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), …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …