Riga I

The bus stopped at the Estonia - Latvia border and we had to show our passports but the border guard, or whatever he was, couldn't/wouldn't stamp my passport. Please don't deport me, Spain. I swear I left the country.

Riga (the capital of Latvia) is advertised by guide books and tourism boards as beautiful and cosmopolitan. And it is, kind of. Mostly. It's just also snowy, and freezing, and windy as hell, and largely not open for business. Ok, so it was my choice to come to the Baltics in very early spring. Of course it was going to be cold. And there are lots of non-Orthodox Christians here and it's non-Orthodox Easter weekend, which includes Easter Monday. Of course the museums were going to be closed. So fine, most of this frustration is not that surprising, but still it's frustrating. And the Latvian State Art Museum's also being closed on Tuesday felt like some kind of last straw. Screw you, Riga, lovely Art Deco architecture and all.

Ok, I feel a little better now. The architecture really is lovely (but somehow I ended up with zero decent photos of it, and a whole bunch of photos of this one bridge I got really excited about) and a lot of the more notable buildings were designed by Sergei Eisenstein's father, which is kind of novel.

Compared to Estonia, Latvia is less well heated. And Latvian is a Slavic language, so no more ridiculous words with consecutive umlaut-ed u's. I can't make too much more sense of the language than I could of Estonian (why do I always think I'll be able to get by in any Slavic language? I can barely get by in the one Slavic language (Russian) that I've actually studied), but most people speak English and the tiny little bit of Russian I know comes in handy with the ones who don't.

Aside from the existence of the Latvian Occupation Museum (which was open and is good but depressing but at least sort of has a happy ending) and the fact that most people speak Russian, the casual tourist would never guess that 20 years ago (ok, 21) Latvia was the Latvian SSR. Same with Estonia. If a local or a guide book tells you where to look, there are a few hammers and sickles and Soviet stars to be seen, but not many. And there are some Orthodox cathedrals and some Soviet-looking buildings outside of city centers, and there is borscht and sometimes Russian beer, but it feels like Europe here. No one is making money selling the Soviet Union to tourists they way they do in the other former Soviet republics I've visited. I haven't seen a single CCCP or DDR shirt since I got to the Baltics. You can't even drink on the street here.

Latvia also unfortunately shares with Estonia a taste for terrible terrible music. Businesses blast bad music into the streets, so much that if you stand in the wrong place you'll end up in the middle of dueling crap. And the terrible covers continue. Slow jazz Smells Like Teen Spirit? Joder. One cafe branched out a little with French music, but it was still bad covers of adequate pop songs, just in a different language. Latvia and Estonia both are supposed to be known for their folk music and song festivals -- where is this musical heritage? With the bad covers and the wind and the closed museums, I'm starting to think dirty thoughts about staying in the hotel and cranking up Bob Dylan on my iPod.