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Published: April 24th 2008
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(Day 20 on the road)When Latvians go to the sauna, they keep their swimsuits on. I found this out the hard way when I was standing stark-naked in the middle of the main room of the sauna, with everyone else being dressed and staring at me as if I was the first guy they had seen without clothes in their entire life's. Well, the people I had asked to find this place never mentioned that fact to me, so... Altogether though, it was a very relaxing afternoon. Especially the "salt sauna", where there was a huge basket full of salt to rub your skin with, was perfect.
Riga itself stroke me as being slightly more cosmopolitan than Vilnius, but also very pretty. I also found Riga to me more spread-out: Whereas Vilnius' Old City concentrated on a few main streets, in Riga the whole area is full of shops, cafes and the like. Like Vilnius' Old Town, Riga is also recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site, and it surely deserves this status.
One memorable aspect of my stay in Riga was a conference I happened to attend, focusing on Latvia's occupation by the Soviet Union between 1945 and
1991. It was organized by the Riga office of the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, and as guest speaker it had invited quite a famous German historian, Dr. Hubertus Knabe, who is also the director of a (infamous) memorial in Berlin (Hohenschoenhausen), which is housed in the notorious former central Stasi-prison in what used to East-Berlin. Also present was a former exterior minister of Latvia and representative of Latvia at the United Nations, Mrs Kalniete, now a member of the Latvian parliament and very active in this field on a European level.
The discussion was very lively and focused on many different aspects of the Soviet past and its terror-regime in the Baltic states. Latvia and the other countries of the region are just getting to terms with dealing with this, and the consensus here was the start to a more closely working-together of Latvia and Germany (as Germany unfortunately has some experience in dealing with the left-overs of totalitarian regimes). Amongst the audience was for instance a lady that had fled from the Soviet Union's occupation of Latvia to Germany after the end of the second World War, and who had returned to Latvia after it became an independent nation once again in
1991. The mix of people made it all highly interesting to follow!
Apart from the above, its abundance of cobble-stoned streets and numerous churches, one thing that quite appealed to me in Riga was a restaurant chain called "Pelmeni XL". As the name suggest, they sell Pelmeni, and apart from a decent Soljanka and some drinks, thats really all the do (talk about core competencies). They have about 7 or 8 different varieties, all delicious, and I managed to pretty much live on that whilst staying in Riga.
Next stop: Tallinn (Estonia).
To view my photos, have a look at
pictures.beiske.com. And to read the full account of my journey, have a look at the complete
book about my trip at Amazon (and most other online book shops).
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Katja
non-member comment
Mission on your travel ...
... publishing a book about the Sauna-going-habits in various countries. I'd write a guest story about Surrey (UK), where people also were swim-suites when going to the sauna and the saunas aren't hot so there was a lady who used the sauna-oven to warm her clothes on it ...