Note: Okay, I finally got to it. If I hurry, I’ll still get four hours of sleep tonight before we fly back. But I can sleep on the plane, right? Enjoy… Smiltene: Vitauts’ Home I know I’m not spelling this right, but I’ll correct it later. Dad lived on a farm for sixteen years and …
Riga After an amazing weekend, we finally had a day to settle into our downtown apartment on Ausekļa (a Latvian poet) iela (street) near most of the foreign embassies and just a short walk from Old Town, the hub of the city. After a slow, lazy morning allowing us to catch up on sleep, we took …
Abragciems Abragciems is a tiny Latvian village on the coast of the Gulf of Riga which is part of the Baltic Sea. Many Latvians have summer homes across the coast. They finish work for the week, and then drive to their cottage on the seaside. Bruno and Maruta have just such a cottage, but it is …
Jaunmoku Pils Latvian lesson of the day… “Jaun” means “new” and “moku” means “torture” or “torment.” “Pils” simply means castle. So every time you drink a “pilsner” you are drinking a bit of a Latvian castle. We finished our visit in Talsi by attending the historical Evangelical Lutheran Church where we were greeted by another …
Talsi and Arnolds Grinbergs After Kuldiga, we drove to Talsi to spend the night. We found out that Ansis wanted us to visit Talsi because that is where our Uncle Arnolds lived after World War II. He was a soldier in the Latvian Army fighting for the German side when the Russians began to move in. …
Kuldiga: One of Latvia’s Gems and the Draudzigs (friendly) Latvians Disclaimer: Again, I apologize for the lack of Latvian characters. After we met at the gas station, Bruno took Vitauts while Ansis drove Sue, Glen and me to one of Latvia’s most beautiful and historical cities, Kuldiga. As we were driving, Ansis explained that this …
July 9, 2016 The Coffee Shop Spoiler: There is no coffee shop at the end of this story. And I apologize for not using Latvian diacritics for the Latvian names. Forgive me. As Susan, Glen and I were walking back to the flat on Friday night, we saw a coffee shop that was only a …
July 8 Continued On the way back from the airport, Ansis took us to lunch at the new Swedbank building on the banks of the Daugava River in Riga. We sat and had lunch with a beautiful view of Old Town Latvia. After we got to the apartment, unpacked, and …
Some months ago I asked dad what he would do if he finally won his millions of dollars. What did he need that he didn’t already have? His response after some thought was, “I would like to go back to Latvia one more time.” My response was, “We can do that right now!” With some …
Learning Latvian Last night, my cousin John Grinberg came over to offer me a lesson in the Latvian language. John is a retired high school German teacher, and I think he relished the opportunity to teach again because he showed up in full Latvian Language Mode! All I could say was “I don’t speak Latvian” …