Then we had a bunch of small errands including changing money and mailing the postcards we'd just written. Rather than change litu to dollars and then dollars to Latvian lati, Evelyn figured we could change the litu to lati, since we had seen rates for lati posted here. Well, just because a change booth lists a certain currency doesn't mean they have it. The first had only 5 lati (about US$9 or 36 Lt--we had 550 Lt to change). We tried the Vilnius Bank and even they didn't have lati, so we changed to Estonian krooni (EEK) instead. Evelyn thinks we did better than we would have by changing litu to dollars here and those dollars to krooni in Estonia, but it's hard to tell yet because the spread between buy and sell on krooni here is much larger than the spread on the dollar. 550 Lt got us 1774 EEK and would have gotten us US$137. So when we get to Estonia we'll see what the rate is there. If it's more than 12.94 EEK to the dollar, we guessed wrong.
Then we went to the Post Office. We hadn't noticed it before, even though we'd walked by it several times, because they were doing construction on the main entrance and it is behind a wooden fence. We found the side entrance, though, and got our stamps (0.6 Lt for a postcard to the United States--cheaper than a postcard *in* the United States). We couldn't figure out where to mail them in the Post Office, so we mailed them in a mailbox on the street.
Mark had liked the NABUCCO he'd gotten for 15 Lt on Eurostar, so he decided to get also their LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR by Donizetti. The cassettes are actually sold independently among the cassettes of American rock and Richard Clayderman. You have to look through a lot of rock cassettes--mostly American--but there are some opera cassettes, including Puccini and Verdi. It all seems to be a brand called Eurostar, and the cassettes themselves do not label content. You have to do that. The cassettes have only the brand name. But it is nice to get an opera.
Well, we got some ice cream after that and sat in one of the many parks writing in our logs. (We spent a lot of time relaxing today. As we said earlier, we probably could have spent one fewer day here.)
Came dinner time we went back to the Picerija and Mark tried the herring pizza. Not a whole lot different from an anchovy pizza actually. He thought it was fairly tasty. He also got a local soda called 'Jo-Jo' and it wasn't bad. Evelyn was not hungry and had only a Coca-Cola. Two sodas and an individual pizza came to 8.70 Lt (about US$2). Prices are fairly good in Lithuania.
After dinner we headed over to the opera house. There were a surprising number of children which Mark sees as a good sign. We saw an odd sight as we went into the opera house. A woman was giving first aid to a man who appeared to have been badly beaten and was very bloody. Not a sight you usually see in an opera house. We climbed to the appropriate floor and spent some time finding the proper entrance. They were selling as souvenirs the same Eurostar cassettes we had bought.
On the way into the opera we heard some English again. It seems the tour group we met in front of St. Anne's Church is from the United States and is on a music trip. The woman who spoke to us beforehand was from San Francisco. In Riga they will be seeing an oratorio of Hayden's, THE CREATION, and we may also. The opera we saw was RIGOLETTO by Verdi. The story involves a handsome duke who beds all the beautiful ladies within reach. When a cuckolded husband accuses the Duke, the Duke's hunch-backed jester Rigoletto taunts the husband and gets cursed by him. When Rigoletto's own daughter falls under the Duke's charms, Rigoletto plots to have the Duke murdered, but it ends up badly for the jester and not for the Duke. The curse has had its effect.
And from this tale we learn three things: From the husband we learn that if you are going to curse someone, curse the right person. From the Duke we learn that good looks make up for a multitude of sins. From Rigoletto himself we learn that sometimes following your hunch can be worse than your hunch following you.
For one litas they have a program that explains the action in three languages: English, Lithuanian, and Russian. There were three reasons this was useful: 1) Mark wasn't sure he remembered the plot, 2) there were no super-titles, and 3) it was sung in Lithuanian, not Italian. We suppose if it were sung in Italian, any super-titles would have been in Lithuanian, but at least Italian has some cognates with English and we would have had some chance of picking up the plot from the words.
A few comments on the production. Evelyn pointed out that the sets must have been used a lot. There are canvas-covered stairs. The canvas looked like it was torn on each stair. Given the general disrepair, it's unlikely that money will be spent for super-titles in the near future.
The singer who played the Duke must have written into his contract that all his costumes would be low-cut. Each one showed the swirl of hair on his chest.
It seemed odd to Evelyn that in a country which appears to work at employing as many people as possible--doormen in restaurants, extra people in shops, etc.--there are no ushers to help you find your seats at the opera. Everyone's ticket is checked at the entrance and then you're on your own.
There is a scene early in the opera when an assassin for hire offers his services to Rigoletto. Mark leaned over and whispered to Evelyn, 'If you need anything collected....' He reminded Mark of the fellow we saw in line the first day. But the opera was well done and Gilda was sung very well, as the woman from the tour group pointed out to Mark. She had asked him how much our tickets cost and must have been a little surprised when we told her how little. She bought this as a music tour of the Baltic states and one of the reasons that they offer it is that the music itself is so cheap. The most expensive seats to the opera are US$2.25. The woman had the highest price tickets and sat two rows ahead of us. (Ours were US$1.75.) We think that the opera is at least partially subsidized by the government and it does not pay very well for the performers, but the costs are maybe 10% of what they would be in the United States. Of course, a part of what you are paying for on the music tour is for the organization for someone to make all the reservations, to determine where buildings are located, and to have things run close to perfect. That is nice, too. Do-it-yourself is a lot of work. A lot of the organization work for us Evelyn does, which Mark says he much appreciates.
The sign outside the opera house listed something (pagaiba? pabaiga?--we didn't write it down) as 21:00. Evelyn had thought that must be the ending time, but it seemed to be the time of the final intermission instead. We got out about 21:40 and took a trolley to the train station. It took longer than expected. Somehow, in spite of what the signs say about how often trolleys come, somebody else's line will always have a lot more trolleys than your own.
The station is not quite as bad as 'The Baltics & Russia Through the Back Door' would have you believe. They have installed some seats in the waiting area, but it's still dimly lit and we had to pick up our bags and our feet so they could mop the floor under us. Our train was listed for track 7, but the signs were only for 'I,' 'II,' 'III,' and 'IV.' We asked at the information window and the woman said, 'Riga? Platform 4.' It turns out there are two tracks per platform, and we found our train.
It took a while to decipher our tickets and figure out our car on the train to Riga. 'The Baltics & Russia Through the Back Door' was again useful in this regard, but we at first thought that some brightly colored (yellow or orange, if we remember) cars were the sleepers. They were clearly post-Soviet. The Soviets never used bright colors for anything--witness the battleship-gray soda vending machines. Mark thinks the Soviet idea was that people could be perfected to a state where they would realize that bright colors were not important. Human nature could be overcome with logic. All they really ended up doing was making life depressing for the good of the state. And for such a minor good at that. Whether Communism works or not, the Soviet version was handled so ineptly that it proves nothing. Evelyn went onto one of the bright cars and said it smelled bad. She had been looking for someone to tell her which car to get on. Finally it turned out that our car was one of the old Soviet-style sleeper cars on the train at the other end. It was a dull dark green.
The sleepers are more like Indian sleepers than southeast Asian ones. That is, the lower berths are seats during the day and the upper berths are folded up. However, thin mattresses (futons) and pillows are provided. (Why are all the pillows here square?)
When the conductor collected our tickets she asked in Russian (the lingua franca of the trains here, we suspect) if we wanted bedding. (Well, she used sign language as well.) We thought she meant only sheets and since it was 10 litu each we said no. Later--as it got colder--we realized it was sheets and a blanket. Luckily we were the only two in the compartment so we took the other two futons and used them as blankets!
This was now 23:15, so it was dark and our car had a little light on a switch. The light was probably no brighter than a flashlight bulb--probably less. In fact, calling it a light is probably not accurate. It was a 'dim.' Turn it on and it sucked all the light out of the compartment. Turn it on and all you could see was the light itself. Mark says he would say we are talking about one jack-o-lantern power. This was determined to be all the light that a person needs, according to the perfect workers' state. The perfect workers' state just naturally balanced the needs of the individual against the needs of the state, and this little firefly light was what popped out of the equation. Shades of 1984, the compartment also had a radio that could be turned down but not *off* entirely. Even there the knob was missing. Still, compared with the trains on our last trip, this was a real luxury sleeper.
The train car was cold and there was no way to block out the light, unlike our rented room which was cold and there was no way to block out the light.
May 13, 1994: We spent a restless night. Sometime about 5:00 the train stopped. It was already light in the compartment. At 5:20 there was a knock at the door. Passport check. Mark tried to open the door, but it would not open. Mark didn't know which position the handle should be in to open it, but it would not open in either position. Finally Evelyn gave it a try. She could not open it, then suddenly it gave way with such force that it threw her on the bunk (which got a smile from the guard waiting outside). It turns out it wasn't the mechanism. There was something wrong with the door and it seemed either to jam open or to jam closed. The people next door to us had the same problem.
The train stopped next to another train. Mark sounded out the Cyrillic on the tank cars: 'Fermi Synthicorp.' Now Mark says he greatly respects Fermi, but he doesn't want to spend a whole long time next to a tank car that says 'Fermi' in Cyrillic.
The train eventually started again but stopped about 6:00, and about 6:20 they came around for a customs check. One quick look in Mark's suitcase and they passed us on. Another passport check at 6:30 and we were officially in Latvia.
In the next compartment were a mother and daughter from Michigan (though the daughter is currently living in Moscow). After we helped them unstick their door, we got to talking and lent them the new 'Lonely Planet' for fifteen minutes, since they were using an old USSR one.
Our first view of Riga was certainly impressive. We crossed a river and there was a skyline of a thriving metropolis, but it certainly did not look like a United States city. The building silhouettes were of different shapes.
We arrived in Riga 8:30, two hours late.
Mark notes, 'I had a sort of personal reason for being anxious to get into Riga. |
