Of Moscow: Four Scenes from the Metro

The Moscow Metro is maybe the best in the world. It's certainly the best we've been on.


It's beautiful. Most of the central stations are spacious and gorgeously decorated. Some of the art seems a bit silly now; there's a lot of Lenin and a lot of happy workers and farmers being productive. But the craftsmanship is still amazing, and whole stations are cohesively designed. It makes one feel sad about the cruddy, lonely attempts at public art that are dropped into metro stations in the U.S.


It's fast. We took it everywhere and never had to wait more than a couple minutes for a train, any time of day or evening.


It's dangerously crowded at rush hour. One train every two minutes tops, more than 10 lines with stations everywhere, and they're still full. Which is fine, but then a train full of people have to squeeze onto two escalators every minute, which means the whole station fills with a shuffling line for the escalator. So, best in the world, but still not perfect. Did we mention that it's beautiful?

Of Moscow: Best Bar in Town

We tried to find a good bar on our last day in town, to relax for a little bit before sitting in the truly world-class traffic on the way out to the airport. But Moscow doesn't seem to do bars. If you want to go somewhere and buy a beer, you can go to a restaurant and pay too much, or I suppose you can go to a club and pay way, way too much. Luckily, we happened upon what we're sure is the best bar in town. Pictured above is one of the many, many kiosks that offers a broad variety of beers for sale on the street by the single bottle. We bought a couple and enjoyed them hanging out by the entrance to the Metro. As much as we would like to claim credit, your correspondents did not come up with this idea on our own. In fact, there was a great river of people heading down into the Metro, and at any point 25 or 30 of them were taking a break from the commute, just hanging out near the stairway, having a beer. The people watching was fantastic; the sun was shining; the beer was cheap (ridiculously cheap by Moscow standards): It was clearly the best bar in Moscow, and maybe the world.

Of Moscow: Matrushkas

We sort of thought we would get an authentic Russian matrushka or nesting doll as a souvenir of Moscow. But they are mostly actually kind of gaudy. Then The Lovely Katherine decided she wanted an icon we found that featured Saint Christopher, who apparently had a horse's head, which is maybe from a Bible story I don't remember so well. But it was too expensive. Oh, well.

Of Moscow: Four Seasons

Coming soon to the heart of communism, a new Four Seasons hotel, featuring views of St. Basil's.

Of Mosow: Continued

We are kind of busy right now with non-Holla related issues. So, today, a somewhat behind-schedule photo from Moscow, and probably more Moscow the rest of this week.

There was some sort of memorial or veterans' remembrance going on at their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, so traffic was closed off on this street leading up to Red Square. We also saw a changing of the guard, which involved some serious goose-stepping, but nothing as goofy as the Greek one.

Of Moscow: Red Square

It's been 17 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it was still a little odd to stand in Red Square, the heart of the one-time "Evil Empire," well-known from movies and as a backdrop for journalists reporting from the darkest heart of communism.

The square is huge and the cathedral is crazy, as expected. The greatest disappointment of our trip was that Lenin's Tomb was closed because Lenin is in the shop getting his oil changed or something.

The communist spirit lives on there, I guess. In the square, at least one side of which should be lined with cafes where you can sit under an umbrella and have a coffee while taking in the scene, there is not much commerce going on. Cross just outside the square, and it's a different story. One side of the square is now a high-end mall, with a Four Seasons hotel under construction. And just outside the main entrance to the square, any number of tchotchke sellers are at work, along with an array of look-alikes who you can have your picture taken with in front of the square. I guess I see the kitsch value in having your picture taken with a guy who looks kind of like Napoleon outside the walls of the Kremlin. And while I don't see why anyone would want to have their picture taken with a faux mass-murderer like Stalin, but given that the guy next to him was dressed as a bear wearing a t-shirt that says "Russia," I guess you could say it's not necessarily a symbol of great respect.

of Moscow: Crapdogs

A small illustration of yesterday's comment about the fun of being able to sound out Cyrillic and only sometimes know the words. The above picture is The Lovely Katherine chugging a liter carton of apple juice in front of a hot dog stand. But don't worry about that -- just look at the sign on the stand, above the smiley hot-dog monster. It mostly kind of looks like "crapdogs," no? Well, being experts on reading Cyrillic, we can tell it actually says "starbogs." Maybe our cyrillic isn't actually so good. Anyway, I think all in all, they are shooting for "Stardogs," although a quick google of "crapdogs moscow" certainly suggests your correspondents were not the first to tap this comedy goldmine.

Of Moscow

They have crazy letters that aren't like the ones you and I are used to. We don't speak Russian, but your correspondents know the Cyrillic alphabet well enough to sound out words. It's fun to sound out some 15-letter-long Russian word, especially on billboards or signs where cognates are more likely, and one gets a little thrill out of realizing that it's a recognizable concept. Soo-pyer-mahr-kiet... supermarket! It must be like what a child learning to read for the first time feels. Of course, most of the words remain cryptic, despite reading them aloud again and again, but that didn't stop us. What can we say -- we're hooked on фоникс.

Of Prague: Port-a-viny

I think this means "Wine Store" in Czech.

Of Prague: Apropos of Nothing

Seen in Prague. We're still celebrating Easter here, office-wise.

Of Prague: Bonus Easter Holla!

There was some sort of Easter festival happening while we were in Prague. There were little markets selling elaborately painted eggs and these delicious pastry things shaped like barrels and baked wrapped around a rolling pin. There was also a stage, where traditional (I presume) Czech dancing and singing happened. A polite observer might say that to a modern observer, there are strong similarities between many of the Central and Eastern European nations' traditional folk dances. At least the Latvian ones don't seem to often feature children attempting to sing.


There was also traditional food, which, not unlike some other parts of Central and Eastern Europe, involved a lot of sausages.


There were also olden days costumes in evidence, which were, in fact, refreshingly not at all like the ones in Latvia.

Of Prague: 20th Century Glass

Happy Good Friday! Here's some religious art to celebrate. But Modern, of course, as befits the Holla's hip contemporary outlook.

Riga is noted as having some of the best Art Nouveau architecture in Europe. Nothing against Riga, but this might be because Prague does so much stuff so well that it's easy to overlook all the Art Nouveau going on there. For example, this Czech fellow Alfons Mucha. Think of a an Art Nouveau picture - I bet you're thinking of something he did. Or you're not thinking of anything, but we'll let that slide. Anyway, the guy was Czech, and after rising to fame in Paris, returned to Prague to create nationalist art in his distinctive style, such as this window in Prague's most prominent cathedral, perhaps since nationalism was also pretty hip in early 20th-century Europe. In any case, I'd seen the guy's art probably about a million times but never knew who he was until now -- another broadening travel experience.

Of Prague: Or at least nearby Plzen

Our friends who we met in Prague had a car with them, spending their vacation driving around Germany mostly. Once the car was parked, it needed to mostly stay parked, so we took but one day trip outside the city. After a few days of mostly sitting olde-style beer halls and drinking delicious Czech beer, there was only one option for a day trip: Go to a small town and drink delicious Czech beer. So it was that we found ourselves in Plzen, town for which Pilsener beer around the world is named, and more specifically home of Pilsner Urquell. We took a tour of their facility, which has some very cool old copper tanks they don't use any more, and some big modern copper tanks they do use, and a big modern bottling facility. And a silly movie about how great their ingredients are and how dedicated to quality their brewmaster is, just like the movie you see at Miller brewery in Milwaukee.

It was fine, but seemed maybe not to have been worth the drive, until the tour went down into the labyrinth of huge cellars where they used to cool the beer in casks in the olden days, before refrigeration was quite so easy. They still make some unfiltered, unpasteurized beer there, using the olden days methods, of which beer paying visitors are allowed a small sample. Surely the atmosphere added a bit, drinking in a hand-dug cavern full of giant barrels of beer and creepy recently added electric lighting and cooling systems, but it was maybe one of the tastiest dixie cups of beer your correspondent has ever tasted. We went out for a meal in the town of Plzen just afterwards, but the Pilsner Urquell tasted about the same there as it did in Prague.

The above picture, by the way, was taken illicitly without flash while the tour guide wasn't looking. Please don't tell on us.

Of Prague: One Million Spanish Teenagers

Yes, one million. Your correspondent lost count at several hundred, but using advanced methods of sampling, can say with 95% certainty that there were one million teenage kids from the Mediterranean in tour groups in Prague the weekend we were there. Some of them might have been Italian. But many of them yelled a lot, and when they did, it was often in Spanish.

This is a picture from a centuries-old Jewish graveyard, packed so tight with headstones that they are leaning up against one another, ancient and crooked and mossy. Fortunately, your correspondent had to share only half of the time he was there with thirty Spanish high-schoolers who seemed to be vaguely interested in Prague and unsurprisingly more interested in each other.

The center of the city was almost unpleasantly full of tourists. No doubt, that's what keeps the city's economy afloat, but given how full it felt in March, I would not want to be there in August, no matter how charming the city may be.

Of Prague

OK, so a week ago or so, we were in Prague. That is one atmospheric city. Have you been? You should. They apparently did a really good job of not getting their stuff blown up over the last hundred years, so they still have lots of old Gothic and baroque stuff. Also: Great beer. Also also: A Foreign Service friend-of-a-friend who let us stay with her and therefore save all that hotel money for more overpriced (for Prague, but still a bargain compared to Washington, where overpriced is standard) beer at sidewalk cafes with views of cool old buildings.

The Lovely Katherine was concerned that today's Prague wouldn't hold up to her mid-1990's memories of it. Maybe it did, and maybe it didn't; but there's certainly something to be said for traveling while at a station in life that the dirt-cheapness of the beer isn't one's primary concern.

Spring!

Warning: There was no professional camera operator around, so this video may cause motion sickness. Also, the only sound is the wind whistling past the microphone, so you might want to turn the sound down to, say, zero if you're going to watch. It does not have a beginning, a middle, and an end.


I think maybe it's really Spring here. We will surely have some more cold days, but we have had several warm days in a row. Your correspondents rode on bicycle to the seaside town of Jurmala, which cleverly means in Latvian "Seaside." It seemed that all of Latvia was there. While I admit that it was still not warm enough for swimsuits and laying out, there were a lot of people wearing a lot of clothes at the beach. The most striking being the shocking number of Latvian women who are apparently so dedicated to looking good wherever they go that they wore spike heels to walk along the beach. Some of them even managed to walk rather than hobble, sort of. We wish you could see more in the video, but I assure you that the woman appearing at the very beginning on the left of the screen was not at all alone or out of place.

Leftover Madona

Race fans.

Editors note: We're trying to go back to hosting things on Flickr, but linking directly, as a service for whatever small fraction of people are interested in clicking on pictures to see them bigger without having to go to Flickr itself and without all the jaggies and low-resolutionizing that Blogger does to things.

Anyway, coming soon: Stuff from Prague! Photographs! Words, maybe!

Stairway to Nothing

The Arsenals Art Museum. It's a long climb to an unknown reward. (In this case, the reward was an exhibit of paintings of Riga's bridges.)

Spring?

This is an aspirational photo, in that it is actually from last summer when everything was leafy and green in Riga. We're not there yet. In fact, we're not close. But we have made some steps from daily painful cold to mere daily unpleasant cold. We've even have a couple days that might qualify as merely brisk. Also, we don't have any new pictures ready to post yet. Also also: sorry that half the content here in the last couple weeks has been about the lack of content.

Late Edition

We're later than normal, so sorry to all of you who obsessively check the Holla every coffee break. We got in late last night and thought we would immediately come home today and get to work putting together a week of entries from our latest sojourn. It didn't happen. So here's one that didn't fit in a week of stuff about a previous sojourn. Although, since it's from a contemporary art museum, it doesn't really matter where it was taken. What is important is that the kids are never too young to start appreciating modern art -- it's much more subtle and sublime than Baby Einstein, which will surely set your infant apart when he's ready for those crucial first days of pre-school.

We're in Prague, but this picture isn't

Flying home from Prague today, so new content tomorrow. In the meantime, here is a panoramic picture of a castle outside Madona, Latvia. Who knew they had castles like this? We may just have to go back to Madona sometime and go inside.

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

x
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.