Janek Mäggi: The Latvian Is a Genius! Better to Fly AirBaltic to Tenerife Than Build Rail Baltica to Ikla

Why Isn’t the Eagle Estonian? Because the Latvian Is a Genius!

I am sitting on the banks of the Daugava in Riga and thinking just how smart, capable and exemplary these Latvians are! Enough to make you jealous! I breathe in the Latvian air – frighteningly clean and crystal clear, enough to make any Estonian instantly nervous: they cannot be bothered to build railways, but they fly wherever they please!

The Estonian sulking at home simply cannot comprehend the masterminds we have to live next to. They have golden brains! Why build a road that, at best, takes you to the Estonian or Lithuanian border – essentially nowhere – when instead you can pour millions into something genuinely pleasant and efficient: flying to every possible corner of the world where life is better than life itself!

Naturally, every Estonian politician with even a shred of self-respect or respect for their nation crows that Estonia wants no part of the Latvians’ miserable little airline, and only a madman would say otherwise!

We peasants are poor; we cannot afford such a fleet of aircraft or such an oil-guzzling monster! The extravagance of Latvia’s newly risen gentry is beyond our means! We will not fall into that net, we will not get stuck on that flypaper! And yet that is exactly the net we are sitting in – our choice is either to fly to Riga or walk there. To get any farther, you practically need Latvian citizenship. This is where the backwardness of our rulers has brought us!

What little money Estonians have is spent gathering stones for the Tallinn–Ikla railway embankment, draining bogs for the embankment and then flooding them all over again. The Estonian has both feet firmly on the ground – when the railway is finally completed in one last burst of effort, perhaps we can run horse-drawn trams on it. The stretch of land from Tallinn to Ikla is not too long, and then we will not need oil, which is always too expensive anyway, especially when bombs start flying in Iran again. We have horses, and we will find some trams too!

The truth is black and white: only a fool wastes time helping the neighbours! How much nicer it is to fly directly to Paris or Dubai, Baku or Yerevan, Milan or Tenerife, instead of rattling along to Ikla. Only a truly stupid person chooses Ikla – and that person is an Estonian!

Strategically, the Latvians have even surpassed the Lithuanians, the tiger tamers of the Baltic states. They have occupied the entire Baltic airspace and all the flight corridors and declared all Baltic Air their own. The price is high, but it is worth every cent!

You need a truly insane amount of cunning to pull off this kind of outrageous stunt. The Estonian dreams of being reborn as a Scandinavian, even though no Scandinavian actually wants the Estonian among them. Still just a manual labourer or someone undercutting wages, not a partner.

The Latvian, meanwhile, has crowned itself, through AirBaltic alone, the heart of the Baltics, the undisputed seat of the Baltic king’s throne. Riga is the only city in the Baltic states; all the rest are villages or small towns!

The exhausted and drink-loving Estonian leaves his old nag of a car to dry out for a week at Riga Airport while he nurses his liver in Turkey or on the islands of the Atlantic. On returning, he orders a Bolt from Tallinn with two drivers: one to bring home the travel-weary man and the other his wilted limousine. Riga is indispensable!

Cursing the Latvians because they do not like railways is downright wicked. Latvian life is so beautiful that burdening it with a railway – one that in the foreseeable future is unlikely to carry either people or goods, because who would want to waste their life and time playing trains, while the losses are greater than the combined budgets of the Baltic states – is simply impossible. The Latvian drives over everyone, especially the self-admiring Estonian. He will not do it by train, of course, but by plane.

The Latvian flies so high that the earthbound Estonian can never reach him – the eagle and the skylark fly in different skies. The eagle has never been Estonian.