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8. Februar 2008

About the impossibility of having a Pizza at Riga Airport

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Imagine you're at Riga's airport RIX and you're hungry. You have two hours to go before lift-off (a welcome respite from three days of non-stop partying at the zanox company event Aspen 2008 in Riga). Of course you would try to find a nice place to sit down and eat something. This is where the story unfolds ...

Going through security straight after checking in was the first bad idea. It was already too late when I realised that they were far more eating facilities outside in the public zone than in the passenger zone. Once inside, I was mildly shocked to find that they are only two little caf�s with virtually no food apart from cheese toast and cookies that you had to dip in your coffee because otherwise they would crumble to dust between your fingers.

While walking around crestfallen I noticed a declining ramp with two big sign-posts for "Lulu Pizza" fast food restaurant. The first remarkable thing was that "fast food" still seems to be a quality in Latvia that's worth pointing out on an advertisement. The second thing of course was the fact that they had Pizza, probably even hot and greasy.

Alright, down I went to check out this Pizza restaurant at Riga airport. Having descended to the platform below, I stood before a check-in gate and had a dry Latvian beauty with dark hair and a military uniform stare at me from behind a customs counter. I looked around uneasily, but there was nothing else down here.

I went back upstairs to my colleagues to report that there was nothing to report. We asked around in the nearby perfume stores, but the counter-women either did not speak English (which is remarkable for an international airport) or were reluctant to share any knowledge about the mistery Pizza restaurant with us (which is remarkable for someone who supposedly works in the service industry). The waitress at one of the cafes was really nice and explained to us in very good English that she actually had been to the Pizza restaurant just a couple of days ago and that she had no explanation why we couldn't find it.

Having watched a plenitude of X-files episodes, I went back to the ramp to check out the scene of action again. This time I asked the customs woman - vey politely of course - if she had any idea about the whereabouts of the Pizza restaurant down here. She looked at me and pointed with her finger behind her, through the sealed doors of the gate area.

No mistery involved - it turned out that the restaurant was behind the gate and that only people who fly to Moscow at that very gate have the chance to visit the Pizza restaurant at Riga airport. No more questions - we sat down in one of the cafes, had a cheese toast that consisted of exactly these two indgredients - cheese and toast - knowing that the next pizza for us was 1,000 kilometres away, in Berlin.