Heading North for a Taste of the Baltics

Europe » Latvia
July 1st 2009

Published: September 15th 2009

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Jub and Anna

Fields of Latvia

Greetings!

Since last writing, we've returned home to reality, but we are determined to finish our blog entries ... so here we go.

From Chisinau, we caught a cheap flight to the northern Baltic outpost of Riga, Latvia. Riga's reputation as a destination for British stag parties precedes it, so we weren't alarmed when we arrived in Old Town to the sounds of drunken raucousness. Indeed, the mayor has recently threatened to kick stag parties out of town after a string of “urinating on the Riga Freedom Monument” incidents, which, given the history of the country is completely understandable. And, it seems, the local mob has taken advantage of the boisterous drunks so many times that even the US Department of State warns against frequenting certain bars and clubs, which have been reported to coax men inside with gorgeous women and hints of sex (on the payroll, of course) before threatening the men with violence if they don't pay exorbitant sums of money for drinks. Needless to say, we steered clear of these places (but did take a few walks by the outside to confirm that, yes, there were gorgeous women and ultra sketchy men there).

The Museum

Vilnius carvings

of the Occupation (formerly the Museum of the Revolution under the Soviets … a pretty smart rebranding) was more our scene. We spent a few hours there viewing Latvian partisan Nazi and Soviet uniforms, propaganda posters and ingenious handicrafts made in the gulags, learning about Latvia’s tumultuous and oftentimes heartbreaking past.

Aside from the city’s party tourism and intense history, it is a pleasant, photogenic place. We spent time taking in the city’s architecture, which includes one of the most extensive collections of Art Nouveau buildings in Europe, a remnant of the city’s economic boom times of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, as well as some crumbling Soviet-style apartment blocks, which we watched being torn down by gigantic dinasaur-looking bulldozers one afternoon. And we loved walking around the Central Market in Maskvas Forstate (the Moscow Suburb), compromised of thousands of vendors in huge old zeppelin hangars on the edge of Old Town. The Babushka ladies in the meat hangar were nicer than the ladies of the cheese hangar for some reason clearly not tied to the relative toil of the jobs.

From Riga, we caught a bus south through blooming yellow fields and over the border

Latvian soldier

Riga

into Lithuania, stopping in Vilnius, where we holed up in a hostel in the quirky Uzupis neighborhood, an artsy enclave that has declared itself an “independent replublic” and has erected a statue of Frank Zappa in place of Lenin. (A sampling of the Uzupis Constitution: Article 12, “A dog has the right to be a dog.” Article 16, “People have the right to be happy.” Article 17, “People have the right to be unhappy.”) We came across many unique sights in Vilnius during our week there: a gigantic statue of Tony Soprano, a local character bedecked in chains and shouting out poetry, street performers singing the blues, DJs spinning records until the wee hours, and university students recruiting tourists to join human pyramids.

We spent a good amount of our time in Vilnius hanging out at a river-front café in Uzupis and wondering how such a beautiful, charming city full of art and music could bloom out of such a brutal and repressive past. Only one near-disaster came out of our Uzupis café-chilling time: Jub dropped his wedding ring through a crack in the deck, leading to a near-hour-long search through the muddy riverbank below, assisted by many of

Riga city market

Meat!

the café patrons, who peered through the cracks of the deck from above. Thankfully, we found it in the mud. The rest of our time in Vilnius was spent avoiding church OD (there are more than 40 in the old town alone), catching up on Western movies on rainy afternoons, and exploring the city’s many fantastic tea rooms and restaurants. We also headed out of town to visit Trakai, a small town home to a population of Karaites, a Turkic-speaking religious and ethnic group, as well as the fourteenth century water castle that draws tourists in droves from Vilnius.

From Vilnius we caught a train south to Warsaw. Stay tuned for stories from Poland and south.

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