This is patently not true in the Baltic republics, at least in neither our first stop, a cold-water flat, nor in our second, a posh hotel. Generally, turning the handle means that there will be an upward or downward change in the speed of the water and it will be in the right direction, but the degree of change will be determined by factors not generally obvious to the user. If you have turned on too much hot water and are scalding yourself, turn the hot water all the way off. This will momentarily freeze you, but that is actually probably good for the burn you just got. Then start over on the whole concept of hot water for this bath, easing up slowly. I think that the mechanism may actually be that there is a man who manages water for the floor you are on. Turning a handle clockwise turns on a light that says 'More hot water to the bath in 532,' and when he gets to it, he increases the amount of hot water. This model best describes the phenomenon that the guest in room 532 sees. In particular it explains why you can turn the water off entirely as far as the handle is concerned, but the water will continue to run for some random and indeterminate number of seconds and then suddenly stop.'
Little drama going on under our window: Mark noticed a car had a 'boot' attached to the tire. This is a vice-like locking device designed to decrease driving pleasure for someone parked at an expired meter. A few minutes earlier he had noticed the car had the boot. Now Mark sees somebody who doesn't look like a policeman, but probably is an official, taking off the device and writing out a receipt as another man, the driver, pays him. The first man gives the receipt to the driver, who wads it up disdainfully and shoves it in a pocket. The official returns to his work and the driver drives away.
The art in the architecture we have been describing is art nouveau. One of the great civil architects who used this style was Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein. His son Sergei (whom we mentioned earlier) became one of the most respected directors in film history. When Sergei uses stonework in BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (the cuts of stone lions: one sleeping, one awake, and one standing and alert), that was probably the influence of his father. According to Leslie Chamberlain in the 'Insight' guide, Eisenstein led the way but was followed by Scheffel, Scheel, and Schmaeling. Eisenstein was unique, and not just because his name didn't start with 'sch'.
On the elevator this morning a man asked where our English was from. He was from Michigan. When we said we were just vacationing here, he asked if we had family here, and when we said no, responded, 'Well, why are you here then?' This is apparently not a supremely popular tourist spot. The prices are not as good as India or southeast Asia, but they are not too bad either as long as you stay out of the touristy part of Riga.
About 10:30 we decided the rain had eased up as much as we could hope for, so we took our luggage to the train station to check it. The book says that the left luggage office is open 24 hours a day. That is a great load off our minds. You don't want to be rushing to your train and suddenly find you cannot get your luggage. Luckily they run the luggage check on a 'never close' basis. We got to the luggage check to find nobody there and the place was locked up.
Somebody showed up eventually. He asked the value of our luggage. (It seems the amount you pay is 2% of the value of your luggage.) We shrugged. He said, 'Fifty dollars? A hundred?' We said fifty dollars. (The suitcase itself cost more than twice that. But Mark figures things depreciate real quick.) So it cost us 76 santimu, or about four times what the lockers in Lithuania cost. We are just afraid we will show up and he will give us 38 lati and say he's keeping the luggage. 'I'm sorry, sir; my assistant got a little careless in moving your bags. He accidentally melted the padlocks off.' Of course, there didn't even seem to be a record kept of what you had paid or what you claimed the value was either.
Well, we shall see when we pick up the luggage. In the mean time, we have a bus to catch, bus number 1 to the Ethnographic Museum. For the first time this trip it is actually raining on us. And it is dark. At least gray. This time of year dark is hard to come by. Twilight is at 22:00. Sunrise is at 5:00. Yet on May 16 it is still fairly chilly. Now let's turn the calendar around one half year. Sunrise is at 8:00; sunset at 16:00. It is bitterly cold. Most office workers are reminded of the color of their cars only on the weekend. There are heavy snows that you clear after dark because that is the only time you aren't working. Mark writes, 'There are a lot of nice people here in the Baltics for whom my best wish is that they get the heck out. I guess they are used to it, but it would drive me screaming right out of my gourd. I grew up in Massachusetts and got used to deep snows and cold, but if I had to live under these sort of conditions I would really learn to fear the winter. People adapt to all sorts of conditions, I guess. But it is no wonder that some of the places we are visiting have high alcoholism and suicide rates. I believe that science now accepts the concept that there are depressions brought on by light deprivation. I know Finland is plagued by a high suicide rate and there is bound to be a connection.'
Anyway, we were waiting for bus number 1, taking turns holding the umbrella. The street looked like a giant spider had been here, leaving a web that the trolleys used for power. The kiosk where we'd bought the bus tickets was selling PENTHOUSE. Mark says it is illegal to import pornography, and wonders how they get away with it.
Othershions standing in the rain: It is easy to tell we are in eastern Europe just by looking at the short compact cars. They look like eastern European cars, which of course they are. Riga seems to have a lot of parks in the city, more than Manhattan, certainly. The bus stop is beside one of the parks.
Well, bus number 1 at last comes. We punch our tickets and within five minutes we have to get off. Bus number 1 is at the terminal and we have to switch to another bus number 1 just starting out.
The new driver has a big sticker that says 'Killer Kommando.' It is a black skull with silver wings. Makes us feel real secure. He also has stuck up a big picture of a nice lady who has opened her blouse to demonstrate she is a mammal. You wouldn't see that in the United States.
The bus went down the main street of Riga, which has three different names, all of which are 'Freedom (Brivibas) {something}.' The road leads to the Freedom Monument. Mark wondered what the road was called when the Freedom Monument was outlawed and replaced with the Lenin Monument. Actually, then it was Lenin (Lenina) Road, Evelyn tells him. We found the Ethnographic Museum fairly easily between the bus driver (Killer Kommando) and a woman whom Mark had given his seat to. Both were anxious to help us find the museum. (This was good, because we almost got off on the *near* side of the lake that the guidebooks mention instead of the *far* side.)
The Ethnographic Museum is one of many in Europe and at least a few in the United States. Some places call them 'open-air museums.' It is a collection of buildings transplanted into a pine forest so that you can see what houses, farms, smithies, mills, etc., looked like. There are four regions of Latvia and there were four sections of the museum, one for each region. The regions are Latgale, Durzeme, Riga, and Kurzeme. There was little enough English but Mark has to say if you put a Latgale and a Kurzeme house in front of him and told him to pick which was which he is afraid he would have even less than the expected 50-50 chance. But still, you can walk through and get a feel for the Latvian lifestyle even if you can't pick out the Kurzeme lifestyle.
We arrived about 12:30 and wandered the park for about three hours. Mondays most museums are closed and this one, while officially open, was mostly closed. Most of the houses were padlocked so you could not see the insides. Enough were open so that we could get the general idea. We saw a tour group in the pub when we arrived, but there seemed to be only two other people wandering around. Maybe the early rain, which pretty much let up, had scared off most of the tourists who might have come here. Maybe Mondays nobody would come.
At the end of our visit we went into the souvenir shop, since we had read that this museum was a good place to buy souvenirs. Maybe it's too early in the season for the shop to be stocked or something, but there were only a couple dozen items. We bought a clay medallion-- apparently a popular souvenir in the Baltic states, because the apartment where we stayed in Vilnius had several dozen from different tourist and cultural sites decorating one wall. (There are also supposedly demonstrations of various crafts. All we saw was the blacksmith--and when we passed that way a second time, even that was closed up.)
From there we returned to the center of the city via bus. Evelyn wanted to check out the bookstore opposite the Hotel Riga for postcards and Arthur Conan Doyle in Latvian. We found a Fantomas novel for 2 santimi (4 cents!), but no Sherlock Holmes or science fiction in Latvian. We also got a couple of postcards to mail (all the ones up to this point had been of churches), and a pack of early 20th Century street scenes on postcards. The store was piping in a song in English. Some sort of ethnic ballad about someone called Billy Joe McAllister and the Tallahatchie Bridge. Big hit in Latvia!
We had a fair length of time until our train and really only one major activity, seeing the local cemeteries, which are regarded as a tourist attraction. They encompass major monuments to Latvians who died in the two World Wars, mostly in the Bralis kapi (Brothers' Cemetery). There is some large statuary and an eternal flame, but for us that was the only enticement. The real interest value was in just the common graves in that cemetery as well as in Meza kapi II and Rainas kapi. There are Christian graves, Russian graves, and Arabic graves. Oddly enough, the Russian graves tend to be the oddest. Some have little cameos two inches high with photographs of the deceased. If you look for young children's pictures you see little boys with years like 1940- 1943. Obviously wartime was hard on them in some way. Some of the Russian gravestones actually have photo-quality images etched into the stone. Mark thinks he found this interesting because it gave him a chance to try out his Russian reading.
Mark explains, 'For those reading these logs for the first time, let me explain: If you are going to anyplace that uses the Cyrillic alphabet, learn to read it phonetically before you go. Make yourself a set of flash cards. When I was a child it took me months to be able to read Hebrew phonetically. You can read Cyrillic phonetically in thirty minutes. Believe it or not, at least Russian in particular is very close to an internationalized English. English uses a lot of international words; Russian takes a lot more. In Bulgaria a store had the name 'Universalka Centralka Magazin' (or something like that) if I sounded out the name. I knew immediately it was a department store. Most of the letters are the same. Reading Hebrew phonetically was a skill. Reading Russian if you know English almost qualifies as a trick. And it adds a lot.'
Evelyn found the prize tombstone. (Mark says he didn't know there was a prize tombstone and so was not looking for it.) In a section of Rainas kapi in which most of the tombstones had Arabic letters there was a plain tombstone that said (in Cyrillic): POLLAK
NATHAN AARONOVITCH [i.e., son of Aaron]
1899-1959
VERA ILINITCHNA
1898-1974
OT DETEI I VNIKOV
That last part is probably what Vera's maiden name was. From the names it must be someone who was Jewish. Mark's mother's maiden name was Pollak. |
