E-Stonia: My Virtual Summer with the ICDS

About the author: Maya Guzdar ’22 is an FSI Global Policy Intern with the International Centre for Defence and Security. She is currently an International Relations major at Stanford University.

One of the main reasons I chose to intern at Estonia’s International Center for Defense and Security (ICDS) was the chance to live there. Having spent the entirety of my International Relations career studying or living in Asia, I was ready to head West and push myself out of my comfort zone in a Baltic state.

Always the planner, I’d imagined in great detail out how I’d spend my summer in Estonia: listening to the fabled Laulupidu music festival, getting breakfast at seaside cafes, and taking the train into Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and even Russia on the weekends.

Luckily for me, it turns out that of all of the countries to intern for during a pandemic, Estonia is the best. Estonia is the world’s first digital society. With 95% of its citizens using online banking, 100% using online ID cards, and a whopping four unicorns for its population of 1.3 million. So when I first connected with my supervisor Tomas, he wasn’t phased by my ten minute struggle to connect to Skype (also an Estonian unicorn company). But the best part of my virtual-Estonia experience wasn’t the tech, (it wasn’t even the virtual reality tour of Tallinn I found online), it was the people I met from the ICDS.

When Tomas and I first met, he told me what he believed to be Estonia’s trick to beating out coronavirus: the social distance guideline of two meters is far too close for most Estonians’ liking.

Yet despite Tomas’s joking, I found the new cross-Atlantic ties forged to be some of the warmest I’ve had in an internship experience. Despite all odds, I found myself looking forward to the 7am meetings — cup of coffee in hand, emails still blurry on my screen, my discussions with my supervisors Ivo and Tomas transported me away from my own reality — my high school bedroom — and to the cobblestone streets of Tallinn.

No matter how busy the week ahead looked, how sleepy I was at 7am or how worn out they were at 5pm after a busy day of work, Tomas and Ivo always had a story to tell, perspective to grant, or question to answer. What do Estonians think of their country’s handling of the virus? What’s the EU’s take on the situation in Belarus? Black Lives Matter?

I spent last summer in Shanghai, China, and always credit my life-changing experience to my Shanghai apartment, meals out, and nights exploring the town. Yet these past eight weeks with the ICDS have challenged my prior assumptions.

Perhaps travel is more than the plane tickets and less-than-six-feet-away transportation. This summer has taught me that connection can be forged in good morning emails sent in the evening, in writing “defence” and not “defense” when writing a brief about 5G, or listening to Tomas’s story of his long drive to vacation in Lithuania.

These moments — no matter how small — have granted me the gift of travel: cross-cultural connection, a deeper understanding of European security policy, and a new understanding of the beautiful city of Tallinn. I’ll carry them with me for the next few months and even years, until the day when I can return (in person this time).