Riga Interlude

This is a very non-traditional post. Neither of our two primary subjects appear in it.

At all.

(There is, however, a cameo appearance by their pumpkins.)

It is concerned only with my trip to Riga last weekend. If you’re not interested in Riga, or what can be seen of it by a haphazard kind of moron tourist in less than 48 hours, you are under no obligation to browse this post. I’ll resume the regular blogging of the girls’ lives some time between now and Maddie’s ninth birthday.

Future Molli and Maddie will hopefully pardon my indulgence.

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First of all, I’m once again grateful to Life360, which allowed Trine and me to stalk each other from opposite sides of the Baltic. It also allowed Trine to very helpfully send me an SMS pointing out that my battery was down to 1% and should probably be recharged.

I was excited to visit Riga on this visit for no particular reason. My traveling companions and I had chosen it only because it was cheap and close. (Round-trip airfare and two nights in my own hotel room in the city center cost just about $200. And flight time is just about 75 minutes.)

My traveling companions were supposed to have been Mads Wilson (long-time friend and business associate), Bartek Andre (long-time business associate), and Søren Buhl (one-time business associate). It sounds very businessy, but we’re just a bunch of guys who have always enjoyed one another’s company, have had a good time together at various professional engagements, and all felt like we’d enjoy a “boy’s night out” kind of weekend.

Unfortunately Bartek was unable to join us due to a wife and two children being dropped by the flu. (He tried anyway, but his flight to Copenhagen from Århus was canceled and since he couldn’t get another flight until Saturday morning, his wife rather strongly suggested he simply stay home and tend to his family.)

Copenhagen isn’t difficult to say goodbye to at this time of year.

But Riga wasn’t especially welcoming.

We walked half an hour from our hotel (the Ibis City Centre which I can very heartily recommend) to the restaurant we had chosen online, only to find it was booked full. They recommended another nearby restaurant, Vest, where I took the only picture of the trip to feature Søren, Mads, and myself.

We were just on our first drink of the evening, but we were feeling very merry.

Everything was so cheap in Riga that we were able to treat ourselves like royalty. Here, for example, we could order a one-pound rib-eye steak:

And (eventually) two of the “grill platters…”

…and a bottle of wine, and a couple of cocktails, all for about what it would cost for Trine and me to have the buffet and a draft beer each at the local Chinese restaurant in Værløse.

The food and service and atmosphere were great, so big thumbs up and hearty recommendation for Vest:

Wandering back toward our hotel, a scruffy little bar caught our eye. It seemed to occupy several floors of a decrepit building that was poorly (if at all) maintained, and covered in graffiti. This despite the fact that the neighborhood we were in seemed kind of upscale. We paid the 1 euro cover charge and went in. I don’t know which of us noticed they had absinthe on the drink menu, or which of us suggested it would accompany the local brews very nicely, but here’s an unsolicited pro-tip: you will never drink a second, third, or fourth absinthe if you don’t drink the first, so if you can avoid that one you’ll be all set.

In any case, we only had three beer-and-absinthe boilermakers (for the rest of my life I’ll think of that as the “Latvian Boilermaker”) at that strange bar, then strolled back toward our hotel.

At this point we thought it would be a good idea to have one last night cap, so we went into the stupid little casino across the street from the hotel. I told the bartender we’d been enjoying absinthe along with our beers, so we’d like to have some, but I told him we really didn’t know very much about how to drink it and it seemed kind of crude just doing it as a shot. Could he prepare it for us the way he and his friends would drink it?

Yes, he agreed, a very good idea, we were going to love it!

He returned with three of the same square shotglasses we’d been served with at the cultural center (yes, more on that in a moment), and three orange slices with cinnamon sprinkled on them.

Long story short: the proper Latvian way to drink absinthe is like the proper frat house way of drinking tequila, except instead of lemon and salt you do it with orange and cinnamon.

Again, remember: if you don’t take the first absinthe, you’ll be at no risk of drinking this fourth one.

As we finished off our beers, we were joined by a wandering Russian who spoke no English, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, French, or German, meaning we had no way of communicating with him at all. He attached himself to our little group anyway, and followed us so doggedly that when we returned to our hotel I actually had to ask the front desk to detain him to prevent his following us up to our rooms.

That’s Ivan above, framed by the doors of the “Casino Olympic.” (This was a chain all over Riga: they’re basically little bars with a few rows of slot machines.)

Thanks to the absinthe we had a leisurely start to our Saturday, and didn’t wander far afield of the hotel until about noon.

Central Riga looked a lot like central Copenhagen (or Stockholm, or Prague).

Tightly wound cobblestone streets would suddenly open into vast squares fronted by ancient churches.

And, as in Faro, even some of the nicest areas featured minor ruins.

I should mention that over breakfast we had looked around online for what sorts of things we ought to be checking out while in Riga. It was then that we discovered that “scruffy little bar” we’d stumbled across the night before was the second-highest rated bar in the city, and had a kind of legendary status.

In any case, we wandered through Riga as three very ignorant men. I was the only one taking a lot of pictures, but I never had any idea what I was getting.

This old church, for example, was obviously important:

But only now, thanks to the internet, do I know it’s St. Peter’s Church, and has been in its current location since 1208. (This is the third or fourth actual building, but the site has been a St. Peter’s Church for 809 years.)

And even before I saw these next buildings, I knew they were important: they’re on all the postcards and coffee mugs and shotglasses sold in the airport and tourist shops all over the city. But only now do I know they are the “House of the Blackheads,” basically guild halls built for German workers (presumably with acne problems) about 700 years ago. They’ve been repeatedly destroyed, most recently by the Nazis invading in 1941, and the current versions were constructed in the middle 1990s.

In front of them is a statue of Roland, Charlemagne’s boon companion.

Notice, by the way, that the left half of the Blackhead House is undergoing renovations, but has an image of its finished frontage draped in front of it.

We almost walked right past this place:

But fortunately I caught it out of the corner of my eye, and we went directly in–not for a drink, but to see whether they’d be showing the Denmark-Ireland World Cup playoff that evening.

(And maybe to drool a little.)

They had a six page menu of single-malts, many of which could be had for about the same price as a draft beer in Copenhagen.

We promised the owner, Sergei, to return that evening for the game, and pressed onward.

The city was festooned in Latvian flags — basically the Danish flag minus a vertical stripe — because it was a holiday. “Heroes Day,” one Latvian told us. “Armed Forces Day,” said another. Lāčplēsis Day, says Wikipedia.

It’s basically a day to commemorate the heroes who fell in Latvia’s war of independence, 1918-1920.

Apart from the fact that Latvian has been independent since the fall of the Soviet Union, I knew very little of its history. The ignorance I carried into Latvia was not carried out of it. They were indeed independent from 1920 until the Soviets occupied them in 1940. The Latvians therefore actually greeted the Nazis as liberators in 1941, but quickly saw their misapprehension.

On two days toward the end of 1941, for example, Nazis and Latvian collaborators killed more than 25,000 Jews at Rumbulla. Let that sink in. This was a planned operation. It was one of the largest massacres of the entire era, and as you all know that’s actually saying something.

We never made it to Rumbulla, but its story and others like it kept coming at us at odd angles all weekend because Latvia was in a somber mood on account of the holiday, which it took very seriously (as we’ll see).

This may have been an embassy row, but I honestly have no idea. It was the only American flag I saw in the city.

Here’s another of the ruins I mentioned earlier:

And here is the top Michelin-starred restaurant in Riga:

And… surprise! They’re next door neighbors!

The city is built around the Daugava River.

This was as close as we got to it. We spent the entire trip on the east side of the river. I had imagined Riga as a coastal town, and it’s sort of advertised as being “on the Baltic,” but it’s not. The city proper is a few kilometers inland from the where the mouth of the Daugava opens onto the Baltic, but it’s not on the Baltic.

Sometimes picturesque is enough:

Here we found the Danish embassy:

We wandered across some soldiers running a drill in one of the squares.

And as we settled into the Garlic Pub for lunch, a bride was being photographed in the alley across the street.

“Garlic beer” sounded like something to be tried. The taste of the garlic-infused ale was not bad, but the chunks of garlic were… excessive.

(The food, on the other hand, was fantastic.)

I couldn’t figure out whether the thing in the photo below was a fire hydrant. It was the only thing that made sense, but there was no obvious outlet for water. So it may just have been a blocker to ensure the car-free Old Town remained car free.

Not far from the square with the drilling soldiers we came across a square with military personnel showing the public some tanks and jeeps.

I didn’t know why the Canadians were there, but a little internet sleuthing has revealed to me that they’re part of this summer’s NATO deployment across the Baltic states.

Not far from that military display we came across the centerpiece of Freedom Square: the Freedom Monument, with their own lady liberty, Milda, on top. It’s a very storied monument.

We noticed there were some flowers around its base, and there were little clumps of people gathered around it. But we moved briskly past it because there was still so much to see before dinner.

For example, as Mads helpfully translated for me, the Ministry of Satire.

And this crazy old gothic building, which had caught my imagination from afar, when I could only see its stepped top and imagined it to be the cap of some fantastic Latvian pyramid.

Our hotel was close to the main train station (although I never heard a single train), and on the other side of the train station was a big open-air market.

The usual flea market kind of stuff was for sale, all of it very cheap, most of it very useless.

A vast warehouse alongside the market (more likely the warehouse market alongside which the outdoor market had developed) had dozens and dozens of meat and fish stalls.

That’s beautiful steak for about $2.50 per pound. We realized our travel plan had been a mistake: the smart thing to do would be rent a house or apartment via AirBnB, then make our own meals with the incredible meats and fishes at the ridiculous prices. (A plan we intend to follow next year in Lithuania as we make our “random weekend” an annual tradition!)

By now it was dark (about 15:30 in the afternoon — they’re a little further north than Copenhagen), so it was time to head back to our hotel, rest a little, and freshen up for the evening.

Afterwards we made our way back into town for a drink before dinner, and we came across this eerily quiet and solemn procession of people bearing torches.

The torches don’t play very well in photographs, but it was mesmerizing in reality.

This was all part of the observance of the holiday. They were all heading to Freedom Square. Later we passed that square while hunting for a taxi to take us to our restaurant. The Freedom Monument was surrounded by men and women and children with torches. At the base of the monument, a chorus of young women in white gowns were singing beautifully. I tried to get some video, but mostly what you hear is the traffic around me, and Mads and Søren telling me to get in the damn cab.

Remember, though: most of what we were seeing was sort of bewildering to us. It was only later in the evening when we would learn most of what we learned about the significance of the holiday.

So we had a truly spectacular dinner at the Beefeaters steak house (the place that had been fully booked the night before).

It was another embarrassment of spectacular food and wine.

Afterwards we took a cab back to the Single Malt Pub and drank fantastic whiskeys while watching Denmark and Ireland play to a scoreless draw.

But it was while drinking and watching the game that we really got to talking with Sergei, the owner. He’s a Ukrainian and has been in Riga for about as long as I’ve been in Denmark.

He told us all about this holiday in Latvia: the history of Latvia’s hard-won, short-lived independence; the barbarities inflicted upon them first by the Soviets, then the Nazis, and then again the Soviets. How seriously Latvians take their independence. How solemnly they commemorate it.

As we were getting ready to leave, I mentioned that one of our cabbies had said something about there being commemorative candles lit in front of the presidential palace. Yes, he said, yes, that’s very beautiful, Latvians come from all over the country every November 11 and light candles of remembrance along the presidential palace. I brought my own children earlier this afternoon to light theirs. Thousands of candles; hundreds of thousands; maybe more than a million. Quite beautiful.

The presidential palace wasn’t far off, just a few blocks, so we decided to stroll by before heading back to the hotel.

And so we found our way to the November 11th Embankment.

We came upon a scene that surprised us. We found ourselves lowering our voices to whispers as we walked slowly, the way one might in a cemetery or some ancient house of worship. The Latvians around us were solemn, serious, reflective.

I came across a young girl, no older than six, setting a candle in the grass and trying to light it. Twice she lit the candle and stepped back; twice the wind blew it out. I recorded the whole thing on video, but all that can be seen are the little glimmers of flame from her lighter and the doomed candle.

As she ran back to her parents, who were watching from a few yards off in the darkness, I debated whether I should stay and get a video of her mother or father helping her light the candle. I couldn’t make up my mind. The father came back with her a moment later and squatted beside her as they sought to light it together. It was such an intensely private moment I couldn’t bring myself to record it. I felt bad for just watching. (This is why I could never be a photojournalist: McConnico would have filled a whole smart card with photographs of that unbearably touching scene.)

Mads and Søren hadn’t been as eager as I was to see all this, but had fallen into thoughtful reveries of their own. We moved about individually, silently.

We were touched and humbled by the memorial. It was refreshing to see a people taking their liberty and independence so seriously. I think the whole western world has lost all sense of proportion: we shriek hysterically at one another across the growing chasm between our two tribes over trivialities, while a tiny little country on our periphery renews its dedication to liberty and independence even as an army that has occupied them well within living memory runs military drills along their border.

There was no nonsense, no noise, no hysteria. Just the simple dignity of a people living up to the oft-uttered but rarely honored dictum to never forget.

It was all very moving, as I hope I’ve conveyed, but we hadn’t come to Riga to be moved. We wanted to have silly fun. So we wrapped up the night with some Latvian “black balsam” (a disgusting kind of snaps with the consistency–and flavor–of used motor oil), some local ale, and a game of darts.

One of the things you may not have noticed in the pictures of this post is something that took me a while to put my finger on: the almost complete lack of outdoor advertising throughout Riga’s Old Town and City Centre. In every European city I’ve been to — and that’s well into the dozens by now — a mere ten minute stroll through the downtown area will quickly reveal, at the very least, the best selling beers in town. You will say to yourself, “This is a Stella Artois town,” or “Guinness rules here,” or “I’m in the land of Budvar.”

Not so in Riga. There were outdoor advertising displays here and there, but they were only in and around bus-stops, pedestrian tunnels, and the like. The streets themselves had none. Even the streets that appeared to be drinking strips–café, bar, bar, pub, café, etc–had no signage beyond the names of the drinking establishments. No big blinking signs for this ale or that lager or any other product of any kind. I don’t know whether that’s the result of strict and formal legislation, or simple Latvian aesthetics, but once you noticed the lack of advertising you sort of couldn’t help looking for it (and not finding it) everywhere.

Except for this building across the street from our hotel:

So it’s weird not just because the man and woman appear to have leaped out the 50s, or because they’re standing in front of a gift-wrapped city. It’s weird mainly because it’s an ad for (according to Google translate) “Place for advertising on large-format printing” in a city where after two solid days of walking around I hadn’t seen a single other outdoor advertisement that wasn’t embedded one way or another in the public transportation infrastructure.

I’ve Googled this a little out of curiosity, and there is no ban on outdoor advertising in Riga. Quite the contrary: there are many signs (heh) that suggest it’s actually ubiquitous. But I saw almost none, have next to none in my 250 photographs, and was accompanied by two marketing-minded friends who concurred with my observation.

I mean, for God’s sake, here’s the main train station:

And here’s a McDonald’s trash receptacle:

And you’ll notice in both cases there’s not a single logo to be found. (The blue logo at right in the train station image is just the name of the grocery store it’s fronting: signage, not marketing.)

It was just odd.

And therefore a little ironic to look out the window on the flight home and see that Norwegian airlines wasn’t going to miss any branding opportunity…