Smoking

The Estonian president just recently paid a visit to Finland before the elections last week and was interviewed in TV about what is going on in Estonia. The Estonians have had a big controversy in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, about the statue of a Soviet soldier.

Some Estonians want it to be demolished and some want to keep it as a reminder of what once was, even the neighbouring country that once used to be the Soviet Union had their say. As a symbol of the oppression during the occupation by their eastern neighbour I can understand the demands of the destruction of the statue, but like president of Estonia said in his interview; “the free will and choice people now can act out is big enough as proof of freedom and no demolishing of a statue can add to that. There free democratic elections in Estonia today, there exist no murdering of journalists or poisonings of other people disagreeing to the government like in elsewhere”.

Well, here in Finland there also are democratic elections and freedom if speech and the Finnish parliament just got 84 women elected out of a total of 200 representatives, wonder if that will change anything?

Anyway, smoking is going to be prohibited in restaurants here in Finland from June 1st, with the risk of fines to the restaurant if they allow people to smoke on their premises.

Most of the restaurants in this country seem to be going smokeless, as almost no applications for the two year transition period have been handed in. Applications for the transition period have to be handed in to the municipality in good time, by latest May, and only 10 restaurants in Helsinki and 5 in Tampere have done this so far.

So now Finland is joining the other European countries gone smokeless in restaurants like Sweden, Ireland and Italy, to mention some and Germany will follow soon suit as well.

So watch where you are smoking when visiting Europe next time!