Is Estonia The Suburb Of Finland?
Or why else does it take us at least three hours to reach the closest airport that actually flies anywhere?
Tallinn Airport is wonderful!
It is only 10 minutes away from my home. Same goes for anyone else living in the city centre!
It takes less than 5 minutes to go through the airport security. A feat usually achievable by those that only fly out a plane or two per hour.
It is beautiful and welcoming. Almost like a home! The WiFi can sometimes be even faster than at home…
So I love going to the airport.!?
Yet feel cheated every time I do have to travel somewhere. Which is 2–4 times per month.
The reason for this is that there are no direct flights to anywhere!
Yes, there are altogether 39 destinations one could fly to, out of which 27 seem to be quite regular.
But most of them only act as a short-haul flight to a bigger terminal, such as Helsinki, Riga, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and the list goes on…
And I am okay with it!
I understand that I live on the edge of the world and need to take at least two flights to reach anywhere with capital and connections. Be it Australia, China, Dubai (AUE), India, Israel, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the United States etc.
People coming from these parts of the world do not understand it!
And this makes the matters much worse.
Estonians are built to suffer and get used to things quite easily. We will not let bad infrastructure stop us from achieving our goals.
But that is not how the rest of the world works…
If there are no direct flights, then they will ignore the region!
An American flying from Belarus to Riga to take a flight to St. Petersburg told me a few days ago: “I would have loved to visit Tallinn. But you had no direct flights from Belarus, so I had to go to Riga instead.”
And that is the answer we have recently heard from a bunch of speakers, potential partners and all other nice people. That it is just too hard to reach Estonia.
It is like the mystical land of El Dorado or Wakanda — people know it exists but they have never seen it with their own eye, as it is nowhere on the map to be found.
At least when looking at any airline map…
It is not like people would not want to help us get on the map.!?
Peter Vesterbacka wants to build the tunnel leading directly to Helsinki Airport — not ideal but still saving us two or more hours and making it easier to reach this sacred land for others…
Throughout the years there have even been a bunch of other international investors willing to invest into the infrastructure.
The Chinese would give us any sum to build a long enough runway so their investors and tourists could visit and bring more of their money here. Just ask!
The Arabs actually wanted to buy our airline to make it better and bigger but we decided to go with a safe (but worse) offer and sold it to LOT (Polish airline).
And most likely we could find a few other interested parties…
But no!
We need to preserve the land!
We cannot accept money outside of the EU!
We need to stay hidden from other cultures!
We need to maintain the status quo of being a factory with cheap labor for our neighbouring tribes!
…
Anyway, this sucks!
And we need to do whatever it takes to change it.
Accept any offer from the “rich” folks.
And bring ourselves on the map.
Or miss all the foreign investments and stay poor…
