When we arrived in Sigulda, a small but somewhat touristy town, it was chilly and drizzling. We stopped at a small bookstore in the train station to buy a map of the city. It was just one room, maybe 15 feet by 8 feet heated by a wood stove against one wall, with an older Latvian fellow sitting behind a low counter. Then we started doing some exploring on foot. We walked down the main street and stopped for a coffee & a pastry. It's a lot cheaper than in the city: we paid 1.50 Ls for two coffees and two maizītes (pastries: literally "little breads"). In the city, one coffee is 1.30 Ls!
Then we walked down Raiņa street toward some castle ruins. We walked past lots of little houses where everyone seemed to be piling up their fallen leaves and burning them. Latvians love to keep the ground clean; no one just lets their leaves rot into the grass. The parks in the city, the cemetery and the yards in Sigulda are all kept up and raked constantly. So the town had the smell of rain, wet earth and smoke. It was misting constantly. We passed Sigulda's Lutheran Church, which has stood in its present location for centuries. There was a wedding going on at first, but we came back later and went in. It is somewhat sparse, but comfortable, also heated by a huge wood stove. We went all the way up the church tower to where the bell is, and peeked out the window at the town. The church also has a pond in front which is home to several dozen ducks and one gigantic swan (we got some pictures of all this, but then the camera died. We'll post what we have soon, and we'll go back to take more at another time).
We continued on our way, past a children's playground to the castles. We saw two castles; one is about 150 years old and now houses a museum and restaurant. The really interesting one, however, is the castle of the Order of the Brothers of the Sword, a crusader order comprised of Teutonic knights and converted Livonians. The castle was built in the early 1200's and partially destroyed in the 1700's during the Northern War with Russia. The castle is amazing; the walls must be 5 - 6 feet thick, all stone, and it looks exactly like what you'd imagine a medieval castle to look like. We crept into it a little (shhhh...we walked around the barrier!) and went down a steep tunneled staircase. It's amazing to walk down stone stairs 800 years old. Inside the ruins it is silent despite the wind, probably due to the thickness of the walls. (We'll post some pictures of this later).
After marveling for a while at these ruins, we took a long (we're talking loooong) wooden staircase down into the forest towards the Gauja river, the second largest in Latvia (after the Daugava, which runs right through Riga). The castle, smartly so, is perched on the hill above the river, which is a very advantageous position against potential attackers arriving by boat. We followed this stair-path all the way down to the river, and stood on the bridge to watch the calm surface of the water eddy past the thick supports beneath us. This whole time we're being misted by rain, and the whole place is just river and trees and grey misty skies as far as you can see... quite beautiful in a sort of dreary, "secret-gardeny" way. We both thought is was very nice to get out of the city and be with nature, regardless of the fact that we didn't have the best weather.
We hiked back up the hill on a different wooden staircase. Let's just say the stairs looked even looooooooonger on the way up (I'm estimating 500 stairs)! But it was a surreal view from the top of the Gauja and the forest. Once we reached the bluff, we were deposited onto a path that led directly to the Tarzan Adventure Park. They had a ski-lift type ride that provided a very nice view of the river (we rode this one); a toboggan-type ride that hurtled you down the hill (the one we just climbed up) through the trees on a little track, complete with a brake for the fainter-of-heart; and even a zip-line course that zig-zags you through the woods on a cable from one little tree-house to another. We're really looking forward to going back on a sunny day for that! They also had a rickety-looking medium sized ferris wheel. We opted to skip that one.
Another attraction at the top of the hill was a cable-car that carries about 15 people across the river valley with what I'm sure would be an amazing view, to another little town a couple of miles away, where there are another set of castle ruins and some other things to see...we'll probably ride this when we come back as well, since there was a long line and the next car didn't leave until after sundown.
So, we headed back into town, walking through the quaint little neighborhood with cozy cottages made of stone, and returned to the tiny city center next to the train station, where we found a restaurant for dinner. It turned out to be very nice (the waiter returned several times throughout the meal to pour me out additional portions of my bottle of perrier into my water goblet), and we found a vegetarian section on their menu! Laima (our friend and conversation partner) says that vegetarianism is beginning to catch on here, but that doesn't mean we can get any fake meat! [On a side note, however, we did find a fast-food restaurant in Rīga, Hesburger, that offers a deliciously deep-fried veg patty- it's no Morningstar Farms Grillers Prime, but it was mighty satisfying to have a burger and fries!] Another funny note about dinner was that I ordered a glass of wine half-way through the meal, and the very polite server asked "maza vai liela?" (small or large?) and of course I say "liela". Well, this is actually a double-serving of wine, so I got a huge, 12 dollar, glass of wine. More than twice the cost of my entree! Needless to say I drank the heck out of it.
We paid up for our dinner, extravagant wine included, and went back to the station to catch the next train. Turned out it was going to be about a 45 minute wait, so we whipped out our cards to pass the time in the dim waiting area amidst the old ladies in their head scarves and the teenagers violently texting away on their phones. Not before too long a drunk guy, probably in his fifties, comes in, 2-liter beer in hand, and starts grabbing at our cards! We try to be polite, and ask him if he'd like to play too? He of course asks us where we are from, and Galen explains, and the guy just keeps touching his (own) face and saying "I'm sorry" in English...clearly he was pretty tipsy. Then he wants to know where in America we are from; upon hearing we're from Washington State he insists that his uncle lives in Seattle, but that he'd never want to go to to America, because there are too many "neģeris"...yes, this sounds very much like a distasteful racial epithet, and sure enough when we look it up later, this is Latvian for "negro". Galen says "You don't like them?" (Vai tev nepatīk?") and he basically gives us a "so-so" hand movement. Let me not leave out that this whole time he's offering us his huge beer, and Galen keeps accepting (saying "why not?" [Kāpēc nē?] in Latvian as he does so, while I give him the "WTF? What are you doing?" signal out of the guy's line of vision). Galen insists he saw the guy open the beer, so I guess it was fine.
The man goes on to tell us about how he was a soldier, shows us his crazy military/sailor style tattoo on his chest, and then starts telling us what he does now. The explanations still involve lots of mime-gun-shooting, and something about money...we're like, you make money as a soldier? A teenage kid that was sitting near us says in Latvian "he kills for money". So I burst out to Galen "he's an assassin?". This man was the least assassin-looking middle aged drunky hanging out in a train station I've ever seen. So this admission of what must have been a fairly secretive occupation was half totally creepster and half laughable. I chose the latter.
At this point it was about time for us to go, so we shook hands with both the drunk racist assassin and the amused teenager, and headed out into the mist to catch our train. We slept most of the way home.
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