Sveiki from Riga

Labrit! It's 8:23am here in Riga, and this is our first Monday morning, and first blog entry as well. We arrived in Riga last Wednesday (Sept. 10th), and have been getting our bearings in the city thus far. We met up with our friend Maruta, who was in Latvia for a Fulbright a couple of years ago, and she showed us all over the city and surrounding areas for a couple of days. She was an absolute wealth of information. Maruta, if you're reading this, you could make a very decent living as a tour guide.

Honestly, we have seen and experienced far too much to tackle in this one first blog, so I guess we'll try to hit what we consider to be some of the highlights.

Riga airport: About the size of your backyard. For Galen, customs consisted of a bored-looking woman with a bored-looking dog on a leash. The dog sniffed the bag and then went back to staring at the wall. For Sarah, nothing at all! We then took a taxi; one of the scariest experiences ever. They drive like the devil is on their tail. We crossed the River Daugava and came to our apartment on Dzirnavu street.

Our apartment: Well, we're rich Americans here. Our apartment is gigantic with hardwood floors and high ceilings. It's really nice. TV is in Latvian and Russian, and we've seen some American movies dubbed. Interestingly, we saw the Hulk 2 in Mexico dubbed in Spanish, and we saw the Hulk 1 here dubbed in Latvian. Pretty funny. You can also get "star tv" which is basically like 24hrs a day of Entertainment Tonight, in English of course.

The city: About the most gorgeous you've ever seen. We saw the Powder Tower, which used to be part of the medieval wall which surrounded old Riga. The tower is about 700 years old and still has cannonballs lodged in it from when Peter the Great invaded Riga from Russia. We saw Saint Peter's Church, which is the most iconic part of the Riga skyline. We took an elevator up the tower and looked at the views of the city and surrounding area; it was so cold and windy that our eyes were watering and we had to leave before too long. The streets in Vecriga (the oldest part of the city founded in 1201) are cobblestone and are so small and windy that we got pretty lost on our first night. There are night clubs and casinos interspersed with centuries-old buildings, walls and churches.

I think the two most interesting things have been Centralais Tirgus (the central market) and Mezskapi (the forest cemetery). The former is a gigantic marked housed in several zeppelin hangars. It is the strangest place I've ever been. They sell everything from smoked eel to goat heads to underwear and knockoff DVDs. The market is located next to Moscow neighborhood, which is a scary, mostly Russian, part of town. It is crazy: everyone is yelling and it's easy to get lost. Hold on to your wallet and purse! After about 30 minutes wandering around in the different pavillions (there's a fish one, one for meat, one for produce, and one for totally random junk ("kramu" in Latvian)), Maruta informed us that the local police were following us quite closely. We were surprised to be considered a threat to the security of the place, but then she pointed out that it was likely they were more concerned for our security than that of the market! Needless to say we made a fairly hasty exit.

Mezskapi is a cemetery that is actually 3 or 4 cemeteries in one: it's the size of a small town. There are Latvian, Russian, Roma (Gypsy), Muslim and Jewish graves there. One of the most impressive sites is the monument to the Latvians who fell in WWI. The ethnic tensions between Latvians and Russians are alive and well (actually more so than I had anticipated), and it's very visible in the graveyard. Everything is so sociologically loaded, from the color and type of flowers that dot the graves to the manner in which the graves are kept to the placement of graves near other ones. For example, the Soviet government placed the graves of generals (who committed horrible atrocities against the Latvian people) around the graves of famous Latvian writers and politicians. You can imagine how that goes over. All that aside, it is one of the most solemn and quiet and moving places you could ever go. It really is a forest populated by the dead, whose graves are meticulously cared for by the living. It's forbidden to leave footprints near or on any of the graves; if you do, the spirits will follow you home. Also, you have to empty your pockets of anything (trash, gum, etc.) that arose directly from your trip to the graveyard before you leave for the same reason. We actually teared up a bit at some of the graves, such as 8-year old boy and his father who were killed on the same day in WWII. I really cannot explain mezskapi in words; the forest literally vibrates with emotion.

Well, I think this has been a long first blog, but, again, I've probably written about a hundredth of the things we've seen. I did not mention the Russian Orthodox church service we attended, nor the Latvian Catholic one; I skipped our night in the trendiest, highest (26th floor) bar in Riga and the weirdness of the local supermarkets. Hopefully we'll fill in those blanks later. Needless to say, this is a land truly like no other.

Sarah and I plan to trade off writing blogs, so she'll do the next one.

Uz reszesanos,

Galen