The taste of freedom

Shopping is a great exercise and dead simple. You browse, you pick, you pick more and then you buy. Easy peasy if you have learned how to do it.

Sixteen years ago I went shopping with two girls, one from Estonia and the other from Slovakia. Both countries had just left communism behind and Slovakia was about to split from the Chech Republic. The girls had never before set a foot inside a western department store. As I walked in the store and started browsing I soon realised that I had left my new friends behind in complete despair at the entrance. They did not know where to look and where to start. The Slovakian girl was a devout Catholic. She kept on shaking her head. ‘All this choice was just immoral!’ My Estonian friend kept clapping her hands about the diverse range of shoes she could choose from (under Soviet rule you were lucky to find any shoe after waiting in a line for weeks, days or hours).

Last year I saw my Estonian friend again. She works in Brussels as a diplomat and her husband is a journalist. She had a fancy laptop and a blackberry, her baby boy sat in the latest model of the Bugaboo. She was happy. I could not help but think back about that day in 1993 in the Debenhams in Liverpool and smile.

How sweet is the taste of freedom. How fortunate that Estonia was able to join the EU.

Estonia celebrates its 18th year of independence today.