reede, juuli 07, 2006

Abiratas goes to Annapolis


Tallinn's boy mayor gets around. After surveying the widespread use of bicycles in Grenoble, France, Jüri Ratas, the 28-year-old mayor of Tallinn affectionately known as 'abiratas' or 'training wheel' decided that Tallinn needed more bikes. Now after a stop over in Annapolis, the capital of Maryland and home to the US naval academy and lots of places that specialize in crab dishes, Jüri was treated to a good old fashioned Marylander birthday party:

Juri Ratas, mayor of Annapolis sister city Tallinn, Estonia, and a few of his staff members made a stop in Annapolis last night, one of 10 stops on their coastal cities tour of the United States.

The point of the trip was to gain information on how to better secure harbors and work with local police and fire on crisis situations. The tour also includes stops in other cities like Tampa, Fla., but turned out more like a belated birthday party than anything else.

And after meeting with city officials, like administrator Bob Agee and of course, our own Mayor Ellen O. Moyer, Mr. Ratas was treated to an ice cream social with about 30 people at Reynolds Tavern and his first root beer float.

Root beer floats and four different flavors made by Annapolis Ice Cream Co. included apple pie, chocolate raspberry, Oreo and especially for the Estonian delegation, oatmeal raisin cookie ice cream, yummy.

"Very interesting, very good," Mr. Ratas said, in between slurps of his float.

Annapolis officials even went so far as to wish the 28-year-old mayor a belated birthday (July 2), singing the birthday song at the conclusion of the social.

Unfortunately, there were no pony rides or clowns making balloon animals.


Too bad about the lack of pony rides or clowns. Maybe another one of Tallinn's sister cities, like Los Gatos, California, can pick up the slack.

2 kommentaari:

Anonüümne ütles ...

Hehe, hopefully Mr. Ratas' experience with root beer was better than mine! He's a politician, so, what else could he say than it was good? My root beer experience was when I was the first time in States and ordered a hamburger and what I tought was a beer. Well, the damn thing wasn't beer but thankfully still better than Kool Aid!

Giustino ütles ...

I know he's from KESK and he did nothing during the pronkssõdur controversy, but Jüri seems like a cool mayor in some ways.

I'd much prefer a 28-year-old mayor who gets the root bear float treatment wherever he goes to some wizened ex-communist who gets his krooni from hi pals at Gazprom.