Going to the Place with Two N’s
RIGA – An excellent information service is advertised in every phone booth of a Latvian phone giant Latelekom. The information service is supposed to answer any question you may have. You can dial 1188 on your phone and for 0.25 lats a pleasant voice will answer any questions you can come up with.
Don’t know the shortest route to an Internet cafe? They will.
Argue with your friend about the age of Latvia’s new president? They will help you.
Now the service is expanding. A service in Latvia will be able to answer questions about our other two Baltic neighbors. Lithuania and Estonia. In ads, it’s impossible to avoid stereotypes when talking about our neighbors. For Lithuania, a creative advertising agent invented a basketball, featured under the words “You want to know what knows a Lithuanian?”
Estonia’s case is a bit different. Sorry Justin.
Under the words, “You want to know what knows an Estonian?’, there’s a picture of snail, clearly imply the slow nature of Estonians in general. In the Latvian language, the word “igaunis” or Estonian, can also describe someone who’s slow.
Tomorrow, I’m leaving on a slow bus for Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, to speak to some slow folks over there and to watch what will happen with the gay pride parade this year.
Have a great weekend.
August 14th, 2007 at 11.31
I wonder what Estonia would do for its neighbors. I can imagine that Finland would be represented by a [drunk, overweight] reindeer. But for Latvia? Hmm. Probably ice cream, because the only Latvian word most Estonians know is Saldejums.
August 15th, 2007 at 10.02
Nah, it is a well known fact in Estonia that ALL latvians have 6 toes — “kuuevarbalised”
August 15th, 2007 at 11.20
Honestly the first thing that comes to mind is ‘loll nagu lätlane’ — but how exactly do you take a picture of that?