thehostelwitness

Photos from Riga, Latvia

Riga, Latvia photoset

Riga Day 2

I take back what I had to say about Riga earlier - this is a city that needs a week, maybe more, to fully enjoy. Part of this realization I think came with the arrival of the sun which, while still cold, at least allowed me to enjoy walking through the city. One of the city's treasures are its collection of Art Noveau styled buildings, the largest in all of Europe, as Riga was spared most of the bombings during the war. Sphynx, angels, choirs, and other such figures adorn the buildings, giving the city neighborhoods a Gotham city like feel, but with vivd blues and greens.

I walked for hours, ducking into coffee shops during gusts and brief rains, which led to the discovery of probably the best coffee shop I've been in - "All Cappacino" (again with the themes). Prices in restaurants and coffee shops take a little getting used to. A latte can set you back about 2 lats ($4). An imported beer, 3 lats. But order a half liter of a baltic brew and it costs 1.20 lats. Less than $3 for a half liter of beer. Dinner here has run me anywhere from $6 lats to $13 lats (the Korean, of course). Still, compared to what I had been paying in New York, I'll take it. And the cheapest of all are liquors and cigarrettes, at $1.40 for a shot of whiskey and $1.60 for a pack of Marlboros. Its no wonder that the life expectancy here is only about 65 years of age.

When the weather grew worse, I made my way to the Latvian National Art Museum. I had been hesitant to go, as the museum doesn't house any famous foriegn artists. Its charter is only for Latvian art. Still, I have to say that the collection was impressive and there is something to be said for discovering new painters you had never head of before (which admittedly for me, would be quite a few, but hey, I'm trying). The two most popular Latvian painters seem to be Nicholas Roerich (though the Russians and Ukranians also seem to claim him, even though ironically, he painted Himilayan landscapes) and Edgars Iltners, who I'm confident that if he had lived in New York, his work would be commanding millions (and he would have subsequently died from a drug overdose). Believe it or not, theres not even a wiki entry on him as of this writing. There are wiki pages on flying spaghetti monsters and every single MTV veejay, but to date nothing on one of the most important Latvian painters in recent history. I think my Latvian friend needs to get cracking.

Today wraps up Riga Fashion Week - my invitation must have gotten lost in the mail - so I walked over to the building where they were holding the event. Two large suited men guarded the entrance, which had a red carpet peeking out the door. I say peeking because this was the shortest red carpet I have ever seen. It couldn't have been more than four feet long, long enough to wipe the rain off of your shoes, but certainly not long enough to feel special attending such a gala event. I sat aways back, interested to see who would be showing up to said event, but it must have been too early in the night as no one walked in at opening. Its not called "fashionably on-time". One interesting feature was from my vantage point, you could see the models staging room, where a sort of prep talk was underway, with a stern, matronly woman gave last minute instructions to a room filled with pretty models who were trying hard to look disinterested. I made up for their disinterest, at least until I started getting unfriendly glares from Hanzis and Franzis at the door.

For dinner, I went back to the Korean place. I know, I know - Riga is a city with 3 million people and a ton of restaurants, I should have tried something new. But my mind went back to a visit I had with Arija (aka my Latvian friend), whose mother gave me a sample of Latvian cuisine. It consisted of a pair of pickelled herrings on a slice of buttered rye bread. So when I considered dinner options, Latvian wasn't exactly #1 on the list. Not that my tastes are anything normal - it says a lot when one prefers spoiled cabbage over say, a steak.

At the restaurant, I found an English language Latvian paper and read with interest - the government is rife with corruption issues, they kept a 25% income tax to discourage consumer spending, inflation is at a rise, and in the years since joining the EU, Latvia loses almost 30,000 citizens to emigration a month. Still, I couldn't help thinking that this city wouldn't be the worst place to live. There's definately a bohemian feel about everything, tons of coffee shops and restaurants, its relatively cheap (rent runs about $200 US for a room), and they even tell self-deprecating jokes: There was a terrible mixup at a hospital on the Lithuanian-Latvian border and none of the mothers could figure out which newborns were theirs. One Lithuanian mother ran and grabbed the only black baby in the room and claimed it as hers. A nurse said, "But this one can't be yours!"
"Maybe," replied the mother, "but at least I know that its not Latvian!"

Anyway, that one kills in Riga.

Riga day 1

I woke to rain in Riga, only the second day in a month that I've had to dawn the raincoat - a very lucky October for me, as I've always seemed to keep one day ahead of foul weather. November though, is not up to an auspicious start. The rain wasn't a driving down pour or even an on again, off again affair - this was one of those misting rains that drives people in Seattle absolutely nuts. I loved it.

My guidebook - In Your Pocket Riga - had a list of suggested breakfast places, one of which was a buffet offered in the Albert Hotel about a mile north of my hostel. There's an interesting trend in Riga where hotels, stores, coffee shops, etc will decorate according to a famous name. So the Albert Hotel was dedicated to Albert Einstein, with each room purporting to have a famous quote of his on the bedroom wall (the theory of relativity being the science community's spanish fly). On my way, I passed the Dada cafe, which was decorated as if Dada himself did the work - words like "stupid" and "dumb" decorating the backs of chairs. I walked on, not getting the joke, feeling a bit well, dumb and stupid about the whole thing.

The best part about the Albert Hotel breakfast is that it is free to hotel guests. Which meant, it was free for me. I loaded up on eggs, sausage, and even smoked bacon, all the while waiting for a check that never came. I guess its just too hard to ask everyone eating there if they are a guest or not, but to be fair, I didn't exactly volunteer my status as a paying customer. Still, no one seemed to care. Its a safe bet to say that I've found my breakfast place while I'm in Riga.

With the rain coming down, there wasn't much in the way of photo taking but I did take some solace in the fact that at least I wasn't one of the Freedom Tower's honor guard. Every hour the guards rotate, in sharp green uniforms, with two dry soldiers take the place of the two wet ones, who (one would assume) promptly went for a warm bath or sauna. Like their more famous London bretheren, these guards are trained not to break character, so I could only imagined their curses as I grinned, finally taking pictures that I'll one day label, "Poor schmucks".

For the rest of the afternoon, I retreated to "Double Coffee", the Starbucks of the Baltics. The difference being though, that here they serve liquor and beer. With all of the alcohol available, you'd imagine you'd see drunks all the time, but that's not the case. I have a hard time believing the same could be said if you ordered a double tall extra hot vanilla latte with vodka back home. I spent a good two hours there, sitting by a window with "Kafka on the Shore" and listened to broken English all around me. Since Riga can be considered the cultural capital of the Baltics, where Eastern Europe meets West, English truly is the language of commerce. Almost everyone speaks English here.

Riga seems more Western than Eastern, with taller buildings than Stockholm and different faces everywhere you look. The air buzzes with business and for the first time I was reminded a bit of New York. Anyone wanting to explore Latvian culture would be better off spending a few days here before heading out to the country - thanks to the Russians, Germans, Swedish, Polish, and the Teutonic Order, only 57% of the country's population is actually Latvian. The number is less in Riga. Still, there are some of the Eastern idiosyncracies I've grown accustomed to. The freeways are backed up with brand new Mercedes rubbernecking next to farm tractors. Electric wires hang over the road with old trackless trolleys belching in their own highway lane. We have those same wires back home in Seattle, so its a bit startling to see the same feature in Latvia (and Lithuania) - I think it speaks volumes to Seattle's mass transportation system when it mirrors what the Soviets installed.

I stopped by the Riga Great Guild, where tonight the Latvian National Symphony performs and inquired about purchasing a ticket. "Am I dressed nice enough?" I asked the clerk.
"Oh, pshh, " she replied. "No worries." Then she took a closer look at me and added, "but perhaps you sit in the balcony."

No argument here, the cheap seats cost only 3 Lats - about 6 dollars. Being a huge fan of contemporary Finnish composers, I was thrilled to see Anssi Karttunen scheduled to play Kaija Saariaho's new Cello Concerto. The only symphonies I have ever been to were classical in nature, with tunes most of us could recognize in passing. This was something completely different - discordant, but familiar. Haunting with a sense of something bigger left behind. I loved it. Even more, I loved the young Latvian violinists, enough that I added "professional classical musician" to my list of pretty girls I'd like to date one day (Baiba Skrida, you will be mine.)

I ended the night sitting by myself in what very well may be the sole Korean restaurant in all of the Baltics. I was a tad bit dissapointed to see the restaurant had only one authentic Korean in it (an old Halmoni) and three Latvian waitresses, but this was quickly dismissed as I realized the old Korean woman was speaking fluent Latvian to the kitchen staff. Its bizarre...it would be like hearing my mother quoting Goethe, it doesn't go together. The meal was pleasant and it went far to quelling any sense of food homesickness I was feeling (one can only eat so many potatos.) I had one final laugh before ending the night - spicy Korean dishes were highlighted in the menu with what apparently is the Latvian word for hot: "ASS!".

As the waitress took my plate, I thanked her, "That food was ass!"