What is the command of Finnish like in Estonian?

I know Finnish and Estonian aren't that related, but is Finnish useful in Estonia? If you addressed an Estonian in Finnish, for example simple stuff like directions, would most be able to give you an answer, or would you probably have better luck with English?

Cheers.

You have a number of aspects to your question so I'll focus on the actual use of language by a foreigner in Estonia rather than the linguistic relationship between Estonian and Finnish.

For the highschool going and young adult generation (aged 15-30) you'd have better luck with English than with languages such as Finnish and Russian. Estonians can understand some basic Finnish because some go on shopping trips or on holidays to Finland and they watch sports on Finnish TV. Also those youth who work in the service sector in Tallinn deal with alot of Finns so they would have basic knowledge of the language. Still, for a young person best to use English with them as English is a compulsory language in school and English language shows are widely available on TV and of course the majority of the movies in the cinema are in English and you can hear English songs on the radio.

For the older generations, especially those 50+ Russian would work the best as these people lived under communism where knowledge of Russian was a must to communicate with the Russian-speaking migrant workers and when travelling in the rest of the USSR. As for knowledge of Finnish, the older generations would have a better knowledge of it than the younger generation as they used to watch alot of Finnish TV during the soviet occupation.

So to sum up, with young people, use English and use Russian and Finnish with older generations. That is of course if you don't speak Estonian. If you speak Estonian, even a little, then use that and people will be happy that you made the effort to learn and use their language.

I hope that answers your question.