Our first impression of the women in Riga: they like to wear elegant shoes – high heels, 7 centimetres and more. But not just the shoes: Elegance from topp to toe. Looking at the contrasting bumpy pavement in the streets we wondered how these women were able to move an inch further with those high heels How do these women manage to get through the day with those heels? The answers we got: No problem, high heels are wonderful!

The next day five women from Riga joined us for our bus trip to Tartu in Estland. The opening of the Hanseatic Days started at 10 p.m. with a wonderful fireworks display. Our first impression of women in Tartu: lower heeled shoes coincident with a better pavement. Even the women from Riga were adjusting their heels and most German women were wearing sports shoes (we do like to be "practical").

On the third day of the excursion we visited the biggest shoe company in Estland. 2/3 of the 350 employees are women - including the managing director and the CFO. The company was founded in 1945 and has a number of women in leading positions. It produces working shoes, hiking shoes and baby shoes (none of which have a high heel) for export, 90% of which go to Scandinavia and England. Wages are around 270 Euros per month on average for a 40 hour-week with 28 days vacation. They also get salary for four months break when having a baby. Since the government has provided the opportunity to stay at home for one year while receiving full pay, the birth rate has increased. The costs are taken from taxes.

The tour through the company ended in the sales department, where we were able to buy baby shoes. And our women started buying like mad. Suddenly everybody knew someone at home who was expecting a baby (in spite of the falling birth rate in Germany) and it felt like our summer sales. Maybe men are right after all?

At night the highlight of the excursion: a wonderful dinner with 50 women. Seven BPW women from Tartu and five BPW women joined in from Tallin, the capital of Estland, situated in the north, at the seaside. BPW Estland (with 200 members) had also invited the “Women of the Year”, an honour awarded every year. Again first impression of the women on this evening: The women of Tallin (two of them with elegant hats) were dressed as elegantly as the women from Riga. And one of the women from Estland whispered: "When we see a woman wearing flat heels we say: she must be from Finnland."

Whether the Finish women knew this joke could not be ascertained that night with communication between the nations just starting delicate development. At any rate, the two Finns from Tartu and the international past president of Finnland, Tuulikki Juusela, who had come for dinner, confirmed the theory.

Our dinner party soon turned into a really serious party as women in the Baltic states love singing and dancing. To the music of a live band two men asked BPW women for a dance and within a few minutes the floor was full with women dancing, laughing, joking and having a great time. 50 women from five countries were exchanging business cards and networking in six languages.
This getting together also had another important impact on the relationship between women from Estland and Lettland, who even communicated with each other in Russian, the language of the former occupying power, which both of them prefer not to use so often. Well, when important things like that happen - shoes are just not so important any more.