Last Picture of Riga

... at least for the moment. Dusk over the train station.

Kapteina Enriko Pulkestenis

One regret about our departure from Latvia. The week before we left, the best restaurant in Riga moved to a new location literally across the street from our apartment. I suppose its for the best, as the best restaurant in Riga is a kebab stand artfully called "Foodbox," and if their perfectly spiced take-out doner kebab had been across the street for two years, your correspondent would weigh about 300 pounds now. And then to make matters worse, the best bar in Riga, Kapteina Enriko Pulkstenis (Captain Enrique's Watch) started moving to a location two doors away from us the weekend after my departure. Unknown if the new spot will feature such attractive shades of orange and green on the walls as seen above. If both the best restaurant and the best bar in town had been within 100 feet of my apartment, I'm not sure I would have ever made it home after work. So, again, maybe for the best, but still a bit of a shame to have been forced to walk a whole three blocks to these establishments for so long.

Some Last Things From Latvia

Last dinner: Istaba (Room), which went from being our favorite restaurant to falling out of favor and then returned to our good graces in time for a fine meal on my last night there. Highly recommended if you are in Riga, but Spring-Fall is probably better for their local-produce ethos than winter. I can't even remember what vegetables they serve there in the winter, perhaps because I'm blocking it out. Also, it considers itself more of an art gallery as restaurant, so there's usually something fun to look at, as in the case of tiny photography, above.


Last shivering outdoor beer: We braved the not-exactly-springlike temps to have a last drink at the "beer tents," aka No Problem bar on Dome Square. The only place to be if you find yourself in Riga on a summer evening. And if it's not so summery, you can borrow a blanket in one of a variety of counter-theft-hideous patterns.


Last Embassy function: Official farewell party, where I was gifted this jersey of the local hockey team. Pretty good party, and I managed to not say anything too offensive in my impromptu remarks. All's well that ends well.


Last balsams: I hope ever. I wouldn't be at all sad to go back to Riga sometime. But the local libation, black balsams, will not be the thing that brings me back. The picture is a little blurry, which is entirely appropriate and I wish I could say intentional.

Visu Labu! (100/100)

Oof. We're really sad to see the 100 Days of Latvia effort end with such a whimper. We had hoped to do 100 days (mostly) in a row, and have a last day left over for a big retrospecticus. But packing and saying farewell to friends and flying across the ocean each got in the way in turn. And while we do want to make this blog something worth the time of those kind enough to stop by and visit, it just couldn't get to the top of the priority list recently.

So here we are, writing from a Holiday Inn in Winchester, Virginia, putting up a belated 100th post. This picture is a display of Latvian flags put up in Dome Square in anticipation of the 20th anniversary of the re-declaration of Latvian independence, from the Soviet Union in this case. Which happens today, actually, so perhaps our delay was more fortuitous than we thought.

In any case, it was a wonderful two years in Latvia. We had our ups and downs, and Latvia had its enduring points and its frustrations. But overall, your correspondents have nothing to complain about. We'll be in the states for the next five weeks and change, after which, we'll be heading to beautiful Kabul, Afghanistan for a year of sun, fun, and guns. About all of which, more soon - but maybe not necessarily every day of the week any more.

Dome Square (99/100)

The additional photography didn't happen, but we did get a couple pictures this weekend of the place yr humble correspondent will probably miss most about Riga: Drinking a cool beer on a sunny day in Dome Square is pretty hard to beat.

There are two bars that share the square, and they each have live music during the summer. At the (superior despite the silly name) No Problem bar, a different band plays every night, ranging from Spanish guitar to rockabilly. Next door, Mitroshkin's Master Band plays the exact same Santana and Rolling Stones covers every night from the top of the antique fire truck (below). They cleverly alternate sets, so one can sit out in the late, late Baltic sunshine on a June night, enjoying a delicious local Tervetes beer with live music basically non-stop for hours on end. Maybe I'm just nostalgic already, but I have not run into a similar combination of fantastic atmosphere and very good beer and consistently good-enough music in any other locale, and I've lived in a fair number of cities in the United States of America.


So, basically, if you, dear reader, have not had a chance to visit Latvia and for some reason are here in the Summer, the no-question recommendation is to show up at No Problem at about 4:59 PM, grab a table, and hold down the fort for as long as your liver will allow.

Mini Riga (98/100)

We are in the midst of the pre-pack-out tornado. The movers show up tomorrow, and we had this grand vision that everything was going to be done Saturday and we would have Sunday to just relax and spend some last time enjoying springtime in Riga. For the one millionth consecutive time, this aggressive plan didn't work out. So the staff photographer's hopes for snapping some good photos today to finish up strong on our 100 days project were not to be. So here's a picture of a scale model of Riga that was set up in one of the shopping malls in town, for reasons that remain mysterious to your correspondent, because he didn't bother to read any of the explanatory signs.

Maybe after the movers are done tomorrow, more photography will ensue? Hope springs eternal.

More Signs of Spring (97/100)

Our smattering of regular readers are probably about as tired now of posts about emergent spring as they were a few months ago of posts about how snowy and dark it was. It was a nice surprise though, on our day trip to Kurzeme, to spot that many of the storks had returned to their summer homes atop telephone poles along the highways of Latvia. It's not rare to see an old pole that no longer has any wires connected to it, in the middle of a field, still standing because it has a stork's nest on top.

The picture above was actually intended to be of the stork. The picture below was supposed to be of the building, but happened to catch some stork derriere as a bonus.

Barns (96/100)

Latvia has got to have the world's premiere supply of dilapidated barns. We wander around the city and take a fair number of pictures of artfully decaying apartments and office spaces and art nouveau masterpieces. But it doesn't stop at the city limits! The staff photographer has mostly limited himself to the shots he can get out of a moving car, perhaps out of deference to The Lovely Katherine, who would have gone bonkers waiting for him to tromp around the plaši lauki of the country, framing just the right angle of each of the 10,000 (approx) scenic old barns of the country. But if it weren't for the day job that is the whole reason we're in Latvia in the first place, or the perhaps too-frequent hops around Europe on the weekends, we could have spent a lot of time and taken a lot of "charmingly run-down barn" pictures. Lucky for you all, we'll stick with this one for now.

Kuldiga (95/100)

In addition to stopping by Europe's Widest Waterfall, we wandered through scenic Kuldiga. Pretty town, but, uh, not a lot going on. The predominant feature of the town is gorgeous woodwork on sad, abandoned buildings. I know the Holla has put a lot of pictures of these kinds of buildings up. We find them pretty and interesting. More of that from Kuldiga wasn't really our goal, but that's most of what there is. There didn't even seem to be many people around, other than out-of-towners stopping by the waterfall.


We stopped by the one restaurant/pub that seemed to be open and they told us they were out of toast. Toast! This probably doesn't strike many Americans as being as weird as it ought to, but garlic toast is the standard bar snack here -- It's like going to a burger joint in the U.S. and being told they're out of french fries.

And yet, I'm glad we went. It was not somewhere I'll be relocating any time soon, but it was a pleasant day out of the Metropolis of Riga.

The Dolls of Sabile (94/100)

To the best of our knowledge, this is a folk-art display, of sorts. It is clear that someone has invested a lot of time making these mannequins/dolls/figures, dressing them in thrift-store clothing, and standing them up in this yard in Sabile, Latvia. They all have the same face, they all stand perfectly upright and perfectly still. Many were positioned around other thrift-store items, say, using an old lawnmower or riding an old bicycle. Standing bolt upright in an empty yard, the grass still brown from the winter, with the neighbors watching visitors and occasionally pulling some water up from their front-yard well (!), the effect was actually a little creepy. I presume that the gentleman on the left in the picture below (the real person in the background, not the life-size doll in the green coat) was the creator of this installation project. But the whole thing was a little creepy and your correspondents never really summoned the nerve to go ask about it. Rather, we dropped a few coins in the box labeled "Donations for Doll Clothes" and made a hasty retreat.

The Widest Waterfall in Europe! (93/100)

It's true! Latvia is the home of the widest waterfall in all of Europe! This is also the home of the annual Flying Fish Festival, celebrating the tradition of catching fish in baskets as they jump up the waterfall on their way upstream to spawn. OK, so it's only about three feet high... but you can't win them all.

Do You Like American Culture (Part 2)? (92/100)

These are details from an installation piece in the Kas Ir Makslas? Gallery ("What Is Art?"). This is a piece by Paul DeMarinis, an American with a long career of electronic and computer-based art. This piece was three different mechanisms that spelled out DeMarinis's e-mail one letter at a time. This one was all the letters of the alphabet cut out of metal and kept in pickling jars full of some sort of chemical. As electric current was applied to each letter, it would fizz. The other two were cool but slightly less photogenic. It was fun to watch, and your correspondent was very happy to see actual contemporary art, a field in which has more or less been centered in New York since 1945 or so, getting some State Department love as "American Culture."

Do You Like American Culture? (91/100)

This picture is the Staff Photographer pushing his bargain-basement Nokia cell phone camera to the limits of its low-light performance at a concert in Riga last week. As part of American Culture Month, the Embassy Public Affairs section brought the Pine Leaf Boys, a Cajun band of no small renown, to play a few shows in Latvia. The audience definitely enjoyed the show, but there was some culture clash involved. The Pine Leaf Boys probably play smoky clubs more often than concert halls with gilt details and a trompe l'oeil painting on the ceiling of Romanesque arches stretching toward the skies. In addition, they begged and pleaded for the audience to dance, but other than a few brave embassy employees, the typically reserved Latvian crowd stayed in their seats.

Of course those kind of differences are part of the reason Embassies do cultural exchanges in the first place. The band was great, and I think all the Latvians in the audience enjoyed the music in their slightly less-rambunctious-than-Lafayette style.

My Self-Declared National Holiday (90/100)

One of the places in Latvia that your correspondent will remember particularly fondly is the big summer beer garden in Dome Square. I personally think that the first day the Dome Square beer gardens are open should be declared a holiday so we can all spend the relatively warm middle of the day there. When I found out on April 15 that they would be opening for the year that day, I went immediately after work - and found that they were still busy making final preparations for a presumed opening later that night. I managed to rally some troops for a visit on Friday, the first weekend night of the season. Unfortunately, it was chilly and eventually rainy, so we huddled under the tent next to heat lamps and enjoyed our beers only slightly less for it. It turns out maybe it's a little early to start spending all day in the beer garden, which is probably the only reason it's not a real national holiday yet.

Kids by the River (89/100)

There are probably kids all over the Northern hemisphere coming out of their hibernation to go sit on concrete walls and smoke, but these kids are in Riga.

Happy Week of American Food (88/100)

We're celebrating a "Month of American Culture" in April, as the Embassy has put on an all-out blitz of cultural events, from Cajun music concerts to dance performances to art exhibits and everything in between. One chain of cafeterias is this week celebrating a concurrent "Week of American Food." It's a cool idea, so your correspondent stopped by for lunch to support it.

I guess our cuisine is sort of hard to define. The most admirable elements of our collective cuisine, I would say, might not translate well to a cafeteria setting. But there are options. Burgers are a pretty safe bet. The sandwich I chose was a "Chicken burger in corn sauce." It was pretty good. A little more Mayo in the "corn sauce" than I might have gone for, but that's Latvia sometimes. I will leave it for readers Stateside to nominate their favorite local joint to pick up a chicken sandwich with mayo-corn-sauce.

Dancing Lady (87/100)

It must be Spring, because the Dancing Lady is back! Hurrah! This lady of some years can be spotted at this exact location just about any day when the weather is nice. She plays some music on a boombox, throws a hat on the ground, and dances. It's the exact same dance, any time you go by -- she puts her hands in a position as if ballroom dancing with an imaginary partner, and sort of does a swirly back-and-forth jig. She supposedly isn't in it for the money people toss in the hat (although she does keep a close eye on it), but rather just dances to make people happy. It definitely makes your humble correspondent happy to have her back out on Livu Square dancing up a storm.

Skeleton Vids (86/100)

My skeleton companions continue to be delinquent in providing any evidence of my turns on the track. So we're putting up videos of them instead. Winter is ending, it's time to put skeleton and curling behind us. The publication schedule waits for no man! Above, Jerry at the start, below Matiss at the finish, flashing gang signs.

Curling (85/100)

No, we're not posted to Canada. Or a consulate in Scotland. But we're far enough north that there are at least a few people here who curl. Your intrepid correspondents went out to give it a try this weekend. The verdict? That may actually be a real sport.

First of all, one has to wear one super-slippery shoe. The ice isn't that slick, but it's easy to do take a step with your non-slippery shoe and forget that the other one is super-slippery, with predictable results. So definitely some balance there.

Second, the bowling-on-ice comparison is rather apt, but it's much harder as an absolute beginner to start scoring any points at all in curling. Way easier to shoot it way over the target or leave it short by trying to finesse it. So in terms of coordination, I would rank curling higher than bowling on the "is it a sport?" scale.

Third, the sweeping is really hard work. If you're sweeping your floor at home, you use long, leisurely strokes. When you're sweeping for curling, you have to press down hard, sweep really fast, and sort of jog while you do it. I'm no super-athlete, but I'm in reasonable shape, and I came back from my inaugural practice sweep winded.

Most importantly, it was actually pretty fun. Which shouldn't be a surprise, because bar shuffleboard is fun, and this is like bigger heavier shuffleboard, so how can you go wrong?

And now for your viewing pleasure, my inaugural throw:

Do You Want to Work in England? (84/100)

Parked (apparently for too long) in front of the Holla offices.