Estonia's government and the country’s people have been caught off guard by the arrival of refugees of different cultures, races and religions. | RAIGO PAJULA/AFP/Getty Images. The migrants that made this mouse roar Estonia grapples with political fallout from its own refugee crisis.

VAO, Estonia — Where is Mecca from here?

Initially, employees working at Estonia’s only asylum center didn’t know. Scanning the surrounding boreal horizon of pine trees, wheat fields, and wood-paneled cottages to point the way to Islam’s holiest site was not a skill they had ever presumed they would need.

Practising Muslims at the center were also baffled. Some were misinformed, and for a while were praying in the wrong direction.

"I don't know exactly how they found out, but they have found out ... finally!" said a relieved Anneli Vōso, a worker at the center.

That sort of cultural skill is in demand in Estonia. Although the country of 1.3 million is one of the EU’s smallest states and the sixth poorest, with a GDP per capita of €13,100, it is also seeing refugee applications rise.

The refugee center where Vōso teaches newcomers has just three full-time staff and was designed to hold 35 asylum applicants. But over the summer, the number of residents swelled to over 80. This year Estonia has received 136 applications in the first six months — almost as many as in the whole of last year, according to the Interior Ministry.

Since joining the EU in 2004, Tallinn's migration policy has focused on stalling its own depopulation.

More are coming, thanks to pressure from Brussels for all EU countries to pitch in and help with the migrant crisis in southern Europe.

After negotiations in Brussels over the summer to resettle 60,000 refugee claimants that Interior Minister Hanno Pevkur described as “emotional and painful,” Estonia agreed to take 150. And that has set off a political firestorm.

“We are not ready," said Kaja Kallas, one of Estonia's eight MEPs. "The problem is we haven’t been really dealing with this issue.”

Not like us

Since joining the EU in 2004, Tallinn's migration policy has focused on other urgent matters. Thousands of Estonians have relocated to western Europe in search of higher standards of living.

As it worries about depopulation, the government has also been trying to figure out how to integrate the 30 percent of Estonians who are Russian-speakers — 87,000 of whom are officially stateless, having never become Estonian citizens.

The government and the country’s people have been caught off guard by the arrival of refugees of different cultures, races and religions.

"I like to quote Plato," said Kallas, "who said that the role of the government is also to educate people, and this is something that has not been done, and you cannot do it over two weeks or even in two months."

That raises worries about how refugees relocated from the Mediterranean will be welcomed in Estonia when they start to arrive this fall.

At this year's Arvamus Festival — an outdoor event for Estonia's policy junkies to get their summer fix of debates from the comfort of picnic rugs, wicker chairs, and beanbags — the leaders of Estonia's main political parties were on stage, facing questions from a panel during the final event of the festival.

To liven things up for the audience, the leaders were given two cards as a way of answering — green for "Yes" and red for "No." When asked: "Is Estonia a tolerant country?" Prime Minister Taavi Rōivas raised the red card.

"I was hesitating, actually, with this one,” he told POLITICO after the debate. “We are very open to innovation, but we should also be more open to, for example, people who aren’t exactly like us.”

Rōivas, who at 35 is Europe's youngest prime minister, criticized European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's plan to apportion refugees by quotas: “It tried to be an order that comes from above, which is much worse than a decision taken by countries themselves."

“The dream of multiculturalism is over” — Jaak Madison, MP.

The Estonian prime minister said that taking 150 refugees was "adequate," but right-wing parties in the Riigikogu, Estonia's 101-seat parliament, are critical.

The Conservative People's Party (EKRE), which won its first seats in elections this March, has jumped on the migration issue, and has seen its support surge.

EKRE members say Estonia’s elites have focused too much on trying to impress the EU's older members rather than looking out for their country's own interests.

“It’s one step closer to the end of the European Union,” said Jaak Madison, 24, an EKRE MP who is the youngest member of the Riigikogu. “The dream of multiculturalism is over.”

Blue Awakening

The party has organized tours of the Estonian countryside aimed at attracting voters who feel alienated from the political process in the capital. Its new youth wing, the Blue Awakening, is growing as a result of the migrant crisis and has been a significant presence on these visits.

Silver Jogger, 20, is head of the Blue Awakening’s Tallinn branch. “We have two examples of what should never happen in Estonia,” he said. “Russia — and Sweden.”

“We're seeing some frightening quotes coming out of there,” he said, appalled at an article he read about a Swedish school banning Sweden's national flag, and reports of ongoing social tensions between refugees and Swedes.

"The immigrants don’t do anything bad” — Hanna-Mari, student.

Wary of EKRE’s rise, Margus Tsahkna, the social justice minister and leader of the mainstream right-wing Pro Patria and Res Publica Union, has proposed banning the burka, the face-covering Islamic veil, in public places, in an attempt to prevent his own party from losing ground.

All this may have seemed like distant politicking for those staying at the refugee center at Vao, where the challenge of learning Estonian, a Finno-Ugric language spoken by a little over one million people worldwide, is far more of a day-to-day concern. Except on July 4, when a thousand-strong group of leather-clad motor-bikers rode from Tallinn to Vao.

They were spurred on by reports of social instability in Vao caused by asylum seekers, and rumors that the next wave of refugees would also end up there.

They were confronted by police and found an almost empty center — authorities had insisted the refugees be taken out for day trips. Only a mother and her newborn child remained, along with an Albanian asylum seeker who insisted no one would be taking him out alive.

“I don’t know why they came. The immigrants don’t do anything bad,” said Hanna-Mari, a student who watched from a neighboring village as the bikers revved their engines and screeched through town.

Estonia's new foreign minister, Marina Kaljurand, said this sort of protest was not representative of wider public opinion.

“In each and every country, there are people who have very extreme views,” she told POLITICO. “Don’t pay attention to what they are saying, but pay attention to what is the official government position on refugees. Today we are responsible members of the EU, and we understand maybe more than others what solidarity means, and we are part of that solidarity.”