First Impressions of Latvia

My dear parents, friends, and friends' parents!

I have safely arrived in Riga! As requested and promised, I am creating a very rambly diary-like blog, and here it is. Please read at your leisure, and then please comment, write and call!

My flight to Latvia was fine and uneventful, except for the surprise of actually making it to the airport having "finished" everything I needed to do (i.e. having delegated it to large numbers of people!). But there were three little highlights: the large amount of vegetarian food that the flight attendant graciously procured for me on the flight to Europe; the unpleasant surprise of lots of smoking in the Frankfurt airport (especially after a 5:25am arrival, when it had been practically empty and very serene) - for instance, I was smoked out of my cafe table, where I was comfortably working on my computer, by an entire family - a mother, two daughters, and the mother's boyfriend, presumably - who plopped down next to me and ALL started to smoke. And the last highlight was my companion on the flight to Riga - a British gentleman returning to Lithuania for several more months, after having worked there for 12 months and, before that, having worked in Dubai! Maybe it was so impressive in real life because of his total normalness, making it seem surreal that this polite British bloke had been stuck in a tiny Lithuanian town for a year, and before that had experienced exotic Dubai and yet seemed totally unaffected by it. Or maybe I was impressed just because I wasn't in my most calm state of mind: I was very sleepy, a little depressed, and, to my surprise, extremely nervous. Which I later realized was probably at least a little bit caused by having read an ex-Fulbrighter's guide to Riga, while waiting in Frankfurt, in which she matter-of-factly warned of the possibility of death in Riga by falling snow or icicles.

Then I also uneventfully took a taxi and arrived at my mom's friend's elderly father's apartment, and had my bags carried into the lift and out of it straight into Vasilij Timofejivich's apartment by a galant burly man. There I am being very kindly taken care of by Vasilij Timofejivich's daughter's (my mom's friend's sister's) friend. Lyuba had prepared a feast for my arrival, is extremely considerate, and has walked around Riga with me and walked me to the stops of various buses that I need to take. And Tanya, also Vasilij Timofejivich's daughter's friend from church, who I might live with soon, has been calling and checking up on me and almost took me swimming (to the pool, definitely not to the sea! it's very much autumn) today.

When I just arrived, I hadn't felt so wordy and I was still in the pre-departure mode of making lots of lists of everything I need to do, and so I wrote down most of my impressions as lists:

Riga has: delicious pastries, wasps (or maybe bees, only my dad knows for sure) who tend to go in one's hair and then bite one's unsuspecting hand, many Russians, mostly whites, very few people begging, underpasses (like in Moscow!), very expensive calls to the US, hard water which makes my hands very coarse and which doesn't quench my thirst. I also learned that there is a neighborhood called Moscow, which has a lot of gypsies. I am finding that having a lot of leisure time makes it hard to not enter enticing stores and spend money. I am now armed with two guidebooks on Riga (because I couldn't decide which one was better), and one of them turned out to be slightly unfinished, with missing page number references and sometimes whole sections, and it's written by a professor of aviation medicine and the Latvian Ministry of Culture...

I want to: travel around Latvia, learn some Latvian, meet Latvian young people, work on my project (which started today with a meeting at my host institution - more another day), hear Latvian music, take photographs or draw Riga, look at Riga from above, read Latvian fairytales, have you visit!

Today I wore my heeled boots, and I have been feeling like an adult, and like a "baryshnya," a plump frilly lady, in my boots and flowing flowery skirt and long braid. In relation to this, I am finding that cobblestone streets, while very pretty, are not so pleasant to walk on. Although of course I am finding it romantic to feel the discomfort of thousands of ancient people before me.

Apparently I am perceived as Russian, because especially after I awkwardly try to avoid saying anything and point to things, and even as I sit reading my English language guidebooks, people start talking to me in Russian...I am not sure what this suggests about perceptions of Russians.

So many little details... My main impressions are that Riga is quite pretty, but not very distinctive for me yet; that for the first time in my life I feel very awkward speaking to people (on the one hand, I speak a language almost everyone understands, but on the other hand it's the language of the former occupiers, and I feel embarassed that I know no Latvian at all - I am really considering taking classes); and that it is completely fall, with no hint of summer. But it is romantic, nostalgic, and very Russian bard-like. Like the forest "birthday" picnic in Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears.

That's it for now! I hope I haven't exhausted you, although perhaps if you are dissuaded from reading the blog, it will be all the better for me!

I hope all is well!!

With much love,

Vera