Forest

This is not a particularly interesting picture, but it might give the viewer a sense of what highway driving is like in Latvia. There are a lot of forests, and many of them are secondary growth, miles and miles of uniformly tall, skinny pines with no branches below thirty feet or so. It's actually quite pretty and kind of mesmerizing to watch as you're speeding by, being passed in turn by insane people doing twice the speed limit in their tinted-window BMWs who are probably not appreciating the odd undergrowth-free forests at all.

One more from Kipsala

If anyone is scouting locations for a movie set in a haunted house, you could do worse than Kipsala island.

Kipsala Rulzzz

An example of one of the less well-kept, but obviously still inhabited buildings in Kipsala. I'm not sure why everyone was flying the Latvian flag on Monday - probably not for Presidents' Day.

Kipsala Architecture

Not that this style of architecture is unique to Kipsala, but there is more open space around the buildings there, as opposed to some of the car-lined or narrow streets on the right side of the river. This one has clearly had some windows replaced -- but not all of them -- which is still a fair bit more modernization than some of its neighbors have seen.

Icy

This is a little branch of the Daugava that goes around the island of Kipsala, basically directly across the river from Old Riga. It hasn't been cold enough long enough to freeze the main channel of the river solid enough to walk across (we think), but the side channel is apparently cold enough for ice fishing. I never saw him catch anything, and it didn't seem like a very popular spot, but maybe he was just there to enjoy the scenery.

Wolfdog

The first picture of the lock bridge featured a padlock with two names on it, maybe painted in Wite-Out. Writing names with anything from sharpies to full-on script engraving is not uncommon. We hope that Wolfdog remembered to put his wife's name on the other side of the lock, and that her name is something equally bad-ass.

Happy Valentine's Day, Wolfdog and Tigercat!

The Lock Bridge

So there is a small canal that defines the border of Old Riga opposite the Daugava. The canal is crossed by a number of small bridges. In what we gather is a mostly Russian tradition, on their wedding day, a bride and groom attach a lock to a bridge and then throw the key in the water. We won't insult your intelligence by further explaining the symbolism. In any case, many of the bridges in Riga feature a fair number of locks in the summer wedding season - your correspondent has actually seen a vague line of decked-out couples waiting patiently, photographer at their side, for their turn to put their lock on some of the more picturesque bridges.

Mostly, apparently unmoved by the symbolism, city employees go around every so often and cut all the locks off the bridges - except, that is, for one of the smallest and most picturesque bridges, where they are allowed to accumulate longer, or maybe indefinitely. Unsurprisingly, this is the bridge with the biggest observed summertime bridal queues.

Olya + Dima

An older picture from a sunnier time in Riga, but I think they're still there. Any guesses from the loyal readership what this is about? Hint: the Rusophiles in the audience may have the best shot. We're actually not trying to cajole you into commenting, just trying to stretch out some pictures of the same thing across a few days. Our new faster-paced publishing schedule may not have been a wise course of action.

Brave New World

We here at the Holla are always pushing the envelope to bring you the very best of what's happening in Latvia or wherever. Like how we figured out the thing that lets us write enough posts for a week and then tell the computer when to post them, so we didn't actually have to have some time to spare each time we wanted to post something. That happened no more than a few years after such technology was available. And now, also only a few years late, we are breaking into the exciting world of internet picture shows. E.g., this video, our first ever, which is basically just like the picture we put up yesterday of the four guys who have one giant four-head-holed hockey sweater that reads "Latvija."

Wow. It's really eerily like the picture, in that it doesn't really impart more meaning or insight than the still picture did. But hey, these days we look back at some of the first pictures that the photo department thought were worthy of publication here and cringe. Surely when we direct our Latvian version of "Casablanca," we'll look back at this and laugh.

Oh, also, seats 10 rows up and between the blue lines, $25. This may be the first thing we have found that is cheaper in Latvia than in the States, other than maybe (what? I never finished this sentence, now I'm re-reading a couple weeks later and I think I gave up on a funny example... - ed). Hockey fans take note.

Lat-Vi-Ja!

Latvia is heading to Vancouver. Your correspondents witnessed the second of three games in the qualifying tournament here in Riga, when the home town team faced Ukraine, thought to be their fiercest competitors in the group. They emerged victorious in a tense 4-2 battle, sealed only by an empty-net goal in the final minute. They also defeated Hungary and Italy to move on to the Olympics in 2010.

Hockey is a fun sport to watch, and it certainly helps that Latvia has a team that punches far above the weight one would expect from a nation of 2 million souls. Perhaps more important are the famously boisterous Latvian hockey fans, who impressed even the Canadians for their dedication, knowledge of the game, and willingness to travel from Eastern Europe to Halifax, Nova Scotia, of all places, to cheer their team on to barely avoiding relegation out of the top division for the 2009 competition.

On Friday evening, they cheered constantly, with all variety cheers shoe-horning "Latvia" into both what would be two-syllable and three-syllable cheers in English. Well done, boys.

Doors

The Photo Department was beginning to complain about the number of pictures recently that have been highly illustrative but not actually interesting as pictures. So here's a small step back in that direction. It's from Old Riga, and it's black and white, so it has to have some artistic merit, no? We're not sure what function the doors on the higher levels once served. Presumably there was a stairway, or maybe they were just for throwing something stored in the building down to the street level.

Wintry Mix

These are some of the various social services employees who attended the event near Daugavpils for the opening of a children's center built by Uncle Sam, as mentioned briefly a couple weeks ago. They were all very nice. We're putting this here only as an example of two notable sartorial differences between here and the States.

First, there is a lot of fur here. Real fur. And I don't get the sense that most women got their furs mostly guilt-free from their grandparents, a la The Lovely Katherine.

Secondly, you may notice the layer of snow and (we assure you) ice on the ground. You may also notice that two of the women whose shoes are visible are wearing some fairly substantial high heels. Latvian women are apparently trained from birth to wear impressive high heels year-round, whether on rutted dirt roads or icy cobblestones. It's either very impressive or mildly insane, depending on who you ask.

More Commie Ceramics

One more item from the world-class Latvian Art Museum ceramic collection. Wouldn't you love to have a full service for 12 of china in this charming pattern of the sun rising (or setting?) over glorious workers' paradise of productive smokestacks, their plumes of smoke visible far and wide, spreading the news of the victory of the proletariat?

Art!

It was sunny this weekend for the first time since who knows when. Unfortunately, when it's clear is actually when it is the coldest. As it was in single digits (F), or double digits below (C), your correspondents did make sure to actually go outside and see the sun, but did not spend any great lengths of time outside.

We did manage to make it the two blocks from the Holla European Headquarters to the Latvian Art Museum. To be polite, one might say that music, dance, and poetry are where the Latvian people have channeled their greatest creative energies over the years. The temporary exhibition -- contemporary photography by a woman who did portraits of the residents of a modest apartment building in Riga over the last four years -- was excellent. The permanent collection, largely comprised of Latvian painting from the few hundred years preceeding World War II, had a few nice pieces.

One of the highlights, for its novelty value more than anything, was a small collection of ceramics, including those (barely adequately) pictured above. They come from a truly odd and certainly museum-caliber set of communist-themed chess pieces. It would have been cool if the opposing player's pieces were fat bankers wearing monocles and smoking cigars, or other capatalist parasites, but they were just the same as these in different colors.

Mr. Safety

All appearances aside, this actually has nothing to do with last week's series of pictures from the Ligatne Bunker. Last week, your correspondent volunteered/was pressed into service as a member of the Embassy's First Responder Team. It is very hard to imagine that Riga is a serious target for a terrorist chemical weapons attack, but it's not impossible. In fact, Riga was one of the many U.S. Embassies that received a suspicious letter filled with white powder in December. They all turned out to contain not weaponized anthrax but all-purpose flour, but it did remind everyone to stay prepared.

As such, this is the team that, in the case of another suspicious-powder letter or even a sarin gas attack on the Embassy, will spring into action doing search and rescue, testing what the agent is, and most importantly, stripping all the victims naked and scrubbing away any trace of potential chemical or biological weapons. We did a no-actual-nakedness drill on Friday. Lucky, too, as it was below freezing out. I certainly hope that if someone decides to drop VX nerve gas on the Embassy, they choose a mild spring day to do so.

Bonus points to alert readers who can determine which gas-mask-and-chem-suit-wearing figure in this picture is your correspondent.

Hooray for us!

This was sort of a conference center. It had a bunch of flags, which were given out as awards for the units that were the best prepared or most productive or showed the most Communist spirit. The one of these I can read has something to do with the winner of some sort of farming competition between two of the nearby towns, while others were about the school group that did the best job of preparing for the next year of classes. It's not exactly clear why they took an award for a school group down into a bomb shelter for decoration. Maybe as a depressing reminder that they once had children and farms and stuff.

Even more bizarre, now the conference room of the Ligatne bomb shelter is available for rental for your next party or meeting. Apparently, actual people have held wedding receptions in there. I'm not sure which boggles the mind more: the extreme advanced levels of irony one would need to hold a wedding reception in a bomb shelter decorated with communist propaganda, or the prospect that someone wanted to do that with no ironic intent at all. Further investigation required... but how?

Cheer up, it can't be all bad!

Hello, comrade.

Welcome to the catacombs where you will be living for the next few months. We think it will be quite safe from all the radiation above. Of course, nobody's ever had a way to do a test run, so you never know. But we put a whole bunch of concrete and lead around this thing, and it just might work.

Anyway, here is your office. You will share it with some other comrades. Here you have very nice desk, and even an extra telephone.

What? Your quarters? Well, about that, this office is also where you will sleep. I'm sure you'll figure out a way to work that out between the four of you.

It is not clear exactly what your work will be in this office; perhaps make plans for our eventual world domination once it is safe to go back up above.

Well, no, there aren't really many women down here. I guess I hadn't noticed. Well, yes, now that you mention it, that may be a hitch in our long-term plan for Soviet survivors to dominate the world. I'm sure the Politburo have plenty of women with them in whatever bunker they're holed up in, so we'll figure it out eventually.

The Red Phone

They actually had one in the bunker, and it's actually red. They also had these other phones that you can't dial - we gather you just pick it up and talk with whoever is on the other side. Perhaps if you're living underground because 99% of the world has been wiped out, you can't get too picky about your conversation partners.

Cafeteria

We were too cruel yesterday in saying that the only decorations were communist propaganda. Look at how those flowers liven up the cafeteria! Three months of living underground would just fly by in such cheery enivrons -- as long as you didn't stop to think that everyone you knew was dead.

Special apology to feed subscribers who may be seeing this for the second time because we don't know how to use a computer.

Cold War Revisited

Not quite time travel, but close. Your correspondents visited a Soviet-era underground bunker where the leaders of the Latvian Communist Party and the Self-Defense Forces and the KGB were going to hang out for a few months in the case of a nuclear war. Under the terms negotiated when the Russian army left after Latvian independence, the shelter was pretty much abandoned as-is, and left empty and unused for ten years. A few years ago, it was opened to the public for tours. The decoration was limited to patriotic slogans, maps of fallout zones, and many images of Lenin.

The Tank Museum

Another work trip called us to Daugavpils, Latvia's second city, far to the East. It was a fun trip, accompanying the Ambassador to the dedication of a children's welfare center that was one of many humanitarian projects in the region funded by the U.S. Military. Between the ceremony and other meetings, we got a tour of a privately owned tank museum. It was a collection of a dozen or so tanks, armored personnel carriers, and artillery pieces, all crammed into one big garage. The most interesting thing is that as the collection is privately owned, and apparently the tanks still work, not all that long ago the owner would occasionally take one out for a spin in the streets. There was never a moment for your correspondent to be photographed in his business suit popping out of one of the tanks as it rolled along, Dukakis-style. Perhaps it was for the best that way.

Oh, yeah, Latvia!

It was over a month ago that we last published anything about the ostensible subject of this journal, i.e. Latvia. Stuff has certainly been happening but we have been remiss, in part because of the traveling, and in part because we must be studiously in line with our day-job responsibilities in saying anything about events in Latvia that aren't focused on us going to a charming countryside retreat.

In any case, your correspondent was present at a large rally (estimated 10,000 people) in the heart of Old Riga a week ago. It was a political rally calling for the dismissal of the current parliament. (And to be clear, neither I nor any of my employers have any position about who should be in the Latvian parliament, since that is an internal Latvian matter. I attended as a interested bystander, not a supporter.) This protest, however, became notable in that after the protest ended, some of the youngsters who had gathered for a freezing-cold night of political discourse and no small amount of vodka decided that the next step would be to start breaking shop windows and trying to force their way into the Parliament building. Fortunately, your correspondent was called away to another event that evening, bidding farewell to our outgoing Ambassador, and did not get any pictures of young hooligans tussling with the police.

It really wasn't much of a riot by world standards, but according to many Latvians, it was the first ever in Riga. I'm not sure if or under what definition that's true, but if it is: what an odd bit of history to have been present for.

Night

In other exciting news about Norway, it's dark there these days. Latvia isn't quite as far North as Juneau, Alaska, while Lillehammer is more or less the same latitude as Anchorage. So the lifts started turning at 9:30 just as it was light enough to ski, and by 3:30, most of the terrain was too dark for comfort. Of course they try to extend the day a bit with some lighted runs, something your correspondent has always considered sort of a gimmick when it's available in America. It was much appreciated at Hafjell, because even though we were quitting at 3:30 to catch a bus back to our hotel, the last run down would have been a bit harrowing without the floodlights.

Hafjelltoppen

This was the view from the top of the mountain, heading down to the only mogul run available during our time there. It was, as it looks, cold (about 10 F or -10 C) and windy and too cloudy to enjoy the reportedly spectacular views.

Your correspondent, in his travels thus far, has mostly tried to limit the number of small-minded "it's better back home" observations. It would be contrary to his day job as a diplomat. However, while we had a fantastic time and found the amenities nice, the Norwegian people helpful, and the teenage snowboarders no more obnoxious than our own, there's just not much you can do as a ski area if your mountain isn't all that tall. Even the highest runs on the mountain had intersections with cross-country ski trails, although that might say more about how tough the cross-country skiers are there rather than how small the mountain was. In any case, neither the terrain or the snow were quite up to Colorado standards. The Lovely Katherine, in fact, felt at home there because the occasional long stretches of ice and gently undulating slopes reminded her of her childhood home base at Mt. Abrams, Maine. Which is great for her, but also a comparison not universally understood as a compliment. For the next ski trip, we will perhaps see how the Alps compare with the Rockies.

Lillehammer

We are back from another quick jaunt out of town. Norway, this time, and after what it costs to spend a few days in Norway, we may not be leaving the apartment let alone the country for a little while. We stayed in Lillehammer, which was very easy to get to thanks to some previous year's experience from traveling companions and the wonder of a device they use in Europe known as a "train." We skied at Hafjell, where some of the 1994 Olympic skiing events took place. As seen above, the Lillehammer Olympic Logo Cave Art Running Man Torch Guy is still carved out of the trees on the hillside opposite.

There was a sign at the top of one of the runs that said "Women's Downhill" in English, which your correspondent took to mean that it had served as the course for the ladies' competition in the fastest and most suicidal of ski races. Apparently not; as we discovered on a plaque near the lodge on the final day, the less-suicidal slalom races were held there. Fortunately, this knowledge came only after your correspondent thoroughly enjoyed zipping down the fictitious Olympic downhill course at speeds that bordered on suicidal given his skill level as a skier.

Another Random Istanbul Picture

The staff photographer was mildly amused by the contrast of the old and very traditional mosque and the bright-pink-soap dispensers at the foot-washing stations. Your amusement may vary.

We have discovered the Auto-Publisher

Resistance is futile. The Holla is on the march. It only took us three years of this to bother to figure out such a basic feature of Blogger. Now, we will be relentless. In fact, as this is being published, we are shushing down the slopes of Lillehammer, Norway. Never again will our travel schedule be to blame for failure to post. If only we can find the Blogger feature that can automatically work around writer's block, laziness, and general lack of insight.

Above is a picture memorializing how cold it actually was in Istanbul. More throw-away photos coming soon, since we may be posting more often.

Constantinople

As you may have learned from They Might Be Giants (or the oldsters may have learned from the Four Lads), Istanbul was formerly known as Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine empire. As such, they have some great old Roman stuff, and even some churches. The Chora Church, pictured above, was a highlight, with ancient frescoes and mosaics on every wall (well, surviving on many walls, surely once literally on every wall). The Hagia Sofia was once a church, and also had some amazing mosaics of saints and virgins and such, which for reasons that remain unknown were not destroyed when it was converted to a mosque. And lastly, there is a whole mosaic museum dedicated to large mosaic floors left behind by some emperor, including pictures of monkeys wearing backpacks and bothering birds with sticks. Detail below from the museum, but not the monkey-with-a-backpack-and-a-stick part.

This is the Best One of These Things We've Ever Seen

This is from the Istanbul Museum of Cool Old Ottoman Stuff. (Museum's actual name may have been somewhat more formal, but we forget what it was - ed.) It is maybe a foot across. It contains a tiny map of the Eastern Hemisphere (while your correspondent doesn't recall the date of its creation, I do recall that at that time the Eastern Hemisphere was the Whole Known World), with a small little metal thing pivoting around Mecca, and somehow pointing to some impossibly tiny Arabic script in columns below (or perhaps in Turkish script before they changed to the latin alphabet). But why? We don't know. Perhaps one of our dear Turkish friends, who are surely experts on all the items in the Museum of Cool Old Ottoman Stuff, will stop by to enlighten us.

Istanbul Silhouette

Several of the Mosques had scaffolding around their minarets. We made two attempts to see the Sulemaniye Mosque only to find it was also being restored inside and was therefore closed. It was worth it because the place across the street had the most delicious beans in the world. We almost went back to the closed Sulemaniye's neighborhood a third time to get another bowl of beans. Yes: beans. In other news, "silhouette" gives your editor fits, spelling-wise.

Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

Your correspondent had always associated roasted-chestnut carts with New York. Perhaps that was where he first encountered them. But they are actually popular urban fare all over, and particularly in Turkey. An economist might note the minimal barriers to entry in a city with literally millions of unemployed or marginally employed people looking to find a way to make some money -- although they are outdone in that regard by the hundreds of guys lining the Bosphorus with fishing poles. Your correspondent mostly just wished he liked the smell of roasting chestnuts a little more.

Mosques galore

One of the best moments of our time in Istanbul was, not surprisingly, in a Mosque. Since we had a whole week in Istanbul, we had tried to figure out how to do some quick trips out of town. But there was always more to do in the city, so we never bothered spending any time on a bus or train elsewhere. On our last day there, we decided to get out and go to Asia - i.e., the other side of the Bosphorus. We hopped a ferry and started hiking in the rain through the less-touristed and more "authentic" neighborhoods on the Asian side, hoping to see a couple mosques that Lonely Planet recommended (so, then, less-touristed, but certainly not un-touristed). While the guide did recommend them, it did not exactly provide a lot of details or a map on how to get there, so we took a few wrong turns and saw some side-streets on our way.

We got to one of the mosques just many locals were beginning to arrive for prayer. At the famed and highly-touristed mosques on the European side, the mosques are closed to tourists during prayer. So we were ready to be kicked out when one of the Turks told us that we (and a few other tourist who must have somehow gotten their hands on the same exclusive edition of Lonely Planet that we did) could stay and watch the prayers if we sat in an alcove by the back of the mosque. So, we did. It is an interesting and beautiful ritual to watch in person. Many of the other men who came in to pray gave us sideways glances or outright stares as they entered, so we worried that maybe the guy who had invited us had overstepped his bounds. But at the conclusion of the prayer as everyone was filtering to the door to gather their shoes, it was all smiles and happy body language, and your correspondent surely butchering "thank you" in Turkish, but seemingly getting his point accross.

We didn't get any pictures of that mosque, since they had posted signs that said "Don't Take A Picture." The above is actually the famous and intensely-touristed Blue Mosque, just as we were being kicked out for prayer time, pictured in super noisy grain-o-vision but deemed a nice picture anyway.

Of the Cistern

Both our dear Turkish friend Ayça and the ever-trusty Lonely Planet (which, by the way, now lets one download guidebooks by the chapter at quite reasonable rates) recommended that we visit the Basilica Cistern while in Istanbul. This was fantastic advice, because it was very interesting, and even more so because your faithful correspondent had essentially no idea what a cistern was. In general, of course, it's clearly some kind of water storage tank. But we had no idea what to expect, really. It turns out it's sort of a man-made cave, built in Roman times, roof held up by hundreds of columns, in which water collects for later use. Somehow, whether by intent or accident, it now has some really huge goldfish living in it. It was weird, it was unexpected, it was not like anything I had seen before: exactly the sort of thing that makes travel worthwhile.

The staff photographer managed to run out the batteries in both cameras in the battery-taxing low-light conditions trying to take a picture like the following, but, you know, better:

Oh noes

We did not realize upon writing yesterday that the best pictures from the legendary Topkapi Palace would also be of lights. Skylights, but still. We suddenly feel as if we have a mission to describe our trip to Istanbul with nothing but pictures of lighting. If you want to see a non-lighting picture of one of the cabinets at Topkapi, which is, to be honest, pretty much as awesome as a cabinet has ever been, you'll have to follow a link.

Anyway, Topkapi. It's famous; it's got all sorts of insanely detailed decor; it shares its name with both an acclaimed movie and a costume jewelry store at the Greeley Mall, and perhaps outshines them both. It also has cool skylights in this honey-comb pattern, capped these days with the tops of 2-liter soda bottles, to the best of or discernment:

Interior Design

Your faithful correspondent, while relatively well traveled, had never before set foot in a mosque. That was remedied and then some in Istanbul, where there are a few mosques of some note. The first one we visited was less renowned than some of its neighbors, but remained one of the favorites throughout the trip. And the first thing one notices upon entering? The lighting. Yes, there is the soaring domed ceiling and the amazing Arabic calligraphy, and the unbelievably detailed geometric patterns everywhere. But first and foremost are the giant concentric circles of light bulbs suspended from said soaring dome. Hopefully slightly deeper insights about Istanbul in the coming days.

A few more pictures of light bulbs over at Flickr.

Happy New Year

Lucky for you, we're back for another year of travelogues interspersed with occasional thoughts about Latvia, when we stop by there for a few days now and again.

Our most recent non-Latvia destination: Istanbul, which despite being a fair bit south of Riga and right along the famously temperate Mediterranean, was ass cold. That is: snow and rain and biting wind and lots of stops to help The Lovely (if Somewhat Circulatorily Challenged) Katherine regain feeling in her fingers cold. We didn't have any days planned for the beach, anyway.

The above picture is the scene on New Year's Day in front of a restaurant that had decorated for New Year's Eve. They cut down the string of balloons from the storefront and there was a near brawl of excited kids trying to get a few. It's as New Years-y as the photography got.

Santa Run

We did one of those Santa Runs. You know, for kids. You sign up. You pay some money. You con your co-workers into also paying some money. You get issued a Santa suit. You run around town in the Santa suit. You give your money to charity.

Except that they ran out of Santa suits. So your correspondent ran around in a Santa hat only. Well, that is, his normal running clothes, plus a Santa hat. It was less festive. But the sun was out for the first day in weeks. And the kids still got their money.

Your correspondent also ran the grueling course through Old Riga -- including quick stops to snap a few pictures of the other Santas (the staff photographer was unavailable)-- faster than the two strapping young members of the United States Marine Corps who participated. I won't mention their names because think they could get dishonorably discharged for letting a State Department bureaucrat beat them in a test of physical fitness, even if it's more about silly costumes than strength and stamina.

Italy: Fashion Capital

Your correspondents diligently stopped by all the main tourist sights, such as the Pantheon (quite cool) and the Spanish Steps (uh...) and the Trevi Fountain. It certainly is an interesting spot, monumental and ornate. But it's one of those sights that doesn't exactly continue to reveal more of itself upon extended viewing. Nonetheless, the square around the fountain was bursting with tourists, all taking pictures of each other and throwing coins in the fountain and doing your normal tourist things. The staff photographer and art director both agreed that photos of our fellow tourists taking pictures of each other would be more interesting than any picture of the fountain. The pictures were mostly not that interesting, it turns out.

That is, until this couple emerged from the crowd and took approximately five million pictures of each other, all with a pocket camera. No harm, no foul, right? But their shots grew increasingly ridiculous, as they worked their way to an uncrowded corner of the fountain, and then started posing, staring off into space, lounging on the fountain, as if they were going to submit these pictures to the next issue of Vogue. The guy took his turns and didn't lounge so much as strike manly poses in his sunglasses and leather jacket. Still, their vacation, they can take whatever pictures they want. But the utter seriousness with which they did it was kind of mind-boggling. The staff photographer took so many pictures of the whole process that it was inevitable that at one point the subject would notice, as seen above. In a remarkable demonstration of their seriousness, she flashed only the briefest glance of recognition, and carried on as if what they were doing was completely normal.

At that point, they seemed odd, but admirable for their lack of concern about what anyone else thought about how they got their kicks. Then we ran into them again, walking away from the square, apparently with two assistants carrying their shopping bags and luggage for them. The picture was growing clearer. Then we saw them again making a public scene at another fountain in another square, with one of the assistants taking pictures with the pocket camera and the woman screaming her head off as the guy picked her up - maybe threatening to throw her in the fountain?

We didn't hear them speaking much, but we have a pretty confident guess on where they were from and why they were acting like they owned the city and all the other tourists were there to see them, which it would be impolitic to print here. I'll just say we hope if we ever have the money to have an assistant carry our shopping bags around town, we'll do so somewhat more discreetly.

More from Rome

Interesting piece of non-church architecture in Rome. Or at least dramatic.

At the very least, you need a beer

Among those who enjoy the game of counting up how many countries one has been to, some take a no-holds-barred approach. I read an article about the "Traveler's Century Club" of people who have been to at least 100 countries and want some certifying organization to vouch for how awesome they are. The article profiled some retards who were sailing by some small island country without a visa, and put out a distress call so they were "rescued" and taken to the island, whereupon they checked it off their list and then sailed away. In my mind, people who probably wasted half of some tiny nation's annual security budget in order to get more credit from the "Traveler's Century Club" should have their passports revoked, not celebrated.

Some of us, on the other hand, find country-counting amusing but not worth risking any lives for. And for me, a country as goofy as The Holy See should maybe not really count. They do have a flag and their own post office. They also have a church that is pretty impressive, but does not meet the medieval-mosaic standards discussed yesterday. They also have a ridiculously large museum. And the Sistine Chapel. I guess that counts for something. They do not, however, meet the official Frank Zappa definition of nationhood: "You can't be a Real Country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer." Well, he's dead, and I don't have designs on joining the Traveler's Century Club, so we'll just use our own personal judgment and count it.

The picture above is the outdoor seating in front of St. Peter's, presumably for the overflow crowds celebrating mass there.

Get wise, get to church

Did we mention we went to Rome? A four-day Thanksgiving weekend may be a little quick for a visit back home for turkey and cranberries, but it was enough time for a quick hop down to Rome, where we saw nary a pilgrim and nary a mashed potato. Not to say we didn't eat well. Pizza for every lunch, pasta for every dinner, wine for every moment in between... hard to complain.

Speaking of things that are unsurprisingly nice in Rome - they have some churches there. We saw many of them, and didn't scratch the surface. They have the big Renaissance masterpieces, but this correspondent prefered the olden-days churches with vaguely naive-looking mosaics, as the one pictured above. It is named something like "Church of the Virgin of Trastevere," apparently not related to the "Church of Vinny Testaverde," which is perhaps an abandoned shrine somewhere near the Meadowlands. Vinny was not pictured in the apse mosaic, in any case.

Whoops

As perhaps predicted, we were otherwise occupied all evening and didn't even look at pictures from Rome. It's the Brits' fault, actually, for detaining the staff at a marathon five-hour game of British Embassy-sponsored pub trivia in Riga tonight. In any case, they do a fine pub trivia night, but it's not their only skill. They are also very good at snatching priceless artifacts from their ancient resting places. They do make a convincing case that if things like this crazy Assyrian relief, painstakingly crafted and then deliberately written on in crazy Assyrian writing, would probably be in a lot worse shape today if still kicking around the Middle East somewhere. Likewise, they claim, the Elgin Marbles. It's a debate we won't settle here, but we were pretty excited to see them in London, and even though we yesterday mocked the idea of taking pictures in museums, we relented in this case.

London

While The Lovely Katherine worked, the Staff Photographer was free to amble about London, snapping photos, surprisingly few of which amounted to anything. But we like this one. He also endeavored to stop into every museum in London to see various Elgin Marbles and Rembrandts and such, but mostly didn't take pictures of them, either because it wasn't allowed or generally taking pictures of things in museums is kind of silly when there's a postcard available in the gift shop. Anyway, tomorrow: Rome, unless we don't get it organized and resort to posting one more picture from London, perhaps taken in a museum.

The Tube

The London Underground is a great system. But some parts of it are a bit creepy. Like this tunnel, with its exposed insulation and security cameras. They also do an amazing job with selling advertising space on the escalators. American subways beaten at their own capitalist game.

Shopping!

Well, shopping, sort of. On the advice of our friend Paul (who has his own unique travel sense, but likes England enough that he managed to acquire a dodgy black-market UK passport) your correspondent spent a fair bit of time exploring various markets in London. These are mostly outdoor markets, selling variously: snobby gourmet foods (Borough Market), hipster clothing and accessories (Spitalfields), disaffected middle-schooler clothing and accessories (Camden), and last but not least, junk -- or rather, antiques -- (Portobello). While there were interesting items and people at each, the junk market was definitely tops in our book.

The further one got from the underground stop, the cheaper and perhaps more "authentic" and "local" the merchandise. Right near the Tube were touristy stuff like made-in-China-but-vaguely-antique-looking pocketwatches, then some interesting antiques like vintage typewriters and telescopes and a couple guys selling toy soldiers or other little figurines (as pictured above) who took it as a challenge to have a toy soldier in the uniform of whatever nationality a visiting shopper might be. (USA was an easy one, of course. Latvia was a stumper.) Moving on, one could find old paperback books, and tons of complete collections of themed cigarette-pack cards, and for some reason, gauges ripped out of boat instrument panels. Then clothing. Then vegetables. Then, reminiscent of Guatemala, a few blue tarps spread on the ground with some old batteries and random bicycle parts and questionably functional clock radios and decades-old VCR tapes of movies nobody wanted to watch then, let alone now, all for sale at sure-fire bargain prices.

Good times. Thanks for the recommendation, Paul. We have purchased you a random socket wrench from one of the blue tarps, which we will send soon, as a token of our gratitude.

London

Did you know we went to London a couple weeks ago? And we never told you about it? Sorry, we just totally flaked. But we were there. Check out the dudes in various silly hats if you doubt it. No other country would have the ingenuity to come up with such a nice variety of silly hats, and then actually use them. And then, crowds of people stand around in front of Buckingham Palace to get a glimpse of the guys with silly fuzzy hats walking around. Meanwhile, just a few blocks away, the staff photographer was alone with the guys in the fuzzy hats and the guys in the funny police hats, vigilantly keeping him from rubbing the fuzzy hats to see if they are as soft as they look.

Right then. So maybe this week a bit of London, next week a bit of Rome, and then maybe a bit of Latvia. All this international jet-setting is really hurting our publication schedule.