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.

90th, revisited

The snowstorm distracted us from posting this last photo from the 90th Anniversary celebrations. There was a spectacular fireworks extravaganza over the Daugava. It was very nice, and pretty quick, which was merciful given the temperatures at that point. For some reason there was a big open space in the crowd just behind the LNT television news crew Winnebago.

Snow

It snowed five inches or so over the last day. This amount of snow would have DC crippled for days on end. And even in Latvia, five inches gets people talking about how much snow there was. It didn't really seem like that much - but apparently it doesn't really snow that much here, it just gets cold. The weather brought out the stories from locals (or quasi-locals) of winters past, in particular one when it was -30F for weeks on end. Please no.

Anyway, the picture above is in the courtyard of our apartment building as the snow was just getting going, looking at the wall separating us from the next building's courtyard. It was shot at night (well, 6:00 PM, which is well into night these days), because the weird snowstorm light seemed cool. But then the long exposure made it seem sort of day-lighty, except for the lights in the windows. It also turned out boring, so the staff photographer had to put someone in the frame to add some contrast. There weren't a lot of volunteers out in the freezing cold.

It gets cold here.

Remember this picture? Well, that was weeks ago. Now it is seriously, miserably cold out. So-called "experts" with high-tech "thermometers" say it's right at 32F, wind chill around 15F. But the staff photographer was out there on assignment for 15 minutes taking pictures and could barely feel his hands. The tropics have apparently made us soft.

Reverse Angle

This is the view from the other side of the Freedom Monument (which is actually the front) on the night of the 90th anniversary celebration, where the crowd gathered for a celebratory concert (no celebration happens here without some singing). Then the concert ended and they all raced through the old town to claims spots along the riverside for fireworks. They managed to do it with urgency but without trampling anyone that we heard about.

Happy 90th Birthday, Latvia!

Yesterday was the 90th Anniversary of the establishment of the Republic of Latvia. Your correspondent returned home in the nick of time to see some of the light displays they had set up around town (e.g. above detail of a street lined with suspended Latvian flag red-white-red fluorescent lights leading up to the Freedom Monument) and the big fireworks show over the Daugava. It was a fun night. It was also, literally, freezing. Our founding fathers were wise in declaring independence in July, surely foreseeing the pleasures of lazing about the park, waiting for fireworks. But anyway, good job Latvia on being 90!

Another November abroad...

...another Marine Corps Ball. And as we have newly declared a tradition, another Holla picture of The Lovely Katherine and some handsome young men in dress uniform. Whether fortunate or unfortunate, this year's entry was composed after several drinks had been consumed and the strict discipline for which the Marines are famed had been dispensed with. Your correspondent was apparently so inebriated that night, he failed to follow through on his long-considered plan to strategically untie his bow-tie with an hour or so left in the festivities so as to look like James Bond or Frank Sinatra or some other cool person who actually ties his own bow-tie. Opportunities were lost.

It got a little dusty at the Residence

The Ambassador's Residence, big party from 0600 to 0900 as the polls closed in California. And when Obama spoke, it became notably dusty and maybe some eyes were watering because of the amount of dust in the air and not at all due to the emotional content of the event.

A black president! The gracious concession! The story of the 100-year-old woman! America, ever moving forward! I don't think you had to be an Obama supporter to feel a little tug at the power of progress and history and reconciliation. But it probably didn't hurt.

We had a crowd of highly mixed party loyalties, despite the commonly known fact that the State Department is an infamous den of liberal America-haters. And we did have a fine time talking with assembled Americans (D) and Americans (R) and Latvians alike. But 0700 on a work day is a little early, and nary a hug nor a high-five was witnessed among the studiously non-partisan foreign-policy professionals. I'll admit that I wished I could have been back at home for some hugs or high-fives or even terrorist fist jabs.

In that spirit, no pictures of Latvia today. Above is one you've surely seen before, taken previously by a million other New York tourists. Below is the photo department's preferred shot from our stop at Liberty and Ellis islands en route to Latvia this summer, but "seagulls standing guard" doesn't really scream "America, ever moving forward," as the day demands.

Happy Election

This is a picture from Guatemala. We were hoping to find a somehow appropriate election day picture, but the pictures we had with the outgoing President in them seemed no longer apropos. So here is your correspondent, gazing off into the Future, seeking the next guy to ride Air Force One.

Your correspondent will be attending an election event at 6:00 tomorrow. That's 0600 AM. In the morning. When polls close on the West Coast, we'll be getting up and hosting a breakfast reception for various interested Latvians. (Interested and apparently early-rising Latvians, not exactly an easy or popular option in Riga in November.)

Dusk in the Park

I don't really understand the WiFi phone booth. I guess if you have a laptop and want to sit outside and check your email, you can drop some coins in the booth and surf away. I would assume it is an effort by the phone company to keep phone booths relevant in an era where everyone has mobile phones. I don't think I've ever seen anyone use the WiFi phone booths, but you can't blame the phone company for trying.