Piebalga: A Trip to the Past
Piebalga
August 19-20
This weekend, Rita invited me to join her for the last day of her folklore collecting project in the region of Latvia known as Piebalga which is right in the center of the country. This is a map of beer breweries throughout the country, and you can see Piebalga to the east. When I rented a car (another story that I will not tell), I told the man where I was going and he asked, “To drink beer?” So I guess it is what you do when you go there.
I told him that wasn’t my intention, but some beer might be consumed at some point in time.
I drove across Latvia on Saturday without any major hiccups. I just had to figure out exactly where Rita and her people were staying. She was in a schoolhouse in a tiny town called Ineši. But there was no address, so I just drove through the town until I saw her daughter, Anna, waving me down.
As the head of the Archives, Rita has many duties, and she was busy getting ready for a reception, so I took a walk to the Veikals with Anna and bought a bottle of the infamous Piebalga brew. It was a bit sweet, but drinkable. So we walked around the grounds of the manor, swung on a swing, and discussed some of the people she met on her story collecting trip. She told me of a gypsy woman (her word, not mine) who was going to tell her her fortune using a regular deck of playing cards. So Anna was carrying cards around, just in case this woman came to the reception. She also told me how this same woman pretended to be a man during the war because there were no men to dance with. It was an interesting story that either ended in violence or accolades… that part was hard to figure out.
The reception was lovely. It was held in a beautiful ballroom of this old manor built by some Russian lord. We had seats for 50 or so people, but only about twenty were there including all the folklore collectors that were a part of Rita’s group. It was rainy, so that likely discouraged the locals from making the trip. Most of them don’t drive, so they would have had to find a way to get there. But we had a great time! A family of folksong singers came with their accordion, and everyone sang songs. Then we had coffee and some nice finger foods. Presentations and gifts were exchanged. The whole thing just felt right.
It felt right until the lights kept going out leaving us in almost total darkness. Each time they went out, Aigars or Rita had to enter a code to make them turn back on. Here was my joke for the evening without a punchline… “How many folklorists does it take to turn the lights on?”
Then Rita invited me to the “after party” with her and her colleagues. This was also a traditional part of their outings. We gathered on the second floor of the schoolhouse where I learned how to play a Latvian card game called “The Fool.” Then, Aigars showed up with his button accordion… he called it a “harmonica” of some kind. I someone will tell me I am wrong and tell me the official name. He is a fantastic player who knows so many songs by heart that it is almost unfathomable. It is his specialty, but still… impressive.
He would start a song, and then most of the folklorists would join in and sing. Sometimes, they would forget a word here or there, or how to start the next verse, and someone would jump in and keep it going. Aldis performed a few solos and showed off his vocal prowess. It was an incredible event, but by 23:30, I was feeling overwhelmed, and tired, so I retired to my English classroom where I slept on a thin mattress on the floor under the loudest clock in the world. When I can hear a clock tick in the middle of the night without my hearing aids in, then you know it’s a loud clock!
