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Published: February 25th 2011
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October 22
I headed from Estonia back to Latvia and one more couchsurfing adventure. It was only about a three hour trip to Riga, a big city, where I was to meet Ligita at her office that was right downtown. For a change of pace I arrived on time and even found a place to park for a few minutes, which was very difficult there. Once again I had that now familiar combination of excitement and nervousness that goes with meeting new people and finding myself in another unfamiliar situation.
Ligita is a beauty consultant or something like that and I think she is quite well known in Riga. Meeting her for the first time was a bit overwhelming. Ligita is probably about six feet tall, she had purple highlights in her hair, fishnet stockings and had a very deep voice. She spoke English very well and had a Russian accent. She sounded just like Natasha from "Rocky and Bullwinkle". Parking was very scarce. Ligita directed me to a tiny tunnel, so small that when you were in there you couldn't open either door, that led into a small courtyard. There were maybe five cars in there and there
was no way for one of the cars to get out without the others moving. Ligita said this was not a problem, you just put a note with your phone number on your windshield and if anyone wanted out, they would just call the drivers of the cars that were in the way. I guess that was just routine there. Anyway, after one more appointment Ligita closed up shop, took me to a late lunch in the best buffet restaurant I have ever been to (and I have been to quite a few, believe me!) and then showed me some of the sites of the city. At one point we went to a restaurant that was a copy of a fifteenth or sixteenth century monastery dining hall, complete with monks, old music and no lights except candles. I had some sort of apple cinnamon drink that was different from anything I had ever tried before. It was very interesting although the prices were definitely twentieth century!
Ligita lives in a suburb called Salaspils in one of those old, ugly Soviet apartment buildings. Hers had been converted to a condo. The stairs were dark, cold and full of echoes but
the inside of the apartment was very, very nice. One interesting feature was in her bathroom. There was a long spigot in the sink and if you wanted to use the bathtub, you just swung it over and it also filled the tub. Ligita explained many things about Latvian traditions and she had branches over some of her doors that were to ward off spirits. Every summer solstice she participated in an all night ritual that she explained in detail. It was fascinating.
October 23
Ligita had to work so I had much of the day to myself. On our way to the city she casually asked if my heart was in good shape which I found a little odd. At her recommendation I spent some time at a huge public market. It included hundreds of small outside booths a well as many stores and shops. I was surprised how many vendors there were who had only a few cranberries or a few apples to sell. I bought some apples from a very old lady for hardly any money and when I gave her a tip of about one US dollar she was very suspicious, she thought there
must be some catch. We couldn't understand each other but I finally got her to smile for my camera when she realized that it was just a tip, with no strings attached. I had walked to the market. When I got back to my car in the same tiny courtyard, a Gypsy beggar was there. I told him I only knew English but that backfired because guess what, so did he. Ligita had seen him from her upstairs window while he was talking to me. She popped out the door and lit into him like no tomorrow and he scurried away with his proverbial tail between his legs. I am not sure what she said to him since it was in Lettish (the Latvian language) but I think that is good because I'm pretty sure it would have made me blush. I then took a drive out in the country and to the coast of the Baltic Sea while Ligita finished work. It was a sunny day but rather chilly.
Probably the most unusual experience of my trip happened that evening. Every Thursday Ligita goes to a steam bath. She asked me and I agreed to go
with her. What I didn't know was that this is in a private house with about fifteen other people. And they all get naked. There was the steam bath room, a dressing (or undressing) room, a shower, a large waiting room and a cold tub outside. Since the steam bath was so hot, much of the time was spent in the waiting room where most (but not all) of the people wore towels. The steam bath room was very, very hot. That is why Ligita had asked me earlier how my heart was. Just when you think you couldn't stand it, someone would throw some water on the fire and the heat from the steam would hit you like a wave. There were so many things going on in this house that it is hard to describe. For one thing people take turns laying down in the steam bath and others take these branches and hit them really hard, all the while saying something like "Oompapa, oompapa, OOMPAPA, oompapa". They also rub salt on each other and later, honey. I got the branch treatment and the salt and I rubbed salt on the back of Ligita but I never had
to hit anyone with the branches and somehow I avoided the honey ritual altogether.
At one point Ligita was in the steam bath and I was in the waiting room with maybe nine or ten other people all chatting away (no one other than Ligita and I spoke English). There was a TV in the corner with something that looked like Monty Python on, but it was in Russian. Somewhere at the other end of the room, out of the blue "The Wall" by Pink Floyd began to play rather loudly, I don't know if it was a radio, a CD, or someone's cell phone. In a third corner was a lady about 65 years old in a '70s style pant suit who was eating dinner (there was no other food out although there were quite a few beverages, no alcohol). She was the only one not naked or only in a towel and I don't know what she was doing there. Anyway the situation was so very bizarre and unexpected that I just began to laugh out loud. A few people glanced at me but I just couldn't stop laughing for a minute. People were coming and going for a couple of hours.
We left at about 10:00pm. That night, after doing some email on Ligita's computer, Ligita was watching a movie on TV. There was the voice of the actors, a voice over translation and captions at the bottom of the screen, three languages in all and none of them were English.
I had to leave about 5:00 the next morning and I was just going to get up and sneakout. But Ligita insisted on getting up and making me breakfast, a great ending to a great stay.
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