The environment

Saaremaa

Saaremaa is the largest island in Estonia. It lay's in the west Estonia. It is surrounded by the Baltic sea and by the Gulf of Riga. The capital of Saaremaa is Kuressaare. There are 36 366 inhabitants on Saaremaa, 15 170 inhabitants in Kuressaare.

I think there aren't any huge problems on Saaremaa. The youngsters, that mean us have a little problem. There isn't anything to do. Because of that a lot of teenagers smoke, drink and wonder around the city at night, just walk around and behave outrageously.

There is one more problem. We don't have universities or anything like that here. So that mean when we turn 19 and finish highschool we have do go to Tallinn or Tartu or some other place just to study. Whell you can go to a vocational school in Kuressaare. Oh, I forgot, there aren't many jobs here to and the salary isn't very high, but enough.

I think they should build a bridge that connect's Saaremaa with the mainland. That would make the transportation a little bit faster. The city should build places where teenagers could hang out or smth. But they should be under surveillance because it might turn out to be a place where some idiots could come to drink.

Despite all that Saaremaa is a wonderful place to have a vacation in the summer. It's is nice, clean and peaceful here. The people here are very nice. I would like to live on Saaremaa when I finish the university.

Group members: Rene, Mait, Martin, Jaan-Martin

Saaremaas population

There are about 35 000 inhabitants in Saaremaa, proportionally big part of them are older inhabitants, because young people tend to move away from Saaremaa to gain better studying and working possibilities (most of them to mainland, some of them also abroad).

Problems we face:
The main problem is the fact that there are not so many opportunities here - not so many university-colleges to attend or job-offers that offer good opportunities.
The local flights should have more destinations than only Tallinn, for example there could be also Tartu.
At these times we have a high unemployment percentage, the economy fall has closed many enterprises and holding down a job is not an option for everybody no more. It's hard to provide a solution to this problem as well as the economy is not jet back to its feet.

There could be more activities provided to Saaremaas youth, otherwise they will just hang in the shopping-malls having nothing to do.

The good things we appreciate about Saaremaa
We have a beautiful nature and a small and lovely city. There are many sights wort viewing and friendly people who hold together.

Our group: Age, Kristi, Enel, Laura

Living in Saaremaa - advantages and disadvantages

In 2009 Saaremaa has about 35 000 inhabitants.

The problems:
1) Local flights - now only a flight to Tallinn (our capital) is made daily, but not to the other cities of Estonia, for example there is a need after a flight to Tartu (next biggest city in Estonia, also a big university-city) - it takes 5-6 hours to drive there, even longer to take a bus, the local flight might be useful.
2) Ferry-connection is too slow - in summertime the ferry goes to mainland and back in every hour and it takes about 35 minutes (the route is 8 km).
3) Young people do not have many opportunities to do different activities - there are, of course different activity-groups and music-schools etc, but the opportunities compared to the capitals youth is somewhat different.
4) Smaller choice of stores and supermarkets - on many occasions you cannot find exactly the thing you are looking for in the local stores and many young people tend to buy their clothes or other stuff from mainland or use catalog-shopping for this reason.
Auriga shopping-center - the biggest in Saaremaa

How do we solve the problems?
1) More local flights - people in Saaremaa shouldn't have a disadvantage only because of the fact that they are living on an island and therefore have to depend on more matters to get to the different locations in Estonia compared to the mainland inhabitants, we should have more local flights, so it would take us less time to get where we need; there is actually a negotiation taking place at this moment on starting a flight between Kuressaare and Tartu, but they are only planning to use it on spring and summer.
2) Permanent connection to the mainland. Instead of waiting on the lines to take the ferry to mainland it would be better to take the bridge and not minding the time-table of the ferrys which often also means speeding tickets for the cars to get to the ferry on time etc.
Cars getting off the ferry

3) More activities for youth - there could be more different opportunities for us, for example a bigger cinema, which would actually look like cinema not the night-club which shows some films now and then in the daytime.
4) Bigger commercial opportunities - some bigger shopping malls with wider choice merchandise; of course here is the problem that big markets don't want to come here, because there are not so many inhabitants here and therefore the economic success is hard to be accomplished.

What do we like about living in Saaremaa?
- safe environment
- lot of greenery and nature
- many vacationing opportunities (SPAs, camp-houses, tourism-farms etc)
- beautiful sand-beaches
- many sightseeing sights - well preserved midage churches, Kuressaares fortress, Kaalis meteoric-crater, Pangas bank, Anglas windmils etc

Kuressaares fortress from the midages

Our group: Grete, Regine, Anett, Kerolin

Saaremaa

Population of Saaremaa is small. The number of people living here is about 35 000. People here stick together and help each-other. There aren't many problems on the island, but one of the biggest is the connection between Saaremaa and the mainland. But on the other hand - it is also an advantage, because thanks to that fact there isn't a lot of a crime on the island.

On this picture you can see the route of the ferry that connects mainland and the islands (blue line) and the bridge is the supposed location of the connection that is discussed in Estonia at the moment

People are calm and the traffic is slow. There are a lot of SPAs, where you can relax and forget all your problems.
We enjoy living in Saaremaa, because we have beautiful nature and nice people in here.

Group members: Riin, Kristi, Kristiina, Estella

History if our city and inhabitans