Coca-Cola instead of red star
International labels change the cityscapes of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
International labels are changing the cityscapes of Estonia, Latvia and LithuaniaBy Werner CatrinaOn the edge of Tallinn's Old Town, three streetcars wait in front of a construction site. All are bright red and decorated with the McDonald's logo. Where the red of the Soviet flag once dominated, the aggressive house colors of Western consumer goods now rule. Instead of hollow communist slogans on the house walls, Avis now proclaims "We try harder.
The Baltic states, Estonia (45000 square kilometers; 1.5 million inhabitants), Latvia (65000; 2.5 million) and Lithuania (65000; 3.7 million), look back on an extremely complex and always painful history. German, Danish, Polish and Swedish influences shaped the metropolises of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius for centuries. And time and again, Russia invaded the three countries, mainly because of their access to the ice-free ports on the Baltic Sea.
After a brief period of autonomy, the Red Army occupied the three states in 1940, then Hitler's Wehrmacht invaded. After the end of the Second World War, the Iron Curtain came down for almost fifty years, cutting off the Baltic states from the West.
"Divide and rule" was the Soviet motto; no wonder, then, that the Russian planned economy led to lopsided developments in industry. Latvia, for example, supplied almost the entire Soviet Union with light bulbs. The country also became one of the most important manufacturers of military communications technology and supplied almost the entire USSR with refrigeration units. Much had to be imported into the Baltic regions because of the unilaterally distributed production; a deliberate dependence on the colonial power.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were completely dependent on Russia for their energy supply in particular. Yet despite these undesirable developments, the three countries were at the top of the prosperity pyramid of the entire USSR; compared to neighboring Finland, however, they were far behind.
Cities that still have
Franz Kafka's Prague remember
The road from the red star to the widespread presence of Coca-Cola was long and marked by frustration and suffering. The liberation process began with Mikhail Gorbachev, who was given an expectant reception by 300,000 people in Vilnius in 1990.
The Baltic states, with their Hanseatic cities by the sea that have been dominated by trade for centuries, have always felt that they belong to the West, which is probably why the Western consumer economy so quickly put its varnish over the population centers. The Coca-Cola red is much more widespread today than the hammer and sickle on a red background was during the Soviet terror.
For visitors from Central Europe, the three metropolises may not exactly be shoppers' paradises, but it's still amazing what you can buy here, from Gillette to Black & Decker to Benetton. Local products, on the other hand, enjoy a lower status.
The cities, still in ruins in the 1980s and reminiscent of Kafka's Prague, have spruced themselves up. In the shadow of Vilnius' 33 Gothic and Baroque churches, Hugo Boss and IBM are flying the flag, as are Renault and Nescafé.
At Doma laukums in Riga, smart young businessmen withdraw lats, the Latvian currency with twice the value of the dollar (a beer costs 0.40 lats), from the ATM. The gross national product per inhabitant and year is, however, considerably less than 3,000 dollars in Lithuania, and somewhat higher in Estonia.
Wealth seems to be anything but evenly distributed in the three newborn states, as evidenced by the numerous Volvos and Mercedes in the cities. Privatization after the end of Soviet rule has produced losers and winners, as elsewhere in the sunken Eastern Bloc.
In Riga's bars, called "Amsterdama" or "Jautras Masas," tourists mingle with locals, Western and Russian businessmen of every stripe; prostitution is unmistakable in styled as well as dim establishments.
Riga has something of a gold-mining town, where some shady characters hang around alongside a hard-working majority. Although the Latvian metropolis is the most expensive city in the Baltic States, average prices here are still quite a bit lower than in Central Europe. For people who earn the equivalent of a few hundred francs a month, the brand-name products remain a mirage - they are out of reach.
The three states are still an insider tip for tourists
Finnair's advertising in the travel agency near the "Riga" hotel shows Helsinki as a star with beams in all directions, including Zurich, Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius. The hub in the Finnish capital is the fastest and most convenient way to travel from Central Europe to the Baltic States. All three countries are a real insider tip and are about to be discovered by tourists. Soon, the crowds of Japanese, Germans or Swiss on Tallinn's Town Hall Square could be as big as on the Charles Bridge in Prague.
Cell phones are ringing on every corner in the city centers. Young, self-confident people promenade over the cobblestones in the old towns of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius as if it were a catwalk in Paris.
But in the streets on the outskirts of the city, where the international corporate labels are thinning out, it suddenly becomes shabby, one feels transported to another world. Desolate prefabricated buildings from a time that really existed in a different form rise up into the sky, run-down houses, sallow faces in the streets and, time and again, begging old people, the losers of the upheaval.
In the countryside, time seems to have turned far back. Old houses, some of them covered with straw, and horse-drawn carriages dominate the landscape. Here and there, a rusting combine harvester from the collective farming era still makes its rounds.
The sparse traffic on the few highways and major interurban roads is also striking. This shows that the picture in the cities is deceptive and that full motorization is still a long way off.
"I hope my daughter doesn't marry a farmer," our Latvian guide Maja Strode declares, putting a deep sigh behind the statement, because "if you want to earn money, you go to the city."
The main thing for the Balts remains freedom
Young people move about confidently; what older people have suffered, some know only from hearsay. The young woman at the reception of the City Park Hotel in Vilnius drives to work in her own car; the Renault-Occasion cost 6000 dollars, she tells us frankly, probably two years' wages. How she does it, with the price of gasoline the equivalent of a little more than one franc per liter, remains her secret. "We are free," she says, "and we are happy!"
APG in Eastern Europe
The Baltic states, Estonia (45000 square kilometers; 1.5 million inhabitants), Latvia (65000; 2.5 million) and Lithuania (65000; 3.7 million), look back on an extremely complex and always painful history. German, Danish, Polish and Swedish influences shaped the metropolises of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius for centuries. And time and again, Russia invaded the three countries, mainly because of their access to the ice-free ports on the Baltic Sea.
After a brief period of autonomy, the Red Army occupied the three states in 1940, then Hitler's Wehrmacht invaded. After the end of the Second World War, the Iron Curtain came down for almost fifty years, cutting off the Baltic states from the West.
"Divide and rule" was the Soviet motto; no wonder, then, that the Russian planned economy led to lopsided developments in industry. Latvia, for example, supplied almost the entire Soviet Union with light bulbs. The country also became one of the most important manufacturers of military communications technology and supplied almost the entire USSR with refrigeration units. Much had to be imported into the Baltic regions because of the unilaterally distributed production; a deliberate dependence on the colonial power.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were completely dependent on Russia for their energy supply in particular. Yet despite these undesirable developments, the three countries were at the top of the prosperity pyramid of the entire USSR; compared to neighboring Finland, however, they were far behind.
Cities that still have
Franz Kafka's Prague remember
The road from the red star to the widespread presence of Coca-Cola was long and marked by frustration and suffering. The liberation process began with Mikhail Gorbachev, who was given an expectant reception by 300,000 people in Vilnius in 1990.
The Baltic states, with their Hanseatic cities by the sea that have been dominated by trade for centuries, have always felt that they belong to the West, which is probably why the Western consumer economy so quickly put its varnish over the population centers. The Coca-Cola red is much more widespread today than the hammer and sickle on a red background was during the Soviet terror.
For visitors from Central Europe, the three metropolises may not exactly be shoppers' paradises, but it's still amazing what you can buy here, from Gillette to Black & Decker to Benetton. Local products, on the other hand, enjoy a lower status.
The cities, still in ruins in the 1980s and reminiscent of Kafka's Prague, have spruced themselves up. In the shadow of Vilnius' 33 Gothic and Baroque churches, Hugo Boss and IBM are flying the flag, as are Renault and Nescafé.
At Doma laukums in Riga, smart young businessmen withdraw lats, the Latvian currency with twice the value of the dollar (a beer costs 0.40 lats), from the ATM. The gross national product per inhabitant and year is, however, considerably less than 3,000 dollars in Lithuania, and somewhat higher in Estonia.
Wealth seems to be anything but evenly distributed in the three newborn states, as evidenced by the numerous Volvos and Mercedes in the cities. Privatization after the end of Soviet rule has produced losers and winners, as elsewhere in the sunken Eastern Bloc.
In Riga's bars, called "Amsterdama" or "Jautras Masas," tourists mingle with locals, Western and Russian businessmen of every stripe; prostitution is unmistakable in styled as well as dim establishments.
Riga has something of a gold-mining town, where some shady characters hang around alongside a hard-working majority. Although the Latvian metropolis is the most expensive city in the Baltic States, average prices here are still quite a bit lower than in Central Europe. For people who earn the equivalent of a few hundred francs a month, the brand-name products remain a mirage - they are out of reach.
The three states are still an insider tip for tourists
Finnair's advertising in the travel agency near the "Riga" hotel shows Helsinki as a star with beams in all directions, including Zurich, Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius. The hub in the Finnish capital is the fastest and most convenient way to travel from Central Europe to the Baltic States. All three countries are a real insider tip and are about to be discovered by tourists. Soon, the crowds of Japanese, Germans or Swiss on Tallinn's Town Hall Square could be as big as on the Charles Bridge in Prague.
Cell phones are ringing on every corner in the city centers. Young, self-confident people promenade over the cobblestones in the old towns of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius as if it were a catwalk in Paris.
But in the streets on the outskirts of the city, where the international corporate labels are thinning out, it suddenly becomes shabby, one feels transported to another world. Desolate prefabricated buildings from a time that really existed in a different form rise up into the sky, run-down houses, sallow faces in the streets and, time and again, begging old people, the losers of the upheaval.
In the countryside, time seems to have turned far back. Old houses, some of them covered with straw, and horse-drawn carriages dominate the landscape. Here and there, a rusting combine harvester from the collective farming era still makes its rounds.
The sparse traffic on the few highways and major interurban roads is also striking. This shows that the picture in the cities is deceptive and that full motorization is still a long way off.
"I hope my daughter doesn't marry a farmer," our Latvian guide Maja Strode declares, putting a deep sigh behind the statement, because "if you want to earn money, you go to the city."
The main thing for the Balts remains freedom
Young people move about confidently; what older people have suffered, some know only from hearsay. The young woman at the reception of the City Park Hotel in Vilnius drives to work in her own car; the Renault-Occasion cost 6000 dollars, she tells us frankly, probably two years' wages. How she does it, with the price of gasoline the equivalent of a little more than one franc per liter, remains her secret. "We are free," she says, "and we are happy!"
APG in Eastern Europe
Europlakat specializes in billposting in the Eastern European economic area. Six years ago, the Swiss company APG acquired a stake in Vienna-based Europlakat International, which was owned by the Austrian Gewista. As Christian Kauter of APG explains, Europlakat is mainly active in Croatia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and the former Yugoslavia; but not yet in the Baltic states. With annual sales of around 57 million Swiss francs, profits are not yet high, but Kauter says that this is a market of the future with annual growth rates of around twenty percent. The Bosnian metropolis of Sarajevo, for example, is experiencing a considerable economic upswing with foreign investment, which is greatly increasing the need for advertising. Posters of Western corporations such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's or Nokia are displayed as well as advertisements for local products. In cooperation with the authorities, Europlakat coordinates the display of posters in the cities, paying particular attention to historical sites. Kauter describes house walls painted with obtrusive advertising in old Eastern European cities as "sins of the past," and Europlakat strives to ensure that the advertising fits in well in the city centers.
