Riga - On Being in Transit

After packing and schlepping, after navigating the check-in bureaucracy and the security theater, I plant myself at the gate and bask in the liberation of being in transit.  All I have, all I need rely on, is with me, like a backpacker.  There’s a sense of being in a separate world, neither “here” nor “there” as I wrote on another trip.  A strange economy in this world, though: how do these shopping concourses, with their apparel, games and jewelry kiosks stay in business?  Are there really enough customers wanting this merchandise, so overpriced?  Do people really buy last-minute gifts here?  And here’s a store selling luggage—how many people buy luggage at an airport?  A baggage disaster would require a handy luggage kiosk, but that can’t be a steady source of income.

Transatlantic flight went as usual (thankfully).  At Helsinki airport passport control the official asks the usual questions, questions he knows the answers to because they’re in front in front of him on the computer monitor: Been to Riga before?  When are you leaving, do you have a ticket for your return flight?  Some new ones: What will I be doing in Riga?  Teaching.  Teaching what? Law.  To whom?  Students at university.  He probably has those answers, too, on the monitor.  Just testing my honesty.  Officialdom knows too much.

At the gate for the plane to Riga, I changed from jeans and shirt into better pants and sweater with scarf.  I practiced “Pleased to meet you,” in Latvian.  As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered.  More in next blog post.