It seems that the bathroom door was either locked or jammed in our car. I tried a couple of times and could not get in. I had pressing reasons for wanting to get in.' (Luckily we had used the facilities in the opera house, or we might have had to take drastic action.)
We changed US$100 and got 56 lati. (That should be enough for four days, not counting the room. Since we paid for the last room with our Visa card, we figure it's better to see how we pay this time before changing a lot.) Latvia is only the third country we have visited whose currency unit is more than a United States dollar. It shouldn't make a difference, but psychologically it does somehow.
Mark writes, 'Once I had a lats in local currency, I could go to the men's room right next to the currency exchange. In fact, you could see the sinks from the line. People rarely gave them a whole lats and asked for the 0.95 lati change, I take it. It is a little disconcerting having women in there cleaning while we are using the plumbing, but different cultures have different customs.'
We came out of the train station and started walking to the Hotel Riga. The area really looks a lot like Manhattan close up. The buildings have more of a European--particularly German--feel. There are lots of carvings in the stonework, like some giants holding up corners of buildings. (Our architectural vocabulary is lacking, we are afraid, or we could better describe how the carvings are used.) Over the doorway of the electric company is a statue of Zeus (or is it Thor?) holding lightning bolts aloft in one hand. Most buildings that are more than fifty years old have some sort of distinctive decoration. Some show Russian influence with onion domes that look science fictional, like something out of THE INVISIBLE RAY. If a roof looks too plain, someone will put on a bronze cat, its back arched. This is certainly one of the cities with the most interesting architecture of any city we have visited.
There seems to be the same Baltic dourness we saw in Lithuania, however. But we are getting ahead of ourselves here. We are over a day behind in our log-writing so some of this is reflecting experiences we have not yet had at this point in our narrative.
The Hotel Riga looks expensive from the outside, but our information said that it cost only about US$35 a night. We went in and got a price. US$99 a night. Inflation has really hit this area. We decided this was a bit much, so we found a phone and tried to call other hotels. No dice. No vacancy. The hotel situation in Riga is somewhat sparse. There are two middle-range places, neither very conveniently located. The only other hotels left to try were places that supposedly charged prices like US$0.40 for a dormitory bed, catered mostly to travelers from the Central Asian republics, and didn't like to take Westerners. Now what? Well, when we go to science fiction conventions we will often spend US$100 a night. And we like Barbara Iskowitz's motto: 'Tour hard, rest easy.' Actually we are not sure if she said that or if the wording is Mark's. We think he may have combined her idea with a paraphrase of Marshall Zhukov, who said, 'Train hard, fight easy.' Anyway, the sentiment applies very well. So we took the room. And it is an improvement. It is the first warm room we have had in the Baltic republics. The curtains are still translucent and the window faces east. The appointments in the room are--well, not what we would expect from a hundred-dollar room at home. The light fixture hanging from the ceiling is orange plastic and looks like a sand toy a store would sell just before Halloween. There are two twin beds which are basically wooden boxes in which mattresses had been inlaid. Not a really comfortable bed. The night stand has a Russian radio--broken. And a Russian digital clock--hard to figure out. The bathroom has a heated towel rack and a tub rather than a shower. There is a hand-held sprayer, but only enough hose to get it about four feet above the floor of the tub. The toilet has a little indented area to go under you and when you flush it, water rushes over that little pool and washes it into a lower drain. There is something about toilets here taking pride in showing you your output and letting you assess it. Perhaps they were designed by doctors to make it easy to take specimens. In any case, it is a design that assaults both the eye and the nose. There is a refrigerator in the room that says in big letters (in English) that it is for beverages, not for food.
We settled into the room and Evelyn took a hot shower and started washing out some clothes. We had accumulated quite a lot of dirty laundry and this seemed like the right time and place to catch up. (Because the air seems very dry here, and because the room is warmer than the outside--which was *not* true in Vilnius--at least the clothing is drying very fast.)
We then rushed out to see Riga. Our first stop was St. Peter's Cathedral in Vecriga (Old Riga), which has a high tower with an observation platform that shows you a great view of the city. We walked over, struck by the German beauty and the architecture. The Cathedral itself is nice, but the statues are most unusual. Most religious statues are intended to be impressive and show idealized people. For some reason the statues around this building show people who are not so good-looking. Some are even ugly. Mark says that he has no objection, but that we tend to live with the equation of beauty=virtue and it is a little surprising when saints are portrayed as homely people. (He also admits that it may be that they were just not to his taste.)
We went in and asked about tower tickets. The woman said something in a foreign language we did not understand. I think she may have been talking in something like Latvian. We looked confused, so she said, 'Elf.' Now, 'elf' is German for 'eleven' (German is very common here), so we gave her a piece of paper that said '11:00' and she nodded yes. Well, that was only about fifteen minutes away, so we decided to walk around and come back at 11:00. We came back at 10:55 and tried to buy tickets. Again, she wrote '11:00.' Okay five more minutes. We waited and went back. More Latvian and she again said, 'Elf.' But it was elf! Had we changed time zones without knowing it? We left confused. Eventually we found out time zones had not changed, but why she was saying 'Elf' we have not figured out. Maybe she meant there was an elf blocking the elevator shaft.
Also, the price of going up to the tower had increased ten-fold since the last time it was quoted--it was now 50 santimu (US$0.78) each instead of 5. Clearly inflation has hit tourist-oriented things here.
Okay, we'll try St. Peter's some other time. We then walked over to the Dom (the other major church in Vecriga) to see if there were any organ concerts, since the Dom is famous for its 6768-pipe organ. All the guidebooks say that the concert office is across from the main entrance. All the buildings across from the main entrance were being renovated. Things were certainly *not* going as planned.
We walked around Old Riga a bit, looking at the various styles of architecture and building decorations. Buildings have classical statues decorating their facades, or silhouettes of cats perching on their roof towers, or carved frogs on either side of their doors, or gargoyles, or flowers, or ... you get the idea. Architecturally, Riga is fascinating; Mark called it 'the Chicago of Latvia.'
Next stop was lunch. One of the books recommended the Kafejnica Balta Roze. We each had a small piece of bread, buttered, with smoked salmon and onion. I had a glass of juice, Evelyn had coffee, and the bill came to 2.81 lati (US$5)! Sticker shock or what? This was *not* Lithuania any more. On the other hand, we had some pastries for dessert--a good-sized piece of cake for each of us--and they turned out to be fairly inexpensive: 35 santimu (US$0.63) for the two. We learned from this that even here, lox is expensive. We'll stick to cakes for the rest of our stay. :-)
Next we went to the Powder Tower. This is the last remaining tower of the eighteen towers in the 14th Century city wall. The 'Lonely Planet' guide says it has been a gunpowder store, a prison, a torture chamber, and a Soviet Revolution museum. Now it is the Latvian War Museum. It is a tribute to the brave heroes from the Latvian military. As military museums go, it is pretty tame stuff. The Soviets must have gotten most of Latvia's big armaments. Most of what you see in the museum is photographs of Latvia's military history, and small objects-- both the sorts of things that could have been concealed from the Soviets. There are lots of photographs of planes. There are frequent explanations that the swastikas you see over everything do not represent Naziism. The Latvian swastika is a red swastika and they were using it before Hitler. Color is all-important. The American military uses a white star. The Chinese use a red star. The coincidence of shape does not indicate sympathy.
Of course, you never actually see that the swastikas are red since the pictures are all in black and white. Mark had bought a photo ticket (50 santimu, while the admission was only 10 santimu each) so he could take pictures. He still couldn't find much to photograph.
This museum had somewhat more English than in Lithuanian museums, and less Russian. Although Riga has a very high percentage of ethnic Russians, Latvia is trying to eliminate Russian from official use. All the street signs, for example have had the Cyrillic versions of the street names painted over (except for the streets that have been renamed altogether, like 'Lenin Boulevard' becoming 'Freedom Boulevard,' which get totally new signs). And the museums have labeled things only in Latvian, or in Latvian and English.
One of the exhibits was about the Latvian legions in World War II, which fought on the Axis (German) side. The explanation given at the beginning was that Latvia did this because Germany agreed to grant it independence whereas the USSR, whom Latvia were fighting, wanted to absorb Latvia into itself. This may be true, but it may also be an attempt to rationalize or excuse their collaboration with the Nazis. The whole issue of the role of the Baltic states during World War II is bigger and more complicated than can be addressed in this log.
After the museum we walked past the 'Three Brothers,' three houses including one dating from the 15th Century, making it the oldest house (not building) in Latvia. Here, as at a few other tourist spots, people would come up to us asking if we wanted to buy postcards. This is more frequent than in Lithuania, but certainly less than many other places.
After that we headed back to the room for a rest and reconnoiter. Mark had remembered seeing a 'Riga This Week' there and we had found the parallel 'Vilnius in Your Pocket' very useful in figuring out what was closed when there. The guidebooks had said that 'Riga This Week' wasn't as good as 'Vilnius in Your Pocket,' and this one was even less useful than most--it was Sep/Oct/Nov 1992, and someone had torn out the map of Vecriga. Still, it did have a list of opening hours and days for the various museums that probably had some connection with reality. (We kept looking to see if there was a current edition of 'Riga This Week' available, but didn't see one until late our last day in Riga.)
We decided to do the Motor Museum, cemeteries, and miscellaneous stuff Saturday, go to Sigulda on Sunday, and do the Ethnographic Museum, art museum, and random stuff Monday. We also need to buy our tickets to Tallinn tomorrow (Saturday) since the advance sales window is closed on Sunday. And we decided to skip Salaspils--two death camps is probably sufficient for one trip.
To fill in the afternoon, we went over to the Central Market, a ten-minute walk away. This turned out to be a huge flea market, not unlike our American flea markets, but more densely packed. All sorts of odd things were there. You see everything from candy to electrical parts (including a lot of batteries, if you trust them). |
