The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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After a wonderfullly restful and -- perhaps more importantly -- warm, rest, I woke up ready to take on day two of my trip to this fascinating country. (That is such a cheesy way to start a blog update, but, I mean, how *do* you start a blog update? I struggle with that almost every time I start one of these! Weird eh?) Anywho.

My first stop today was Rigas Central Market. You would think that the central market would be in the center, but, as with many European towns, the name has survived passed its accuracy (like in Prague where the "new" market is like 500 years old!) It is actually across the railroad tracks, so to speak (and literally as well) a bit to the south of the city center. (Being this far north at this time of the year makes it pretty easy to figure out cardinal directions: If the sun is in your eyes, you are going south.) It is pretty easy to find once you realize what you are looking for: five old zeppelin hangers that have been converted into a huge market. When I say huge, that does not even begin to describe this market. It is like an entire city's worth of grocery stores, music stores, furniture stores, clothing stores, gift shops, candy shops, bakeries, and more, all crowded into one huge area. There are also tons of little booths set up outside, which at this time of the year are mainly selling scarves, mittens, jackets, sweaters and the like. (The Latvians definitely know how to do winter clothing: Practically everyone on the street is wearing a fur coat or fancy scarf or something. I guess when you live in this area of the world, dealing with cold is a must for survival!) In between these shops were other little booths selling boots, shoes, and other miscellanesou items. I dif also find an area which seemed to be devoted to selling plants -- an interesting, but not bad, thing to purchase at this gray time of year.

I decided to start my trip inside in the eastern-most hanger, which turned out to be entirely devoted to meat. It was like a vegetarians nightmare. They had just about every imagineable type of (nonseafood) meat imagineable there. Apparently people here are willing and eager to eat just about every organ or part of the animals. It was sort of interesting in a rather disgusting way. It would be not a bad place to start an anatomy lesson. They had entire pigs hanging behind some of the booths. I guess all you had to do was tell them which parts you wanted and they would cut it off. I also saw a row of pigs-heads, (awaiting a medieval feast, I guess).

The next hangar was devoted to the more homely topic of baked products and other more grocery-type items. There were baked goods and rolls and breads of almost every imagineable variety (from which I bought a very filling breakfast for .24 Lats -- about 40 cents) It was fascinating to walk around and see how much variety there was. It was also kind of fun to guess what the items actually were and compare the languages. Most of the labels were written in Latvian, but a number are also written in Russian (Riga is only a few hundred kilometers from Russia and after a half century of russian domination, there are quite a number of russian-speakers in Riga, as well as the rest of Latvia.) With the latvian, I could often get a food feeling for the item (Jogurti for yogurt, etc.) though with Russian, and its cyrrilic alphabet, there was little correlation!

The next hanger over was devoted to just about everthing imagineable. There were clothes of every imagineable type, cell phones, bakeries, candy shops, knick-knack shops, hair product shops, candles shops, soap shops, video/computer games and just about everything else imagineable! It was so much fun to just walk through all the booths and look at everything! After this hanger was a little connecting area that had some more miscellaneous shops, including a furniture shop, outdoor sporting shop and a lamp shop. (The next hanger was primarily fresh fruits and vegetables. Riga is the biggest port in the Baltic countries and it is not hard to get items imported from greener and warmer areas of the world. (It was nice to be reminded that such areas exist!)

The last hanger was by far the most disgusting and amazing. I could guess the theme of this hanger before I even went through the door connecting it to the previous rooms: fish. An entire zeppelin hanger devoted to just about anything that could be found in the ocean. There were fresh fish, frozen fish, dried fish on a stick (perhaps as some sort of snack? -- they did not look at all appetizing to me!). They had flounder, eels, tuna, and all sorts of other varieties that I could not come even close to identifying. These fish were fresh too. Like straight out of the water fresh. My friend in the Duke program who was here a few weeks ago said she saw a few still moving and one that had another fish still in its mouth because it had not finished chewing before it was caught! It was such a stomach-turning, but yet fascinating place!

All in all, the market was quite an experience. I was simply overwhelmed by the vast types of products offered, as well as the quantities of products, suppliers, and buyers there. This was truly something like nothing else that I have seen.

After the market, I headed over to the Navigation and History Museum of Riga. It was rather difficult to find, haveing no sign advertising it and residing behind a rather imposing and closed door. Nevertheless, once I did find, it I spent a good few hours wandering around and learning about the fascinating history of this capital. There have been people in this region for the last 11 thousand years or so, and though the earliest remnants are not nearly this old, the museum does start off with some very, very old items. Although the people who settled the region are though to be Finno-Ungric in origin, their artistry is very reminiscent of Celtic art that I have seen in books. There were a number of old brooches and rings with a stronge emphais on intertwining paterns. The next room had some of the later developments in thea area in the middle ages when German traders came and settled the region and crusaders came to conquer and convert it. There was a rather interesting statue there of St. Christopher. The original St. Christopher legend is that he was a huge man/giant who used to ferry people across some unknown river. Well, the local inhabitants of Riga in the middle ages, decided that this river must have been the Daugava, which runs through Riga. So, the made a large, "life"-sized statue of him and put him in a small shrine. Subsequently he was moved into the museum. It is a rather striking statue, if not for the size, then for the rather fascinating expression on his face. For a medieval statue, it is remarkably expressive with large kindly features but a rather sad expression and big deep eyes. I spent some time looking at it.

The rest of the museum was basically about the various wars that had ravaged Riga and the various governments and guilds and armies who vied for control of this important port. The most interesting thing I noticed to comment on was the fact that an exhibition room of the museum was also being used today for what appeared to be an amateur violin/string tryout. Consequently, throughout there museum a whole number of young people were running around in tuxes and dresses. Several exhibition rooms had even been changed into practice rooms and there were live musicians there practicing while I looked at the exhibits. It was generally very pretty music, but rather surreal as the background for a museum.

After the museum, I took my bearings on what else to do today. I was running sort of low on cash and the only other museum I really wanted to do today turned out out to not be quite as open as I had thought. So I decided to take a walk over to the other side of the river to the "Old Soviet Town" -- the other side of Latvia. After so much beautiful architecture and fancy extravegance, it seemed that I should take some time to see what life is like for the poorer today and what it was like for everyone when this area was part of the Soviet Union. Across the bridge on the western cide of the Daugava, the cityscape changes dramatically. Apart from one or two few shiny new buildings, most of this area is low-lying decrepid buildings that seem to either be abandoned or else lived in by people too poor to even keep the buildings together. The cloudy skys today added to the general feeling of decay and grayness. I said yesterday that Riga was one of the most colorful cities that I have seen, but the Soviets apperntly did not like color and the other side was so gray that every splotch of color, whether it be a roadsign, car, or the occaisionally restored house seemed like a drop of water in an otherwise baren landscape. I do not know how much of what I saw was actually due to the decay of soviet communism compared to the decay caused by the economic upheavals in the changing economy with the fall of communism. Nevertheless, not too many of these buildings could have ever been even moderately attractive (even when new). It was a rather depressing place, but an important contrast to remember when thinking about Riga. Not all of it is the bustling, cheerful old city center that caters so well to the tourists. Nevertheless, that city center is not just the past, but also the hope of redevelopment and repair. For the sake of the Latvians, I wish them the best of luck.

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Comments

[Maris]

The FatherLand
Just spent a week in Riga myself, the occupation museum in VecRiga is well worth a visit and Latvian beer in the 26th floor Slyline bar in Hotel Latvia beats no other. How things have changed in 15 years, good and bad, can't wait to return in the summer. Sveiks...