MS MIRIAM McIlfatrick Ksenofontov comes from Rasharkin, Co Armagh, and lectures at an institute in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. She is part of a 10 person delegation of Irish studies co ordinators from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria, which has been visiting Belfast and Dublin in the past week.
She says Estonians, as citizens of a small Baltic country which spent most of the past 50 years under the domination of its giant neighbour, the Soviet Union, have an instinctive sympathy with Ireland.
Young Estonians are particularly interested in Irish music and culture. A leading Estonian band, the Johansons, first visited Ireland in the mid 1980s, and poets and singers such as Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and Len Graham have taken part in Irish festivals there.
Ms Lauma Lapa, meanwhile, teaches at the University of Riga, the capital of neighbouring Latvia. Her first interest was in the Welsh language, and the similarities between Wales's and Latvia's linguistic, literary and musical traditions. She now plans to run courses on all the Celtic countries.
There is something of a spiritual revival going on in Latvia, she says, and her students are particularly interested in Celtic spirituality, in its pagan and Christian manifestations. Irish missionaries based in Germany were responsible for bringing Christianity to the Baltic republics, she explains.
Ms Rasa Karnuseviciute, who teaches Scandinavian languages at Vilnius University in Uthyania, has found the same interest in pre Christian Celtic myths, as well as a strong empathy with Ireland's theatrical tradition.
Nearly 1,000 miles to the south, Ms Ioana Mohor teaches British cultural studies in the central Romanian city of Galati, named after a Celtic tribe which once lived in the area. She says Romanians are intrigued that such a small country could have produced such a number of great writers - Sheridan, Swift, Wilde, Shaw, Joyce, Yeats, Beckett and now Seamus Heaney.
Her compatriot, Mr Adrian Radu, from Cluj University, points out that some of the leading Romanian poets - people such as Marin Sorescu, Denisa Comanescu and Ileana Malancioiu - had been translated into English by Irish poets and published in a book last year.
Other reasons why young Romanians were attracted to Ireland include a general interest in the problems of national and cultural identity, a curiosity about the Northern conflict, and, above all, the fame of bands and singers such as U2, the Cranberries and Sinead O'Connor.
The Bulgarian representative, Ms Filipina Filipova, who teaches at Sofia University, said Irish studies had been on the curriculum there for at least 10 years. Writers such as Joyce, Shaw and Beckett had been translated decades ago, and were well known to the Bulgarian reading and theatre going public. Her department will soon be introducing Bulgaria's first master's degree in Irish studies.
The group's trip to Ireland is the latest stage of an initiative begun by Mr John Fairleigh of the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen's University Belfast, and funded jointly by the British Council and the Department of Foreign Affairs.
A Queen's University introductory pack is the basis for Irish studies courses in the 10 universities and university level institutes represented on this week's delegation.