I sat on the bus from Tallinn to Riga with a pretty young Finnish medical student who told me the big homes along the road are owned by Russians. more bad news: Tuberculosis is rife among the 'bums' and Riga prostitutes have a high risk of AIDs. She had just had her hair streaked in Estonia, much cheaper than in Finland. Despite her remarks, I found Latvia lovely, only saw a few 'bums' and no hookers. There tend to be pious women begging at the entrance of churches everywhere in Russia and Eastern Europe.
At the bus station was my next couch, Zane ("Tzana"), on medical leave
following lung surgery from her PR job at a big supermaket chain, which
supplies her car and Internet in her large remodeled house in the forest 30
kilometers outside of Riga. She was making up of her mind at age 35 to take time
off to travel. She'd loved visiting Viet Nam with her partner (teaching business
software in Denmark that week). She would fly to Oslo in a week to visit her
best friend and to the States later in the fall, a bargain she couldn't pass
up. I begged off exploring the old town there and then, still recovering from my
cold. Her lovely wood-lined home was too close to the highway to Riga for the
survival of cats. but after a rest we drove to a nearby castle, Sigulda,
explored a Soviet era "Time" hotel whose rooms were transformed into art
installations, then I took a cable car to Toraida. There were old towers, a
history museum, a sculpture park and a linden tree monument to tragic love. We
stopped for huge bowls of delicious soup.
Zane went into the dusk in the forest around her house to pick mushrooms
for dinner.Then we drove back to Riga for White Nights, a city-wide cultural
celebration, dropping in on concerts, bands, clubs, a labyrinth, and a poetry
reading in an old factory in Latvian, Russian and English going past 2 am.
Zane took me to an old sanatorium out of town, which had been the cover for
a huge Soviet bunker designed to save 250 people from nuclear fall-out. But
there was only enough fuel for the generator for a few weeks. The guide was a
historian and old friend of Zane's. We trouped around with a tourbusful from
Estonia, to cubicles full of old phones, maps, a kitchen, showers, and an office
suite for the chief with a photograph of a young Gorbachev without a birthmark.
Construction workers were only on the job a week for secrecy, it took the annual
budget of the whole country to build it, and there are hundreds of simpler
underground bunkers throughout the country. After the tour we walked with the
historian and his son through a nearby national park in the beautiful forest,
visiting large enclosures for wolves, fox, owls, moose, beavers...the bears kept
escaping and that pen is being redesigned. He also guides for a local paper mill
and believes a former head of the plant was once a Soviet officer in Ukraine
responsible for many deaths there. Though the paperwork has disappeared, when
given a list of workers to be deported to Siberia, he tore up the order. Only a
powerful man could do such a thing. I urged him to write a book about this
phenomenon.
Another day Zane went potato-picking, a seasonal hobby for many Latvians,
while I met Brigitte, another couchsurfing hostess I had met online while trying
to decide how to enter Russia from Scandinavia. A tall and cheerful
greatgrandmother, elegant in black but younger than me, Brigitte hadn't been
able to host me because of an upcoming rendezvous. But most men she meets on the
Internet have money on their minds as well as romance. A Madagascar man had
squired her to Marseilles and Paris but couldn't bear the Latvian cold mornings.
She let one gentleman know she only had ten euros; send it to me, was his reply.
She showed me offers of great wealth if she just paid a small deposit...
We stopped in Information for maps and brochures, and explored the old
town, then ended our visit in a medieval cellar enjoying mint tea. She told me
many Russians in Latvia refuse to learn Latvian, "a language of dogs." The
present mayor of Riga is a Russian Zane went to school with; it's a small
country! After walking around an enclosed market by the river I sat in the sun
reading "Eat Pray Love," Zane's book, in the square (knowing Italy and India and
heading for Bali made it great fun) then ran out of time in the history museum
before Zane picked me up at Old Gertrude church with a huge bag of potatoes for
the winter (her wages for the day's work). She stuffed a pumpkin with ground
beef and cheese and baked it for dinner. Yum!
Brigitte and I had planned to visit the seaside resort of
Jurmala, but Zane's parents wanted her to take them to her father's family's old
wooden house hours into the country, so I opted to finally see a 'dacha'
instead. We picked them up in their beautiful home in Jurmala, bursting with
garden produce, and then drove off to the house off a dirt path in a field. They
signed a contract with a local farmer to plant the field to keep it from
reverting to forest. After a picnic we snipped and cleared brush, stopped at an
old German castle and a spring on the way home. At dusk we drove to her garden
in richer soil a few kilometers away for cucumbers, tomatoes and squash she
harvested in the fog,
Another day I met Zander, a sweet German teacher anxious to practice her
English, who couldn't host but wanted to meet, so we peered together at early
20th century womens' gowns at the Museum of Decorative Arts, then walked to
Albert Street, renowned for its Art Nouveau architecture. Classical heads and
figures adorn the facades of the mansions. We ended our visit at the rooftop bar
of the Hotel Albert for black balsam, the national drink, a strong concoction of
herbs and alcohol, where Zane joined us.
The day I got my camera back from bus cargo, we stopped at the tuberculosis
hospital where Zane had her lung surgery and she gave her underpaid doctors gift
certificates to a new fish restaurant and sunflowers in gratitude. They said she
was fine to fly and from the taxi on the way to the airport she left me near
Brigitte's and I ended my Latvian days on her couch. She has a lovely, quiet
grand-daughter Samantha living with her, always at the computer, and two cats.
Her house in the suburbs is a work in progress, she is finishing the upstairs to
rent to a couple. I had a lovely bedroom that would soon be closed off for the
winter with the softest sheets and pillows. The buses to the city were five
minutes away up a dirt track to the street.
One day I spent in the National Art Museum, finally reunited with my
camera, then stopped at a history of medicine museum nearby, photographing a
dress made of condoms, examining an iron lung, watching videos of dogs being
flown into space, and looking at food packets used in space. There was a stuffed
dog with a smaller dog implanted in his back. They shared a circulatory system
and survived for four days. Then a revisit to Albert Street for photographs and
a long detour when I took the wrong bus home. The next day I took the right bus
in the wrong direction. I am glad I'm alone, I only drive myself crazy!
My last day in Riga despite the rain I headed out of town to another open
air museum, a large complex of old thatched houses, windmills and churches in a
forest on a lake. That night Brigitte's oldest friend stopped by with cheesecake
and cookies for English conversation, sharing photos of sunsets in Jurmala and
animal trophies including a giraffe from a wealthy friend's collection.
Brigitte's yard and kitchen, indeed the whole country, is full of apples and she
gave me some for my trip. I was grateful Brigitte had taken me in, as previous
couchsurfers had overdone coffee, tea and showers, straining her meager pension.
I bade farewell to merry Brigitte and caught the Ecolines bus to Vilnius,
Lithuania where apples also abound.
No comments:
Post a Comment