Dear people of Paide, and dear winners of the Home Decoration Year!

I am very glad to be here. Actually I knew your town well even before I visited it for the first time. I have a good friend Ants Viidalepp. You can find his painting of Paide in your General Post Office, to the right, just opposite the front door. On this oblong picture, he has painted all these nice, lovely and funny stories that he used to tell me on our journeys together: stories about Paide, about his father, who was not only the Head of the Post Office, but also the head of the Paide voluntary fire brigade, about his scout work in the peat bog, about his school days, his first loves. From the stories of Ants Viidalepp, I got quite a clear image of Paide. And when, returning from my long expeditions, I first visited Paide, I must admit that the soviet Paide I saw was not really a match to the beautiful, colourful and joyful of the stories of the artist Ants Viidalepp, the colourful Paide, the Paide of merry fairs, the Paide where people were helpful, where indeed the inspector of all Estonian schools came to inspect Ants Viidalepp's school and got in trouble due to my unintentionally over-zealous friend.

The colours and landscapes of the Estonia of the Soviet times and the Estonia of the memories of elderly generations drifted farther and farther apart. All those who are my age or older know this. And therefore it seemed so natural for me one day to think that we should take the lead and tell especially the young people how beautiful this country used to be, how clean it used to be, how friendly, how honest, how colourful, and how after even the hardest working day there was no place in Estonia, where there was no game of rahvastepall (an Estonian ball game) or volleyball in progress. These two things went hand in hand. This beautiful human cleanliness, cleanliness of the soul, and cleanliness of the state - they went hand in hand.

At the time when I first reached Estonia by land, the weather was as hot as today. We knocked on the roadmaster's door to get some cold water. Instead, milk was poured to our mugs. When we said we had only asked for cold water from the well, the mistress of the house got upset. Of course, we drank the milk. These are the elder generations' memories from Estonia, the memories that we should hand down to the young who do not know them. The youth has something else, something the older generation lacks. They have been abroad and seen the order, cleanliness and helpfulness that they have not experienced in Estonia. And yet we have had all this - as well as many other important things. To bring together the old yearnings and the new opportunities - this is the task of home decoration. This is why I initiated the home decoration movement. This is not just the longing for brightly coloured houses. This is not mere vanity. The yearning that compelled me to start again with the home decoration work was the yearning for the real Estonia, the Estonia that lives in our hearts, in our hopes for the future, and in our midst. Even today, it lives in our midst.

Today I have flown two times over Estonia, in two different directions. We started our flight in the morning from Paslepa, and flew to Valga, mostly over bogs and forests. And I saw two metalled roads, two villages, and on the roadsides so much garbage, scrap iron and waste, so much of it that there should really have been no room for it in such a small country as Estonia. Because Estonia is so small that we could wander across her on foot.

In other words, the small state of Estonia is also our garden. It is the garden surrounding our home. And as we all are capable of keeping our gardens clean, I wished that this big cleaning wave would sweep over the picket fences and clean up every nook and cranny, from border to border.

At first, as you may remember, the media did not take the idea of home decoration all too seriously. And therefore I am twice as grateful that the people did. You took it seriously.

One human hand can not reach every nook and cranny. A million hands can work miracles.

And in the name of this miracle, I wish more power to your elbow! Let the motto of the next home decoration year be: "Let us scrub Estonia clean with a brush!" And I thank you with all my heart!

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