Eastern Europe: Riga

As I started writing this post, we’d just taken off from the UK for the last time (for now, at least) and, because our Westjet flight was only half full, had scored free exit row seats! We took about 5,000 pictures over our two week trip, 9-country trip through Eastern Europe, so with all of the craziness in moving home, we haven’t had time to get to them until now! We'll go through each country in turn. Sorry for the delay!

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Our itinerary for this trip was to fly from the UK to the Baltic, then head south on a combination of trains and buses south to the Adriatic. Our outbound flight left from our home airport, East Midlands. Because Justin had just finished writing his dissertation (literally the day before) we weren’t packed at all and had a bit of a scramble - good thing we left in our taxi 2 hours before our flight and still had plenty of time at the gate! We’ll miss you, EMA! And this was our last Ryanair flight - more of a mixed bag but we’ll miss getting flights to another country for $20 return for sure!

When Justin first suggested an Eastern European tour, I have to admit I had pictured unsafe, dingy, war-torn areas. My only knowledge about Eastern Europe came from movies and from friends’ grandparents who left after the war. I’m happy to admit that I was completely wrong - every country we visited was beautiful, safe, and for the most part we got along fine in English. We had no time to learn multiple different languages, or at least the bare minimum as we had for most other countries - we basically learned hello, please, and thank you for each country. Sidenote - if you haven’t downloaded Google Translate, and specifically the offline language packs, prepare to be amazed! Without an internet connection, in real time, we could use our cell phones’ cameras to translate any sign we saw without having to type a word! It’s as close to a universal translator or Babel Fish as I’ve ever seen, and we used it a lot on this trip.

So, Latvia. One of the small Baltic countries south of Finland, with a total population of around 2 million people. It was ruled by a number of countries from the 13th to 20th centuries (this was a common theme throughout this trip), so while Latvian is the official language, there are a variety of cultural influences. Latvia gained independence in 1918, but went through some turbulent years in World War II. They were forcibly occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940, then invaded by Nazi Germany from 1941 until 1944, then made part of the USSR again from 1944 until they regained their independence in 1990. They joined the EU in 2004, mostly to avoid being absorbed by any other aggressor countries and maintain their independence, and started using the Euro in 2014. Riga is their capital city, and has around 700,000 people (one third of the country's total!).

Riga was founded in 1201 (I love how specific that is) at the site of a sheltered harbour and trading outpost. It has been an important city throughout its history and generates more than half of the country’s GDP - mainly through tourism, forestry, shipping and manufacturing.

We were blessed with absolutely wonderful weather throughout the entire trip, perfect for one of our usual free walking tours (I strongly recommend looking for one of these in any city you travel to - since the guides are usually local and work entirely for tips, they’ve never not been excellent) and enjoying the sights and varied architecture. According to Wikipedia, Riga has the largest and finest collection of Art Nouveau buildings in the world, because it was experiencing an economic boom just as this architectural style was most popular.

To show you what I mean about Riga’s beauty and lay to rest any lingering misapprehensions about the country, here’s a smorgasboard of architecture porn.

 On our first night, after arriving on our flight, we went up to the Riga Skyline Bar for a great view of the city and some expensive cocktails including the country’s signature liquor, Riga Black Balsalm (verdict: pretty good!). Justin’s had coffee and mine had rhubarb, but both were super tasty. We brought back a bit of that liquor to see if we can recreate the recipes at home.

The next morning we headed out for our walking tour. Our guide, Toms, was hilarious - he told us how he was offered a new job but turned it down flat because his commute would have doubled, from 10 minutes to 20 minutes (on foot). We started at St. Peter’s Church, which has a beautiful spire that has been hit by lightning or collapsed six times over the 800 or so years since it was built! This is in the centre of Old Town so we came back to it a few times over the visit. The interesting thing about a few of these countries is that everything is built so close together that it’s actually hard to photograph them! For some of these pictures I’m actually crouched on the ground inside the front hall of a neighbouring business.

 

We passed these four animals, the Musicians of Bremen, which give good luck as you rub their noses. They are based on a Grimm Brothers fairytale.

Next we got our first view of the town’s walls. Like many towns from this era, tall walls were needed for protection from raids, and as the town was built many houses and businesses built up against them so they only needed to build 3 walls! The two sides looked very different. One gate is officially called the Swedish Gate, because when the occupying Swedes left the city they left through this gate. However, no one in town knows this (Toms amusingly asked a local walking by where the Swedish Gate was and she had no idea, although she was about five feet from it) and calls it the Lion Gate, based on the old carving of a lion above it. We also saw a woman dressed in traditional garb twirling down alongside the wall, being filmed by high-definition steadicam cameras for some purpose.

Three Brothers are three consecutive buildings with very different ages and styles. From left to right,  17th century Baroque, 16th century Dutch, and 15th century Gothic. Again, the street is so narrow here it’s hard to photograph! Neat fact: the middle building (my favourite) was clearly built in 1646, but the door is taken from another building and dates to 1746.

The windows in this church (and many in Europe) were boarded up in the 1600 and 1700’s when taxes were introduced based on the number of windows in your building. It also has a bell on the outside of the tower (on the right side of the picture) so that people who were outside the town walls could hear the time and come inside for the night before the gates were closed!

The Riga Parliament building is not much to write home about - crammed into a small alleyway beside a church. The most interesting thing about it (beyond the fact that you can walk right up and knock on the front door) is that the building was too small, so they had to add an addition; the architect had to have the easiest job ever! (Just make it look like the rest of the building). The two buildings join at the centre of the picture, to the right of the marble statue.

We also saw the Riga Domus Cathedral, which has the 4th largest organ in Europe with 6,700 pipes. Sadly the organ is currently being refurbished, so the pictures weren’t too exciting. They did also have an exhibit of some neat things in their courtyard, including the original weathervane which was used from 1595 to 1985 (it’s huge!), old water pipes made of tree trunks, and someone’s heart in a jar.

 One of our favourite stories was about the next guildhall. It was built by Germans, and you had to be a German to be admitted to the guild. There was a wealthy local (Latvian) man who wanted to be a guild member, but was refused based on nationality. In a fit of pique, he built a building right across the road with an enormous cat on the roof, posing with its butt towards the guild hall! The best part is that the guild then sued the man (for emotional damages??) and forced him to turn it the other way. We ended up getting a ton of cat butt related souvenirs, including our new Christmas tree topper!

This is another guildhall dedicated to beekeepers.

The Freedom monument has three stars for the three historical occupying powers of Riga (Poland, Russia, and Sweden), and also contains the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

At the end of the tour, we walked along the river to get some pictures of the bridges and the national library. We ended up coming back at night to get more since they were so nicely lit up.

Although we had planned to go to a Latvian restaurant for dinner, we arrived to find it under renovation (thanks for updating your website, guys!) and since time was short, we ended up eating at a nearby patio that served German food (oops!). We started off with beer flights for Justin then jumped right in with fried bull testicles (surprisingly delicious!) and a 30 cm long sausage on a skewer. Justin was very happy about this amount of meat!

After dinner, we went to the ballet! In Eastern Europe, ballet and opera have always been very culturally important and affordable (10 euros for our tickets!) - not just for the upper class. We were at the Latvian National Opera with a total cross-section of society (although the screaming children behind us thankfully left after the second act). We watched Sleeping Beauty - while the first two acts were really great (not that I know anything about ballet), the story wrapped up at that point and then there was a baffling third act made up entirely of pas de deux dances between, without exaggeration, two felines (from Cats?), Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, possibly Aladdin and the Genie (someone blue) and other weird pairings. It was great to see all of the younger boys and girls outside during the intermissions trying out their dance moves and dreaming of being on stage one day, and seeing the beautiful building.

Photo credit: http://www.latvia.travel/en/event/riga-opera-festival-1

Photo credit: https://www.liveriga.com/en/7875-scheherazade-and-her-tales

Photo credit: https://www.liveriga.com/en/4486-the-sleeping-beauty-1

After the show, we headed down to get some night shots of the downtown, then headed to bed.

Riga was a great place to start off the trip - it totally exceeded my expectations and, like many of the cities we’re going to talk about, I hope we get to return one day for a longer visit!