles speaking of roads again estonia has strict rules on wearing reflective clothing
at night if you are caught at night not wearing something that helps others see you you could get
up to 400 euros in a fine otherwise estonia is quite a charming place with coin oh 400
that's more than what i paid for my apple watch that's a lot of money oh hell no i gotta get me
some glow glow i gotta glow in the dark that's crazy that's crazy imagine being charged for
uh or uh not wearing uh reflective gears like what what about if you're like in a car like
estonians um and that's what you guys are called right estonians right um what about i'm in my
car right and i'm driving down the street and it happens that i get a flat tire right and i hop out
i ain't got no you know reflective uh gears on what's gonna happen like what can i plead my
case can i go to the judge and be like george i was in a car i had a flat tire i hopped out
the cops pulled up you know dang 400 dollars not even dollars it's actually um euros i think
towns and saunas everywhere and clear wi-fi can be found even in the most remote areas
in the country even in the middle of the forest which is actually kind of growing pretty fast
let's explain in no i did no estonia live in it bro y'all got wi-fi in the in a forest
free wi-fi
sounds like home
okay i didn't really think it was going to be this easy but one way you can remember what a
stoney uh is like is that it's really actually kind of stony found in the lush forest and metals
estonia is actually home to more giant boulders than any other european nation over 60 of which
have diameters over 30 meters wide all of which protected by the government not only that but
estonia also has more meteorite craters per square kilometer than anywhere else in europe for some
reason the most notable ones being the kali craters on sarema island and the massive eight
kilometer wide neugrund crater under the sea with impact residue pieces found all over the coast of
osumar in the north and not only that but estonia is also europe's largest shale oil producer second
in the world after china with most of the rocky deposits found along the north and northeastern
parts of the country by the way little side note shale oil is an unconventional source of fuel
in which the oil is trapped in rock fragments and extracted in a process that adds hydrogen
to remove impurities simply put estonia is pretty lush and beautiful they're actually going through
a reforestation phase right now partially thanks to the declining population in which now over half
of the entire country some numbers estimate over 60 percent is covered in forest estonia
is generally flat i mean the highest point sur munamagi or egg mountain is only 318 meters tall
and at over 1400 they have a ton of lakes and even more small ponds the rest of the country
is comprised of open bogs fens and wetlands they're never short in supply of fresh boggy mud
and waterfalls oh my gosh some amazing ones like in balaste yagala and keayola falls are some of
the most pristine magnificent nature sites but definitely try not to miss out on the national
animal the charming blue barn swallow in terms of produce estonia is a very hearty meat and
potatoes type of country with national dishes like blood sausage and lingonberries and raim
or baltic dwarf herring they love that hard liquor and it comes really cheap too because
the alcohol is expensive and highly regulated by their government finnish people typically take
the 45-minute ferry to estonia simply to just buy cheap alcohol and come back i'm not even joking
oh estonia you people are so unique finland got dropped y'all got trapped in this one again bro
i need me some liquor i'ma go right over there 45 minutes and give me some liquor that's practically
worth it though because i mean you know it's like a vibe right there like a vacation and
i don't know i i probably would do the same thing i don't know tell the world who you are
ah estonia you want so bad to be labeled as nordic you're so close
but yeah not quite there first of all the country has about 1.3 million people and has seen a 19
population decline in the past two decades the country is made up of
how do you decline up how do you decline the population by that much i i'm pretty sure he said
19 right let me run it back because i got to make sure he said 19 so close but yeah not quite there
first of all the country has about 1.3 million people and has seen a 19 population decline dang
so what is it like birth rate or something um less children being born or is it that um
people are dying a lot what is it because you know population decrease um when a population decreases
it's not necessarily because of the fact that okay people are dying there are factors that
can be um taken into consideration but i do think that one of the main reasons why a lot
of population will decrease obviously is because of contraceptive birth control stuff like that
people are not having as much kids as they would have which automatically makes
a population decrease because if nobody if people are dying but no one is you know you get the math
in the past two decades the country is made up of nearly 70 people that identify as ethnically
estonian about 23 of the country is russian and the reindeer are mostly ukrainians finns
and other people groups the national currency is a euro they use the type f outlet and drive on the
right side of the road estonians speak estonian a uralic-based language in the same group as finnish
hungarian is technically a far-off distant cousin that they kind of lost contact with
almost every estonian i talked to has said that they can probably understand finnish better than
the finns can understand them due to the fact that they have regular access to finnish tv
whereas the finns don't have estonian if they listen very hard they might be able to have like
a very basic conversation with each other however to speed things up they usually just speak english
by the way estonia is fairly english friendly as it is taught in schools and most of the younger
generation can carry on a decent conversation now culture-wise estonia may be small but is
packed with detail first of all throughout history they were either subject to the danes swedes and
the germans or the russians until finally they gained independence from the soviet union in 1991
literally by singing seriously in 1987 estonia was the first soviet republic to defy the soviet army
and they started to gather in huge crowds and spontaneously started singing estonian national
songs which were strictly forbidden and without any bloodshed eventually won their independence
they gained freedom through song which is why it's no surprise that at over 133 000
estonia has the largest collection of written folk songs out of any country in the world they
take singing seriously here and swinging estonians invented the sport of kiking which is like when a
person gets on a swing with solid arms made of steel with the objective to swing an entire 360
degrees around the fulcrum today estonia has developed dramatically from its former years
estonia is a highly tech savvy country with more startups per capita than anywhere else
in europe they invented hotmail kaza and skype which was pretty much invented
no they hotmail in skype those are the biggest thing once of in a time bro oh my gosh bro estonia
invented skype and hotmail i used hotmail and i used skype before bro i don't use them right now
right because hotmail fell off a lot because of um google right but i mean hotmail bro
outlook is hotmail if i'm not mistaken outlook is hotmail maybe outlook um is a different uh
company that bought like took hotmail away like bought it right but um i know that hotmail was
the thing bro back like probably in the 2010s uh somewhere there before google came about
in skype yo skype was the ultimate video call bro before you had facetime
and uh zoom and all that fun stuff bro skype was lit bro still oh my gosh bro
and i'd be sitting here thinking everything was man that's crazy bro by estonians i mean there
was a swede and a dane involved somewhere but the estonians did pretty much all the
programming now here's the thing to this day estonia has the highest prevalence of females
to males in the world with .84 men for every one woman it's been said the reasoning behind this is
because so many of the men were killed during the soviet times leaving an influx of women behind to
this day estonia also has the highest number of international fashion models per capita in the
world i mean after all those years of getting the pick of the litter i guess estonian's bred
some really attractive people unfortunately estonia also has one of the highest unmarried
and single single-parent ratios in europe as well part of this has to do with the fact that
estonia disputedly has the lowest importance of religion on any country in europe as less than 20
claim to be affiliated with any religion at all therefore many people don't really see a need for
marriage as grounds to define their relationship as it has just social and sometimes even religious
institutional connotations that has no bearance on their lives and they choose to just kind of bypass
it all together to this day many estonian children are raised by a single parent who may cohabit with
another partner but almost likely will never get married which is funny because they really do
well at wife carrying competitions we'll explain more about that in the finland episode
isn't that but we'll talk more about finland yeah because i did do uh the reaction for finland and
um i i the wife competition where you carry the wife on your back and uh you know you
gotta bear if you win which was pretty cool right but yeah they do it too that's cool
okay so since the fall of the soviet union estonia has pretty much re-revolutionized the entire way
that they engage with outsiders in 2004 they joined the european union and quickly gained ties
to the nordic countries that they've longed to unite with for like forever iceland was actually
the first country to recognize their independence and estonians to this day even consider themselves
nordic although the term is kind of debatable with other nordic countries again after the fall of the
soviet union estonia actually kind of still kept close ties with all the other former states that
also gained independence like in central asia kazakhstan uzbekistan as well as the caucasus
regions azerbaijan armenia and georgia it was kind of like hey remember the old days when big
old russia used to control us well not anymore high five bro lithuania and latvia are kind of
like the two friends that they used to play with in the sandbox when they were kids but then they
kind of grew up and kind of stopped hanging out lithuania and latvia are kind of like estonia just
accept the fact that you are baltic not nordic join us their best friends however would have
to be finland finland is kind of like the bigger brother that has always loved his little sister
but hated seeing her get tossed around from empire to empire they share the same cultures and general
life values and have always been there for each other as the last surviving uralic peoples on
the planet in conclusion if europe was a choir estonia would be prepared to empire they share
the same cultures and general life values and have always been there for each other as the last
corrections of the last there are other irelic people in russia and other parts of the eastern
what is uralic uralic people y'all let me know in the comment section
i'm sorry i'm stupid i'm trying to learn man i'm trying to learn don't be mean
i'm trying to learn but either ways man let me know what's uh you for alec
i would ask but uh you know tell me in the comment section down below guys surviving
uralic peoples on the planet in conclusion if europe was a choir estonia would be like
that one girl who didn't get any solos but then gets to sing that one high note that
causes the whole crowd to give her a standing ovation stay tuned ethiopia is coming up next
that was beautiful that's tonya shout out to y'all man leave a like in the video estonians
and uh subscribe all the questions that i ask please answer them in the comment
section down below i really appreciate that guys uh anything about estonia like culture or whatever
it is that you want me to check out leave those in comment section down
below i will get back to those for you guys uh i'm out of here guys case we