Tonight's concert of the Grammy Award-winning Eesti Filharmoonia Kammerkoor in Tallinn's 13th century Niguliste kirik has been postponed until May 18. Individuals, so young that they have lived in the Republic of Estonia longer than they lived in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, continue to loiter a few short blocks from the kirik, to throw rocks at police officers dressed prophylactically in riot gear, to smash benign storefront windows, and to pillage stores selling liquor and cigarettes - many in front of television news cameras.

These young people, whose most recent hot meal was undoubtedly prepared by their short, stout, hard-working mothers, have either Estonian or Russian passports. Their Estonian passport gives them access to nearly every country in the European Union, which has a GDP second only to the USA. Their Russian passport admits them to country with the 11th largest GDP in the world. What's their beef?

The Eesti Filharmoonia Kammerkoor's May 18 performance in Tallinn will be preceded by concerts in Norwich, Edinburgh, and Manchester and will be followed by concerts in Italy and Norway.

Which trip would you take?

Cost.
Trip A: 3,000EEK – about $250
Trip B: 3,100EEK – about $258

Length.
A: 3 days – about 75 hours
B: 6 days – about 135 hours

Time in Transit.
A: 8% – about 6 hours (on train and plane)
B: 55% – about 76 hours (on bus)

Hotels/Hostels.
A: 1 hostel - 7 to a room
B: 4 hotels - 2 or 3 to a room

City Stops.
A: 1 - London (about 69 hours)
B: 3 - Prague (about 40 hours) plus Karlovy Vary and Prachovské Skály National Park

Fellow Travelers.
A: 7 - High school seniors, all girls
B: 45 -about 40 high school seniors and 3 adults

I am taking both trips this summer: to the Czech Republic in June and to London in August.

Happy Easter

Suur Reede

The movie line-up on Kanal 2 for Good Friday, a national holiday for this otherwise agnostic nation, is:

• -Krippendorf's Tribe (1998) with the always annoying Richard Dreyfuss,
• -The Crocodile Hunter (2002) with the late Steve Irwin, who was memorialized here in Tapa last fall by being the topic of one of my multiple choice clozes,
• 
  -Vice Versa (1988) with Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage - a father and a son who exchange bodies - as well as Richard Kind, whom I saw at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in Stephen Sondheim's Bounce!,

-MacGyver: Lost Treasures of Atlantis (1994) with Richard Dean, who made a comeback as Jack O'Neil in the Saturday afternoon sci-fi tv show Stargate SG-1, which, ironically, evolved into Stargate Atlantis, where Dr. Elizabeth Weir ain't no Captain Janeway but still she's putting in yeoman service,

-Grumpy Old Men (1993) with the odd couple Lemon and Matthau,

-Money Talks (1997) with the sharp-talking Chris Tucker (or is it Chris Rock), and

-You've Got Mail (1998), which seems to be run ad nauseam in every country in the Western world.

On the other hand, errrr, channel, ETV, the Estonian PBS station, is showing Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which I have never seen. So, since it's bloody snowing outside this afternoon, I'm curled up on the couch in front of my Finlux television with a blanket and cup of tea.