Lennart Meri Tallinn Airport
Photo: Erik Peinar
Several airports in the world are named after legendary statesmen to keep their memory alive and Tallinn Airport is now one of them: from March 29, Estonia’s most important aerial gateway is honoured to bear the name of Lennart Meri Tallinn Airport.
If you ask Estonians why it was necessary to name Tallinn Airport where so many of their travels start and end after Lennart Meri, president of the Republic of Estonia 1992-2001, the answer is obvious. Meri, the first president of the newly independent Estonia, has become a national legend whose character and heritage symbolizes the arrival of Estonia on the world map, statesmanship as well as national pride and realization.
Because of his extravagant character, president Meri was a never-ending subject of amusing stories. Examples of this are a cross he made on the globe of President Bush in the Oval Office to mark a good river for fishing in Kamchatka, or the idea to hold an impromptu post-visit press conference in the public toilet of the then Tallinn Airport to show its dismal condition… These stories featuring “our Lennu” together with various crowned and elected leaders around the millennium change are an inseparable part of our legendary president who was deeply respected by his nation.
Lennart Meri has always been beloved and appreciated for his versatility, courage and creative personality. He was widely known as a writer, filmmaker and a bright intellectual who remained a true artist with an acute eye even when being a diplomat. Ultima thule and the need for Estonia to invent its own “Nokia” that president Meri talked about in his books and speeches requires ongoing development and relentless pursuit of perfection, two activities that are standard practice for the new Lennart Meri Tallinn Airport.
For further reading on president Lennart Meri please visit http://www.riik.ee/lennartmeri/index.php?id=26215
