Expensive (25% inflation), people aren't nice here - it's not about foreigners, it's the Estonian society. People just don't really like to hang together, or make friends. If you're a bit different, you'll get "the stare".
The country is divided between Russians and Estonians, and foreigners. Estonian politics revolve around picking on Russians. It's sometimes a bit comical: Estonian schools don't have enough teachers for Estonian speakers, because of lack of planning and funding, and now they want to ban russophone schools. Russophones are forced to "learn the language" (one of the most complex in the world) while being soft-excluded from the society. Anyway, Estonians don't really enjoy speaking with less-than-fluent Estonian speakers and will switch to english or try to make humiliating corrections, so picking the language is quite hard here.
People won't hold the door if you have a kid in the arms, doctors won't be nice to you, there's absolutely no culture of service. You have systematically to send emails, calls, in-person visits to get things done, or get paid. It's not me being nice, every local will tell you the same thing we he stops pumping the "Estonia is nordic" meme (it's not, it's a post soviet society with 0 public services).
Advice: don't go to Estonia. It's no wonder one fifth of the population already left.
There is nothing about banning Russian language schools. It's about shifting state funding from Russian language to Estonian language. Privately funded Russian schools can keep operating. It's also not out of the blue, this has been talked about for over 30 years now. The latest developments are also still just more talk, no actual action has happened.
As for the culture of coldness, that is true. That also means though that if someone is nice to you, it's genuine. I personally much prefer this truthfulness to the USA style of fake niceness.
The State currently fund the vast majority of schools, among which many are russian-speaking. Forcing those schools to switch to Estonian, without having enough teachers to do it, is going to create a lot of problems. The solution found was to degrade the teacher's level, by authorizing anyone with a university diploma to teach.
The country is divided between Russians and Estonians, and foreigners. Estonian politics revolve around picking on Russians. It's sometimes a bit comical: Estonian schools don't have enough teachers for Estonian speakers, because of lack of planning and funding, and now they want to ban russophone schools. Russophones are forced to "learn the language" (one of the most complex in the world) while being soft-excluded from the society. Anyway, Estonians don't really enjoy speaking with less-than-fluent Estonian speakers and will switch to english or try to make humiliating corrections, so picking the language is quite hard here.
People won't hold the door if you have a kid in the arms, doctors won't be nice to you, there's absolutely no culture of service. You have systematically to send emails, calls, in-person visits to get things done, or get paid. It's not me being nice, every local will tell you the same thing we he stops pumping the "Estonia is nordic" meme (it's not, it's a post soviet society with 0 public services).
Advice: don't go to Estonia. It's no wonder one fifth of the population already left.