Sigulda

I am finding it hard to write, as I am feeling that all I have to say is grumpy and grey, so I will finally replace my words with photographs. Although I will start with photos not of Riga, but of Sigulda, a city Southwest of Riga, about an hour away by lazy creaky Soviet train. It is known for its castles and hills and forest and winter skiing, and the day that I went was appropriately grey, making it seem all the more magical and mysterious and ancient. I went with Elina, a Finnish colleague of Laura, one of the other Fulbrighters, who (Elina) very disappointingly left back to Finland today.

This is the forest. (We travelled over it in a "foniculer" - a flying glassed-in cart.) Somewhere in its depth is the Gauja River, which was incredibly still, like a lake. Like a ribbon winding in the valley between the forests and castles.

This is outside of one of the caves (which are some of the landmarks in Sigulda), which were all of very sandy rock (sandstone?), like the beach packed into a hillside, and this one (Peter's Cave) had a lot of engravings and names and schools from the 1920's even! And it had this ghoul.

This is the old Sigulda castle. It is in ruins, in bits and pieces, and here it looks deceivingly whole. On the right side of the fortress, at the top, one can just barely make out on this picture a huge ingraved red cross, which to did feel very ancient and menacing.

And this is me, bundled up a little bit after a long lunch (of various yummy store-bought picnic products, including black bread and mushroom cheese spread) on top of "Painter" or "Paradise" hill, with this view. The little bit of white to the left of me is the still and ribbony Gauja.

And I have more beautiful and whimsical photos, but I haven't yet figured out how to flip them on my new Canon computer program, and so they are yet to come.