Son of Revenge of Prague Airport

7:50 AM. Not much going on.

Prague Airport continued continued

Prague Airport continued

Photo department running the show. Not much to be said, though. We warned you. You can see it bigger by clicking on it, but blogger turns them into sad low resolution versions.

More from Ruzyne

We were there early on a foggy morning. Not much to see. Didn't stop this guy from looking.

A Brief Layover

Sorry, Hollamaniacs, but we have a busy few days ahead, and then we're heading to Prague for a few days later this week. So, we don't have time to come up with many insightful observations about Latvia. Not that we've ever let that stop us before, but this time, we're waving the white flag.

In honor of our probably being in Prague by the time you see several of this week's posts, we present a series of pictures the staff photographer took a few months ago during an hours-long layover in beautiful Ruzyne airport in the Czech Republic.

After the Big Event

Being out in the country, with true country Latvians, or at least city Latvians acting like country Latvians, we had to finish the day off right. And what better way to cap off a day of standing around in snowbanks and drinking than spending the evening standing around in the snow along the side of the road, drinking, and roasting weenies on sticks over an open fire? To complete the deal, and building on his vodka-swilling experience from earlier in the week, your correspondent briefly transitioned from cheap beer to the cheapest of cheap vodka, alternating each swig with fruit juice straight from a carton. Some elements of country living are the same all over the world. In fact, we even saw one roadside good Samaritan repaid with a healthy swig of Jim Beam and a coke chaser, which I believe would be considered a fair swap in many parts of our own country.

For further research someday: The Latvians have a mind-boggling array of packaged hot-dog-quality sausages available in their grocery stores. We sampled several. They mostly tasted like hot dog, but the vodka may have had something to do with that.

The Big Event

What could draw your worldly correspondents to not only the distant town of Madona, but the countryside near Madona, on a March Saturday? In short: Monster trucks.

A Latvian friend, who when he is in Riga you would perhaps not guess is a monster truck kind of guy, happens to participate in a series of off-road jeep orienteering competitions in the fields, swamps, and forests of Latvia. Due to needed repairs on the family "mud horse," he was not competing, so he took us along to go stand in the snow and watch souped-up land rovers run over saplings in a ten-hour test of whose was truly the most souped-up machine.

This involved a lot of tear-assing through fields:


But also forests. To get a closer look, we took our trusty guide's not-souped-up Land Rover onto a one-lane logging road with a foot of snow and no hope of turning around. We got stuck multiple times, and eventually just walked behind as another spectator towed the car along the road and out of the way. All so we could see the quasi-monster-ized jeeps bounce through some ditches and run over innocent saplings in their quest to reach the most checkpoints over the course of the day.


It was awesome. Someone asked if we have such events in America, and I can only guess that in the arroyos of Texas and the mountains of Wyoming and the forests of New Hampshire, there are indeed people doing jeep orienteering or whatever you might call it -- but I've never seen it.

Of Kurzeme

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Are foreign place names really all that funny? Well, certain members of the Embassy community here get no small amount of amusement from the city in Latvia called "Madona." I think they are a single "n" away from a true tourism bonanza. They could alter the name slightly and become the Latvian Ciccone Graceland, perhaps. As it stands, they are stuck with a few random characters such as your correspondents, who were taken to the country just outside Madona by a local guide to see an unusual spectacle which will be described in this space shortly. For now, a sign that I assure you is not a protest against the one-time Material Girl's current string of forgettable albums, but a notice to drivers that they are leaving the town limits.

Of Latgale: The Russian House

Your correspondent's trip to Daugavpils included a (thankfully) final stop of the day at the Russian House, a kind of community center for the ethnic Russians who make up the majority of the population of Daugavpils. It's a pretty diverse city, with Latvian, Latgalian, Polish, Belorussian, Ukrainian, Jewish, and Lithuanian populations. (I.e. Pretty diverse in one sense, although in the grand scheme of things most of these populations have more than a little bit in common. Nobody's going to mistake it for Los Angeles.)

Anyway, the Russian House had a variety of historical items and collections of Russian crafts. They had old orthodox icons, a room full of Russian porcelain, a variety of three-dimensional plate/sculpture things that we did not get a picture of and can't possibly describe with words, nesting dolls from all over Russia, and much, much more. They had a little bowl of petrified sap nuggets from the Holy Land, and even gave me a small nugget. I was then informed that it would protect me from harm if kept on my body at all times, as in the case of a previous visitor who had, sap in hand, missed her plane out of Latvia, which plane then (reportedly) crashed.

At the end of the tour, in a display of what I presume was traditional Russian hospitality, my hosts offered me coffee, tea, pastries, chocolates, and three various kinds of vodka, about which vodka they said it would be a horrible insult not to drink a shot of each. Or maybe my crack Russian translator just wanted to see me get trashed. At the same time, the city employee who had been showing me around the town was already on overtime, so there was no chance to linger over the vodka. Above are the special home-made, home-decorated bottles of, respectively, horseradish vodka, pepper vodka, and "siberian nut" vodka. I made the mistake of complimenting the horseradish vodka and was almost poured another glass. It was, in fact, pretty tasty, but I did have to drive a few minutes to the hotel, and diplomatic license plates or no, three vodka shots plus wine punch in 15 minutes, is a bit much for some of us weak-livered Americans to drive on. Perhaps I can thank the petrified sap nugget in my pocket for my safe arrival at the hotel.

In any case, my hosts were extraordinarily kind with both their time and their alcohol. It was one of the most memorable things I've done in Latvia, and I certainly hope they were serious in offering to make me a bottle of horseradish vodka to take home next time I'm in Daugavpils.

Of Latgale

We made two separate expeditions to the Eastern stretches of Latvia over the last week. The first was related to the day job, visiting Daugavpils (pop. ~100,000), Kraslava (pop. ~10,000), and Dagda (pop. ~2,000). I don't think Dagda gets a lot of diplomatic visitors. I talked to the students at the high school about America, they asked questions about whether we're really as violent and fat as is rumored. (Answers: "No," and "We're working on it, ok?")

Above picture taken out the only slightly dirty windshield while driving near Dagda.

Of Vilnius: Robotukas

This was without a doubt the highlight of the trip to Vilnius. While a traditional (i.e. not much to watch for terribly long) dance performance happened on stage in full traditional attire, this guy was backstage, doing his own equally basic dance. But his was far more entertaining, because for some reason, he is dressed as "Robotukas," whatever that means. Not unlike the Zappa/Soprano sculptures a few blocks away, Robotukas demonstrated an admirable sense of the absurd and the off-beat that seems to define the beating heart of Vilnius. And even if it didn't mean anything larger about Vilnius, who can resist a guy dancing in public dressed in a cardboard-box robot costume?

Of Vilnius: The Grassy Scepters

The most popular item for sale at the St. Casimir's Day fair are these unusual items. They are basically staffs made of dried grasses and flowers. The story we heard was that because there are no palms to be had in Lithuania, they started making these as a substitute in preparation for Palm Sunday, which is usually not too terribly far away when St. Casimir's comes around. Your correspondent has never really understood what one does with a palm on Palm Sunday, but apparently if you don't have a palm, you need one of these things.

This picture was taken at a sort of parade that we happened upon, wherein most of the participants (other than these women carrying not-palm things) looked like they were on their way to a Renaissance Faire, with different degrees of expense spared on the costumes.

Of Vilnius: No Sculpture of Paulie Walnuts. Yet.

Vilnius somewhat famously has a public sculpture, mere steps from the U.S. Embassy, of Frank Zappa. (Well, not that famously. Don't feel bad if you've never heard of it. Famously among Lithuanians and those of us who wore out the figurative grooves on Burnt Weenie Sandwich.) It's an oddity that is definitely worth a look if you're in Vilnius, but it's really not a very interesting sculpture and doesn't work well with its surroundings as public art.

At least for now, Mr. Zappa is not the only odd bit of American-pop-culture public art on display. From what your correspondent could gather, in keeping with its role as European Capital of Culture for 2009, Vilnius initiated a project called "Art in Unusual Places." Exemplary of this project: This monumental sculpture of Tony Soprano in his bathrobe. Why? We cannot say. Frank Zappa's peculiar musical expression was supposedly an inspiration for the freedom-starved Lithuanians in the 80's. I hesitate to guess that a sculpture of Tony Soprano could be similarly inspirational for today's Lithuanian youth.

Of Vilnius: In which are discussed the Potato Bombs

This was the dinner your correspondent ate in Lithuania. They are "Zeppelins," which are meatballs wrapped in mashed potatoes and boiled, then slathered with butter sauce. It is a traditional food that people apparently eat on purpose.

The Baltic cuisine news did not improve over the weekend. The next morning we stopped at a blintz stand we had spotted the day before. The Lovely Katherine, paying no mind to the time of day (actually, many honest people were eating lunch by then), had a chocolate and banana blintz (or blynai in Lithuanian, I know but can't tell that it's different from a crêpe). I asked about the savory options and decided for the "spicy pork" filled option. Which looked delicious as the piled a little mountain of ground pork and beans on the pancake. Then they added an equal part of ketchup. Then they added an equal part of mayonnaise.

As if this wasn't bad enough, on our way out of town, we spotted a restaurant promising doner kebab and burritos. We decided we had to roll the dice and try Lithuanian burritos. It wasn't all bad, other than that it was drenched in thousand island dressing and cooked in a panini grill thing. The rule, as always in the Baltics, is to imagine the food you want and then to imagine it with a pound of sour cream or mayo on top of it and decide if you still want it. This counts for salad.

There are a lot of very cool things about the Baltics, but when bidding on our next tour, your correspondents have pledged to take cuisine into account more seriously. How do you say "Zeppelin" in Thai?

Of Vilnius

We have been happy to provide several weeks in a row of wholly Latvia-centric content, in keeping with our primary mission. But it couldn't last. Your intrepid correspondents spent the weekend in the capital of our neighbor to the south, Lithuania. This weekend, Vilnius celebrated St. Casimir's Day with a street fair. Your correspondent witnessed folk dancing (not unlike its Latvian counterpart); drank hot beer (beer being essential for any street fair, but when it's freezing out, you need a hot beverage); and got shoved around by the insane crowds that were pushing past thousands of booths, each booth selling various traditional Lithuanian wares such as wooden spoons (again not unlike Latvia), special dried-flower arrangements, and bagels. They sell the bagels on a string, which many people wore around their necks, as above. I guess that could be why the bagels have a hole in the first place. Unfortunately, cream cheese is apparently not a traditional Lithuanian accompaniment.

Yeah!

This curious character, apparently some sort of circus version of the Tasmanian Devil, looks like he might be used to advertise sugar cereal. But no, he is featured here in Latvia on the label for a loaf of Latvia's famous black bread. It does say "with HONEY" real big. Perhaps the reality is that Latvia's famous black bread is actually a children's food. I can't imagine being big on rye bread at the age where a psychotic little clown-monster was a convincing marketing pitch, but I guess these are the little cultural differences that make life abroad so rich.

Not Just in Panama Anymore

Some time ago, your correspondents published a dispatch lamenting that we had fallen behind lowly Panama in providing consumers convenient pre-mixed alcoholic beverages. Well, the news only gets worse here. Not only does tiny Latvia also have a similar lead in pre-mixed beverage technology, they are doing so with our bourbon. This cannot stand.

In fact, your correspondent should concede that it has been years since we spent much time perusing a liquor store in the United States other than those way over-priced ones on Connecticut Avenue in DC, which probably don't carry Beam-and-Cola-in-a-can and if they did it is probably $5 a can. Perhaps the more down-to-earth liquor stores of our great nation are working this fertile terrain.

Snow Islands

Not long ago, we boldly proclaimed that it does not actually snow much in Riga. There has not (yet) been a blizzard of ironic comeuppance.

In fact, it snows often, but rarely more than a half inch. When it does, the property managers of Latvia are out early, shoveling or sweeping the snow into little mounds. Often it doesn't get much above freezing for days or weeks on end, so the piles from each tiny snowfall just keep building, and you wind up with all the sidewalks lined with these islands of snow. Except, of course, for sidewalks along city parks, where nobody can be held accountable for failure to clear the sidewalk. There, the occasional half inch of snow gets tramped down each day to create the most slippery hundred-yard stretches of ice imaginable, unlikely to disappear for another month at least.

Tramvajs

This is the tram barreling down on whoever dares ignore the sign from yesterday's post. This is neither a great photograph nor illustrative of anything interesting. Actually, don't expect much this week. We're just trying to keep our heads above water on this every-weekday posting schedule right now. But we have big plans. It will get better soon. Or we'll quit posting so often. One or the other.

Warning!

This is an apparently ancient sign warning people that they are about to cross not train tracks, but tram tracks. Tied around the bottom was a length of red-and-white-striped tape like you might string from one pylon to the next marking a road closed or an area off limits for parking. In this case, it was perhaps warning people that there was a warning sign that they shouldn't run over, which looks to have happened before, perhaps pre-tape.

Now That is a Hat

Taken out the car window on the way to the grocery store.

The "Nature" Trail

Eventually the snowy trails we had been following met back up with the well-traveled and therefore ice-packed "nature trail." The friendly visitors' center staff had told us we would see some animals on this trail out in the open air, which seemed a bit odd. Well, it turns out the National Park nature trail is more or less a zoo. The animals do have large enclosures, and are all local (or close enough - there were no giraffes, at least). We saw wild boars, wolves, and owls, and might have seen bears and elk if the season were right or if we had really spent much time looking. The worst part was that the trail was made more visitor-friendly by installing stairs on the inclines, which are not so easy in snowshoes - we mostly hopped off the trail to go overland beside the stairs when it was possible, but it wasn't always an option.

In any case, the park was very pretty and well maintained, but definitely a little less focused on outdoor recreation than what we would expect from our National Parks back home.

Snowshoeing and the Arts

Continuing from the previous post's tale of snowshoeing in Gauja National Park...

The snowshoeing trail we did was really short, so we decided to follow another random trail that didn't seem to be heading back to the parking lot. Along this trail, we were surprised to find a series of sculptures, hewn fairly roughly out of tree stumps. Mostly they were figurative, including a couple women, a bear doing some sort of salute or dance or something, and a couple that it was hard to tell what was going on. Definitely not something we were expecting out in the middle of the woods. Of course, even the middle of the woods in Latvia is rarely all that far from civilization.

The Mighty Gauja

Your correspondents did their best to arrive in Latvia prepared for the long, dark winter. We calculated that we would need some way to get out and exercise during those frozen six months, so we invested in snowshoes. We tried to invest in cross-country skis, but those took a little more research and a little more expense and it just didn't happen. But that's just as well, because the secret of the long, dark, frozen winter here is that it is long, it is dark, and it is frozen, but it isn't really all that snowy. Reliable reports indicate that there were only a couple decent snowstorms the whole winter last year, and this year is barely ahead of that.

In any case, after a few meager inches of snow last week, your correspondents felt like they needed to get out and justify the purchase of said snowshoes. We went to the Gauja National Park, centered around Latvia's most scenic river, and found a visitors' center to inquire about trails. The friendly visitors' center employee told us that several trails were closed because of snow, but the nature walk, where one could see a variety of animals, was open. We tried in vain to explain that we wanted to walk on snowy trails because we had snowshoes. This is a hard concept to explain without the word "snowshoes" in one's vocabulary. Because to literally say "snow shoes" makes it sound like you have winter boots, which isn't really the same.

Anyway, we decided to try out the closed trail and were rewarded with the above picturesque view of the Gauja.

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.