For this year, fate (or some other magical force) sent me to Latvia. I am here in Riga at Ausekla 2-7 (Bruno’s apartment) and I will soon transfer to Ansis’ home at Daugmales pagasts. I left on the 23rd and arrived on the 24th. It felt like I was in some kind of a time warp, …
The Departure Saturday morning came quickly. It was hard to get dad up, and he was a bit disoriented, but Bruno woke us all up at 4 a.m. and made sure we got to the taxi. He said he called for a van the night before, but the guy showed up in a station wagon. …
Vitauts in Latvia 17: Friday (piektdiena) I sort of woke up on Friday morning, but I was in a lot of pain. I promised myself that I would never drink enough to get sick again, but hey, it was Latvia. It was a bar crawl. There was absinthe. I had a slims gulva (sick head), …
Note: I apologize, but Vitauts plays a very small but fun role in this story. I’m publishing from the airport after a sleepless night, so if you see mistakes, let me know! Celebrating my Citizenship One of my goals in Riga was to go on a bar crawl, and this was the last night to …
The National Library of Latvia Gita Berzina, dad’s grandniece, invited him and I to go with her to the National Library of Latvia (NLL) to see the archives and then to her apartment to look through some photos. We found out later that she is actually making contributions to the library by giving them old …
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 …
Kakava (Pronounced Checkeva) Just outside of Riga, Ansis and Monta found an old property with a farmhouse on it. Their dream was to take the old house, fix it up, and create a place for their family of five to live and thrive. They were very successful in their endeavor. Ansis drove us out of …
Jurmula to Riga Ansis is the host with the most. We left Abragciems for Riga in the morning, but it was raining, so our plans to stop along the beaches to see the white sands was no longer possible. We did, however, sprinkle dirt from Liesma and Arnold Grinvalds’ graves onto the Latvian soil and …
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 …
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 …