Triviana Latviana

Latvia and, I expect, the Baltics in general are the world capitals of flower giving. International Women's Day was this week, and flower vendors were everywhere selling bouquets. Many of my women students showed up to class with flowers. This was not an isolated event. At the previous two concerts I attended, conductors, choreographers, and musicians were all presented with flowers at the end of the program. My colleagues have fresh flowers in our communal office weekly and sometimes more often. There are shops selling flowers (ziedi) all over Daugavpils. I find it hard to buy some basic kitchenware but easy to buy tulips. I don't know to what one should attribute this cultural preference for giving people flowers -- well, and chocolate too -- but it's an awfully nice preference.

I am compiling an extended list of what I call TINDs, or "This Is Not Done" -- those things that you do in your own country until you go to another country where those things are clearly incorrect, as in This Is Not Done (Here). For example, when you enter a building you only go in the door with the big green dot on it, not the one with the big red dot on it. This would seem to be self-explanatory, and it is if you know traffic signals, once you have realized that you are supposed to pay attention to the color of the dot on the door. Or more accurately, once you become aware that doors have dots on them that you otherwise would have never noticed because they don't have them at home, and then that you are supposed to pay attention to them. Oddly, the dots do not line up logically. That is to say, if there is a set of five double doors in a row at the entrance to a building, the green dot will be on the far right outside door, and the next green dot will be on the far left inside door, so you have to make a little jog to get in. Streamlining the doors would make more sense, but This Is Not Done. The door directly in front of the outside green dot door has a red dot on it. But you, like me, were probably not paying attention.

TIND #2 involves the busing of your tray full of dishes in a kafejnīca back to the counter to save the staff a trip to your table. Do not do this; This Is Not Done. The staff of the kafejnīca will take the tray with a mix of good cheer and general bafflement, but they also might say something like "Don't do this" in Russian. I'm not sure why not, but I can only assume that returning the tray to the counter destroys the finely calibrated balance of how the institution in general works, and too much busing of trays might throw the Earth out of its natural orbit and, perhaps, directly into the path of an asteroid.

I would say in general that stores in Latvia are staffed very completely, perhaps even too much so. I went to buy a flash drive and stopped by the local electronics store. It's not a particularly big store, or at least not big enough to warrant the eight salespeople on the floor. This system is terrific for customers: thorough, attentive service is the norm, and with that many people somebody can probably understand English well enough to figure out whatever I am saying in my poor Latvian and worse Russian. (Everybody appreciates my honest efforts, though, which is gratifying.)

I am guessing that home gardens are very, very popular in Latvia. The supermarkets have had their seeds for flowers and vegetables out since my arrival in mid-January, and every supermarket also has a good-sized section of gardening tools and paraphernalia. Because most people live in low-rise apartments, many have a "summer home," a sort of a local Russian dacha on the outskirts of town where they garden. My acquaintance Svetlana does, and for a small plot of land, it's extremely productive, complete with vegetable beds, flower beds, and an apple tree from which her husband makes juice from his own press. As it happens, this apple juice is delicious. Svetlana brought me a gallon of it.

I can now say "Good morning," good afternoon," "good evening," and "thank you" in both Latvian and Russian. I have found that these phrases in the local language are pretty much all you need to exist anywhere, as long as you are willing to point, gesticulate, and pantomime to make your needs known. Happily, I've been here long enough now that I am a known entity, an example of that exotic species Homo Americanus. Now people will try out their English with me if they have it, or even if they don't. So I have arrived at that sweet spot where I am living here, not simply passing through. I have a regular network of acquaintances, professionals, and shopkeepers, all of whom know me and know that I really like coffee, I seem to read books a lot, I am very grateful for any help proffered, and I apparently smile more often than is strictly necessary, which officially marks me as American, peculiar, or both. And they respond in kind. One very nice Russian kafejnīca lady, when she sees me come in, says in a very accented and carefully practiced English, "Hello! Glad to see you." I show my appreciation by leaving my tray on my table.

The local public library has a small collection of books in English, though the vast majority of the collection is of course in Latvian and Russian. The English books are clearly donated books because there is no guiding principle as to what the collection ought to be: Dave Barry, Virginia Woolf, John Grisham, and Jack London all share the shelves together. I'm grateful that there are any books in English, and when I first arrived I was so eager to be able to read anything that didn't require sounding out slowly (or harder, learning an entirely new alphabet and then sounding out slowly) that I just checked out and read classics that for some reason I had never read in my academic career. This is why I can now say that I have read Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and I'm sort of surprised that it's taken me so long to get to it. It was very good -- better than the Judith Krantz one shelf over.