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Published: July 13th 2006
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After a few days in the capital getting myself reoriented to this new place, I took a train to Liepaja, thanks to a recommendation from Julija. The first night I stayed at a place called ‘La Fontaine Hotel.’ It was an absolutely magical little place. It opened only a few years ago and is in an old building that was recently renovated by the owner. The owner is an entrepeneur of sorts in Liepaja; along with this small B & B he has a small restaurant, a pub/night club, and is currently building a new 4-story hotel/club/entertainment complex right on the river in Liepaja. He also owns many of the buildings surrounding La Fontaine Hotel. See more pics of La Fontaine at www.fontaine.lv, it is really an interesting place.
I had heard of another place in Liepaja that I couldn’t miss—it was a hostel in a part of town called Karosta, about 15 minutes by mini-bus away from the city. So after a day of ‘touring’ the city, which was pretty uneventful and sort of boring, I hopped on the mini-bus headed for Karosta.
The trip took about 30 minutes, because the main bridge into Karosta was closed which meant
we had to head upriver for a bit to the next bridge to cross. I learned later that the bridge was closed because of a Street racing tour that was in town (sort of like ‘The Fast and the Furious’, but more structured and legal), and in fact a whole section of the city was closed off for this race.
But I’m getting off the subject. I had been told that Karosta was built during Soviet Occupation of Latvia as a war port; it was supposedly the biggest Soviet Military Seaport on the Baltic Sea. But when Latvia gained their independence about fifteen years ago the area was abandoned, and for a number of years no one occupied any of the buildings. Most taxi drivers, I am told, would not enter Karosta up until a few years ago because it was deserted and dangerous.
Our detour required us to come into Karosta from the back end, and I was blown away by what I saw. For ten solid minutes we were driving through empty building after empty building—at least one hundred buildings (I’m guessing) just empty and abandoned. It was like one hundred Brightleaf Square buildings just sitting there, empty.
Like Fisk Hall (for all you wes folks), one hundred of them, just empty. Mostly warehouses, apartment buildings, and large mansions.
I was told that at one point before independence Karosta had 20,000 people living there. In the past few years people have begun to reoccupy some of the buildings, and now there are an estimated 6,000 living there, but there are still countless facilities still abandoned. Interestingly, many of the current inhabitants are Russians.
I finally found the hostel. It was a huge mansion of a house that the hostel folks told me was originally lived in by two high-ranking officers in the Russian Military.
Unfortunately I have no pictures of the hostel—somehow it slipped my mind to photograph it. But I do have a picture of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral that stands less than fifty meters from the hostel. It has been recently renovated.
The short story of how the hostel came to be…..a Swedish man named Karl (his name is not actually Karl, but I don’t remember how to pronounce his Swedish name) and a Latvian woman named Kristine came to Karosta and to the hostel building about six years ago and began to fix it up.
They acquired a short-term lease from the city, the agreement was that the city would waive their rent in exchange for repair, maintenance, and upkeep of the facility. Karl and Kristine started a community group, an arts collective of sorts, called K@2, the hostel being its home base. Currently k@2 has about 15 people working for the organization and countless volunteers and others who are involved in K@2 projects and activities. K@2 has six buildings all in the same part of Karosta: the hostel, a café, an art gallery space, another space that will be used for performances and exhibitions, and two buildings that are still in disrepair.
It was a beautiful thing—to see a group of people in another part of the world creating a community-based initiative using old, abandoned buildings to create a space for arts in the community. I just kept coming back to this image of a flower growing out from beneath the ashes of a burning forest—a little dramatic, but there certainly was some sort of magical beauty in what Karl and Kristine had created.
And of course I am not doing K@2, the hostel, or any of their work justice. And probably don’t have
Autorally Art
K@2 artwork on display at the autorally my facts exactly right. So you should check out their website as well: www.karosta.lv. And if you are ever in Liepaja, Latvia, you MUST pay them a visit.
On a final note, I went to the street race with the K@2 folks that evening, they all had VIP passes because K@2 was catering the event. And I (naively) had the pleasure of eating dinner at the same table as the Latvian prime minister. It was only after he had gotten up and left the table that the others informed me that he was the prime Minister.
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Liepajalover
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Liepaja and Karosta are great!!!
Did u see the fantastic seaside both in Karosta and in Liepaja center? White soft sand beach in the center, and fortresses in Karosta blasted up and particularly fallen into the sea... breakwater where you can go even by car on it... Underground tunnels, that used to be top secret... A prison for tourists in Karosta... The Arena... Oh,, so many wonderful things!!