The West Coast Estonian Days are beckoning again this year. It is with pleasure that I invite you to the 28th West Coast Estonian Days to be held in Los Angeles this summer. The festival will take place from August 9 through 12, 2007. It is not too early to plan your summer’s vacation and we sure hope that your destination will be our four day festival in Los Angeles, California. Come one, come all. Meet old friends and make new ones. The presentations at the festival will be bi-lingual for all to enjoy.
The event will be held at the magnificent Millennium Biltmore Hotel, located in downtown Los Angeles. Special event room rate of $149 for single and double occupancy will be offered. Children can be accommodated on rollaway beds.
We have worked hard to prepare a content filled, interesting program for the festival. The program, in part, is geared to showcase Estonian arts and culture. This has always been one of the purposes why the festivals are held: we, Estonian Americans / Canadians, do not want to forget our cultural heritage.
But there is more. There will be a two part, two day seminar on recent Estonian history, encompassing the years 1940 to 1991, a tragic period in the country’s history that has affected the lives of nearly all Estonians. We will have a lecture by a brilliant mind on European genetics and linguistics. It may answer the age old question of where did the Estonians and their language originate from. Is the origin in the east or in the west? Come and find out. The Alberta Estonian Heritage Society will have a multi-media presentation on Estonian pioneers and their descendants in the heartland of Canada. Here I would like to interject an invitation to all Estonian pioneer descendants, wherever they may be, to join the festival. There will be a festival ball and a picnic with fun and games. For the sports minded, there will be a golf tournament and a morning 5K jog (maybe two). For the insomniacs, you can idle the time away in the late-night ‘secret’ festival pub. These are only some of the highlights of the four day program.
Come and enjoy beautiful Southern California with its pleasant sun-filled climate, its sandy beaches, nearby mountains and deserts. Let’s not forget the world class city of Los Angeles itself, worthy many a visit here. But please, let’s stay with the festival while it lasts. I will venture to say that you will not regret it.
Until we meet at the XXVIII West Coast Estonian Days in Los Angeles,
JÜRI TINT,
LEP2007 President
(Visit their website for more info in both Estonian and English, www.lep2007.com) 