I spent Friday night at the American Center of the Latvian National Library running a book discussion group. This event is part of monthly book group called "Books are Still Cool," which they are, of course, and is sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Riga. The events are spearheaded by Nils Students, an American-born Latvian citizen who has lived here since the '90s and who works for the U.S. Embassy.
I suggested Anya von Bremzen's Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing, which I had read when my local library, the Lithgow Library in Augusta, Maine, acquired it. I loved it. A survey of the history of the Soviet Union through the prism of food, the book is both a macro- and micro-history. First, it surveys the Soviet Union and its Communist Party's complicated food policy, exploring how it tried to engineer a new, more highly evolved human in its purported "socialist paradise" by every means possible, including food production, delivery, and consumption. It's also a multi-generational history of Bremzen's Russian family, from her grandparents at the turn of the Russian Revolution to her dissident mother, her emigration to the United States with her mother, and their return to Russia before and after the fall of communism. Bremzen herself is a highly honored food writer with three James Beard awards to her credit. The book is fascinating. It is sometimes surprisingly funny. It is sometimes horrific; the story of the Leningrad blockade in which the Nazis essentially starved that Russian city to death will appall you. And it is always wistful for Russian and, yes, Soviet food. Plus there are Russian recipes. (Bremzen's first cookbook, Please to the Table, explores Russian cuisine from every part of that great country, and it won her her first Beard award.)
Bremzen's great virtue as a chronicler of her family's history is that she doesn't settle for easy, pat, black and white responses to the Soviet insistence on intruding on virtually every aspect of a citizen's life. Her mother despised the Soviet system, finally leaving it once and for all -- and at the time, with no right of return, ever. But her military grandfather benefited highly from the system, and as a child, Bremzen accommodated it in all sorts of ways. And that's really what her family story is about: how people accommodated a system that did its darnedest to control virtually every aspect of private life in order to create greater-good-for-all-comrades Communists.
I thought that this book would sell well in Latvia, given its own Soviet history. Readers would have the opportunity to talk about how their own families dealt with Soviet history and, not coincidentally, food. And that in fact is what happened, which pleased me greatly. Some readers noted that the assumption among Latvians was that Moscovites had it better than anybody, and they were pleased to discover that in Bremzen's Moscow family, this was not the case. (As a matter of fact, the best of the Baltics was sent to Russia and especially Moscow, most likely to be consumed the Communist Party bigwigs who got the best of everything.) Others spoke of the endless shortages of literally everything and living on a food budget of one ruble a day. None of them were pleased about this hardship, but significantly nobody gave me the impression that it was impossible to manage under this cock-eyed food system, either. And we talked about favorite foods, from childhood, from Soviet times, from Latvian cuisine, from Russian cuisine.
I did find out, though, that according to Nils at least one international Latvian-born reader chimed in on social media when the book was announced about how inappropriate this was, for a couple of reasons: 1) there is no such thing as Soviet cooking and 2) how dare some uppity American suggest that Latvians read something with "Soviet" in the title. He did not come to the group, as he lives overseas -- in Australia, I think. But he was highly offended by my book choice.
Obviously, this man did not read the description of the book carefully, thinking it was a cookbook rather than a memoir. His second point really struck me, though. I have always been of the mind that no idea is so scary or dangerous that we can't talk about it, but obviously the word "Soviet" struck a raw nerve. In suggesting this book, I didn't mean to say that Latvians should want to relive or glorify the Soviet period. And in fact, the book does no such thing; it is highly critical of the Soviet Union, and rightfully so. As I have said elsewhere in this blog, the Soviet Union did the Baltics no favors. Environmentally, the Soviet Union was one long, unmitigated disaster, the legacy of which we are still living with. (This was a country that made an entire sea disappear.) Politically, it was a brutal, cynical nightmare. One of the most beautiful Art Nouveau buildings in Rīga is the museum of the Soviet occupation, the place where the KGB (Soviet secret police) tortured, killed, and "morally humiliated" dissidents, as its sign says. On a lesser note, everybody knew that there were two systems in operation: one for the hacks who cooperated with the Communist Party and who got the best of everything, and one for everybody else who got the crumbs on the table. When there were crumbs. So much for equality, comrade.
I do mean to say, though, that here many citizens' relationship to the Soviet period is extremely complicated. As Bremzen's book makes very clear, she is very nostalgic for her Soviet childhood because she figured out ways to make the system work for her, as many people did. Her mother's endless pushing against the system meant that she and mother focused on each other, and their private bond, where the State could not intrude, drives much of the narrative. She is cynical about the worn Soviet platitude, "Thank you, Dedushka [Grandfather] Lenin, for our happy socialist childhood," while acknowledging that her childhood in fact was happy. She is nostalgic for the very proletarian kotleti, or meat patties, that were the staple of every Soviet household -- and mind you, this is a food writer who eats in the best restaurants on the planet. I have a feeling that most people just got on with their lives, the same ways my parents did growing up in the Depression. When everybody's poor, who notices that everybody's poor? I don't want to say more about the book than this in order to encourage you to read it yourself. But I do think that the idea that Soviet times were unspeakably grim isn't the whole story. It's worth noting that in Latvia, pushing against the Soviet Union was in part pushing for Latvia, or at least the idea of Latvia, so there may be real differences that play out here. But Bremzen's book is an excellent reminder that one can have complex, love-hate relationships with things that one is supposed to love. Or hate.
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Russian Gymnasium
On 31 March, I went with Natalija Oševerova of the USA Information Center in Daugavpils to talk to students at the Russian gymnasium in town about study opportunities for students in the United States. There are a few exchange programs that are worth knowing about, one run by the U.S. State Department, another by an organization called the Baltic-American Freedom Foundation, and a couple of others. But those first two are the big ones.
A gymnasium (ģimnāzija in Latvian) in this context is not a large room in which to play basketball but a school. It looks to be a cross between an elementary school, middle school, and junior high school, to put it into American terms. After the gymnasium, students will go to the Russian lyceum (licejs), or high school equivalent.
These are smart students who are very curious about the U.S., so I would love to see some of them apply for these scholarships. After the information part was over, we just had an informal question and answer period about what American high schools are like. Obviously, one difference is that a teacher might sit on the desk.
In general, I would say that American schools emphasize breadth over depth: one takes a wider range of courses in an American high school (some of which, shock of shocks, you actually get to choose yourself), but they might be more cursory than the kind of in-depth work that Latvian students do. So they were likely to be advanced in their studies if they attended a year of high school in the States. This is especially true in terms of foreign languages. Bear in mind that all of these students are pretty much trilingual already -- already fluent in Russian and Latvian, their English was little short of superb -- and they would be the envy of their linguistically challenged American colleagues.
I also said that American high schools dominate social life in a way that they don't in Europe. It is curious that Americans expect their high schools to do much of the socialization work that might properly be left to the family, the church, outside clubs, and other institutions that do that sort of work. Schools are where you're expected to make your best friends, learn to become a good citizen, be involved . . . and I won't even go into how sports dominate the social life of high schools. As you might expect, a book-loving nerd like me was not popular in my high school, which honored prowess at football more than anything. I wish we had talked about pep rallies, an truly alien concept if there ever was one. I am guessing that the old American adage "High school is the happiest time of your life" and that you are supposed to pine wistfully about your high school experience for the rest of your life would simply not ring true here. Here high school (secondary school) is where you get an education. Happiness isn't the point. Why in the world would it be?
Chatting with the students informally was a ball. They were curious about American football, that game that is the love child of rugby and D-Day. They were pleased that real football (that is, soccer) was gaining in popularity in the States. (For my American readers, you may not be aware that in the rest of the world, football means soccer. Most American sports are not truly world sports at all. It is amusing to think that the annual champion pro baseball team in the U.S. claims to have won the World Series, when in fact it has done no such thing at all.)
One student was fascinated by the idea of a host family. "Why would they want to have us for a year?" she asked incredulously. I explained that cultural exchange is a two-way street: a host family will learn as much from you as you will learn from it. You want to see the world, and they want you to see it because they understand why living in a different culture is important. If they can't go live somewhere else, they can at least host you and introduce you to Froot Loops and Thanksgiving Day celebrations. For the record, they loved the idea of Thanksgiving, as everybody should.
Finally, one student was a gifted amateur magician, and his card tricks were really impressive. I was impressed also at how much these students had bonded with each other. The other students were as pleased by the magician's sleight of hand as he was. I think that they have been in classes together for most of their lives, and there is something to be said for that model that Americans adopt only until about the sixth or seventh grade and then drop in favor of "floating" schedules.
Visiting schools in the area is seriously fun. It's odd to be exotic as a native English speaker, and it's good to meet people where they are and find out what their own interests. As expected, the session ended with prolonged applause, which always embarrasses me, and a gift of Laima chocolates, which never does.
A gymnasium (ģimnāzija in Latvian) in this context is not a large room in which to play basketball but a school. It looks to be a cross between an elementary school, middle school, and junior high school, to put it into American terms. After the gymnasium, students will go to the Russian lyceum (licejs), or high school equivalent.
These are smart students who are very curious about the U.S., so I would love to see some of them apply for these scholarships. After the information part was over, we just had an informal question and answer period about what American high schools are like. Obviously, one difference is that a teacher might sit on the desk.
In general, I would say that American schools emphasize breadth over depth: one takes a wider range of courses in an American high school (some of which, shock of shocks, you actually get to choose yourself), but they might be more cursory than the kind of in-depth work that Latvian students do. So they were likely to be advanced in their studies if they attended a year of high school in the States. This is especially true in terms of foreign languages. Bear in mind that all of these students are pretty much trilingual already -- already fluent in Russian and Latvian, their English was little short of superb -- and they would be the envy of their linguistically challenged American colleagues.
I also said that American high schools dominate social life in a way that they don't in Europe. It is curious that Americans expect their high schools to do much of the socialization work that might properly be left to the family, the church, outside clubs, and other institutions that do that sort of work. Schools are where you're expected to make your best friends, learn to become a good citizen, be involved . . . and I won't even go into how sports dominate the social life of high schools. As you might expect, a book-loving nerd like me was not popular in my high school, which honored prowess at football more than anything. I wish we had talked about pep rallies, an truly alien concept if there ever was one. I am guessing that the old American adage "High school is the happiest time of your life" and that you are supposed to pine wistfully about your high school experience for the rest of your life would simply not ring true here. Here high school (secondary school) is where you get an education. Happiness isn't the point. Why in the world would it be?
Chatting with the students informally was a ball. They were curious about American football, that game that is the love child of rugby and D-Day. They were pleased that real football (that is, soccer) was gaining in popularity in the States. (For my American readers, you may not be aware that in the rest of the world, football means soccer. Most American sports are not truly world sports at all. It is amusing to think that the annual champion pro baseball team in the U.S. claims to have won the World Series, when in fact it has done no such thing at all.)
One student was fascinated by the idea of a host family. "Why would they want to have us for a year?" she asked incredulously. I explained that cultural exchange is a two-way street: a host family will learn as much from you as you will learn from it. You want to see the world, and they want you to see it because they understand why living in a different culture is important. If they can't go live somewhere else, they can at least host you and introduce you to Froot Loops and Thanksgiving Day celebrations. For the record, they loved the idea of Thanksgiving, as everybody should.
Finally, one student was a gifted amateur magician, and his card tricks were really impressive. I was impressed also at how much these students had bonded with each other. The other students were as pleased by the magician's sleight of hand as he was. I think that they have been in classes together for most of their lives, and there is something to be said for that model that Americans adopt only until about the sixth or seventh grade and then drop in favor of "floating" schedules.
Visiting schools in the area is seriously fun. It's odd to be exotic as a native English speaker, and it's good to meet people where they are and find out what their own interests. As expected, the session ended with prolonged applause, which always embarrasses me, and a gift of Laima chocolates, which never does.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Triviana Latviana 3
I was surprised by the number of redheads that I have seen in Latvia, but I suppose that I should not have been. Redheads are actually originally from central Asia, if my memory serves correctly, and they fanned out in tribes back in the mists of time, settling in the Celtic lands that we (Americans) now associate with them like Scotland and Ireland. But apparently some of them got no farther than Russia and the Baltics, and some of them settled specifically in Daugavpils. Make no mistake: some redheads owe their hair color more to L'Oréal than to their genetics, particularly women of a certain age. But gingers are fairly common here nonetheless.
One of the pleasures of walking around Daugavpils -- well, any Latvian city, really -- is seeing young families out making the rounds. Daugavpils has a pedestrian mall, one of the first in the country, and it has been full of walkers at all hours, even in the cold and gray winter. Many of those walkers are families, all out together for their stroll. Latvian dads in particular are charged with walking the stroller that is occupied by a very bundled up little baby, sometimes so bundled up that she looks as if she is going to be mailed. If there are other children, they often join Mom, Dad, and Infant, and the whole family gets some public as well as private Family Time. I don't see families walking together in the United States very much. Truth be told, in many places it's hard to see walkers, period, in the States.
Fruit-flavored beers are sort of a thing in the ever-trendy United States, but Latvia has its own set of such beers, brewed by a little brewery called Lielvārdes. I am not particularly fond of fruit beers -- I think that fruit is one thing, beer is another, and just because you can combine the two doesn't mean that you should. But Lielvārdes makes a one beer infused with cherry and one with black currants. These don't sound as if they should work, but for some reason they do. In particular, the black currant beer is really nice. I can imagine drinking this in the heat of the summer. Not that it's especially light so much as it combines beer with dessert, and what could be better or more convenient than that?
I've noticed that when I go to the university pool that there is none of that "get into the slow/medium/fast lane" mentality that is everywhere in the United States. You get in the lane where there are not a lot of people, and whoever is in your lane sets your pace. If they are slow, you slow down with them, and why not? I suppose that swimmers do change lanes based on their speed as they need to, but I also notice that the pool is not a terribly competitive place, where everybody is watching a time clock (there is none) and trying to beat their own times. Swimmers here socialize, chatting at the end of the lanes when they're not swimming, which would drive achievement-obsessed Americans batty. Here swimming seems to be an actual leisure activity; you get in the pool, head into the sauna (wearing your little felt pirts hat), chat, get back in the pool, and repeat. Repeatedly. I don't mean to say that there are no serious swimmers. I do mean to say that here workouts seem to be organized around the idea that a workout should be a pleasure and not a grim battle that must be won at all costs.
I have an update on the whole spring/Easter swing thing that I wrote about a few posts back. The swing must be built by men before Easter and must be made beautiful. I assume that this means that it's supposed to be decorated, and it must be painted a cheerful color. It also matters where you set it: on a hill that has beautiful views is best. When the swing is ready, the builder and his wife swing in it first, and then they swing others in the swing, who give them knitted mittens, eggs, and beer for payment. (I like the beer part, though mittens knitted with traditional Latvian patterns are very nice too.) Then the men swing the women, and everybody sings folk songs, exchanges painted Easter eggs, and plays games.
What is this all about? As you might have guessed, it is of course it is a pagan practice: swinging attracts the harvest spirits. The higher you swing, the bigger the harvest will be and the higher the flax will grow. This explains how it got tied to Easter, which is a Christian appropriation of a spring fertility celebration. Also -- and this is nice piece of insurance -- swinging high will also protect you from mosquitoes and gadflies. So there you have it. A fertility rite and insect repellent, all in one. Thanks to Svetlana Jahimochiva, who is an endless fount of Latviana and who told me all this.
One of the pleasures of walking around Daugavpils -- well, any Latvian city, really -- is seeing young families out making the rounds. Daugavpils has a pedestrian mall, one of the first in the country, and it has been full of walkers at all hours, even in the cold and gray winter. Many of those walkers are families, all out together for their stroll. Latvian dads in particular are charged with walking the stroller that is occupied by a very bundled up little baby, sometimes so bundled up that she looks as if she is going to be mailed. If there are other children, they often join Mom, Dad, and Infant, and the whole family gets some public as well as private Family Time. I don't see families walking together in the United States very much. Truth be told, in many places it's hard to see walkers, period, in the States.
Fruit-flavored beers are sort of a thing in the ever-trendy United States, but Latvia has its own set of such beers, brewed by a little brewery called Lielvārdes. I am not particularly fond of fruit beers -- I think that fruit is one thing, beer is another, and just because you can combine the two doesn't mean that you should. But Lielvārdes makes a one beer infused with cherry and one with black currants. These don't sound as if they should work, but for some reason they do. In particular, the black currant beer is really nice. I can imagine drinking this in the heat of the summer. Not that it's especially light so much as it combines beer with dessert, and what could be better or more convenient than that?
I've noticed that when I go to the university pool that there is none of that "get into the slow/medium/fast lane" mentality that is everywhere in the United States. You get in the lane where there are not a lot of people, and whoever is in your lane sets your pace. If they are slow, you slow down with them, and why not? I suppose that swimmers do change lanes based on their speed as they need to, but I also notice that the pool is not a terribly competitive place, where everybody is watching a time clock (there is none) and trying to beat their own times. Swimmers here socialize, chatting at the end of the lanes when they're not swimming, which would drive achievement-obsessed Americans batty. Here swimming seems to be an actual leisure activity; you get in the pool, head into the sauna (wearing your little felt pirts hat), chat, get back in the pool, and repeat. Repeatedly. I don't mean to say that there are no serious swimmers. I do mean to say that here workouts seem to be organized around the idea that a workout should be a pleasure and not a grim battle that must be won at all costs.
I have an update on the whole spring/Easter swing thing that I wrote about a few posts back. The swing must be built by men before Easter and must be made beautiful. I assume that this means that it's supposed to be decorated, and it must be painted a cheerful color. It also matters where you set it: on a hill that has beautiful views is best. When the swing is ready, the builder and his wife swing in it first, and then they swing others in the swing, who give them knitted mittens, eggs, and beer for payment. (I like the beer part, though mittens knitted with traditional Latvian patterns are very nice too.) Then the men swing the women, and everybody sings folk songs, exchanges painted Easter eggs, and plays games.
What is this all about? As you might have guessed, it is of course it is a pagan practice: swinging attracts the harvest spirits. The higher you swing, the bigger the harvest will be and the higher the flax will grow. This explains how it got tied to Easter, which is a Christian appropriation of a spring fertility celebration. Also -- and this is nice piece of insurance -- swinging high will also protect you from mosquitoes and gadflies. So there you have it. A fertility rite and insect repellent, all in one. Thanks to Svetlana Jahimochiva, who is an endless fount of Latviana and who told me all this.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Retail
I'm a bit baffled by the retail scene in Daugavpils. There seem to be a preponderance of certain types of stores and a dearth of others. To be fair, my context here is the American retail scene, so I may be comparing apples and oranges. But in a blog that's at least in part about cultural differences, that kind of comparison is OK.
I am first surprised -- no, actually, astonished would be a better word -- by the enormous, and I mean enormous number of clothing stores. Many of them are very small stores, even smaller than boutiques, so that ten of them might equal one clothing store in the States. Still, they are everywhere. The mall Ditton Nams has a large hangar-like area that is filled with hundreds of small retailers selling cheap clothing, reportedly much of it imported from Poland and, I presume, points east. It's rather like being dropped into a Russian-speaking souk. I don't entirely know what to make of this. Daugavpils' population is only about 100,000, so there simply isn't enough market here for the number of clothing stores. Nor do I see people constantly wearing new clothes. So what is going on here?
Unless they are buying new clothes and giving the old stuff away to what we call thrift stores -- that is, secondhand shops. There are a huge number of these as well, and they deal almost exclusively with clothing and textiles; none of that housewares stuff or furniture that you might see in a typical American thrift. I can walk to fifteen different ones in about as many minutes.
Having been to Rīga twice now, I can say pretty confidently that Rīga is where the money is at in Latvia. Daugavpils is where it isn't, for the most part. Though there are as a wealthy neighborhood out by the lake that's in town, this part of Latvia is poorer than the rest of it, being rural farmland and a bit off the beaten track. This might explain all the clothing and thrift stores: people put their money where it can be seen, literally on their backs, and can do so on the cheap. I don't say this as a slam at all. Where I come from, Maine, shopping in thrifts is a point of pride. And thrifts in New England are incomparable to the rest of the country -- you can get anything at a Goodwill at 90% off its usual price. And I would point out that people here are not dressed poorly. If anything, Latvians are a surprisingly fashionable lot in ways that I find very pleasing. (More on that later.)
I'm also surprised by the sheer (no pun intended) number of stores that sell curtains. Curtains are in fact a necessity, but it would seem that one or two shops could reasonably serve the entire city. There are at least a dozen, maybe more. I cannot explain this. Nor do I totally understand the number of shoe repair stores, not to mention shoe stores. Again, these are very small stores, so that might explain part of the reason there are so many of them. But how many curtains can one buy? If you have four windows in your flat, the answer would seem to be four pair. Is there something here I do not understand?
On the other hand, I have not seen a computer store anywhere. (A computer repair store, I think so, though I haven't gone in to see exactly what they do or sell.) I find it hard to buy housewares. The big super- and hypermarket chains have a housewares section, but it is not very big, and it sells limited kinds of things -- some pots and pans, some linens, and some kitchen tools. It may be that I am used to endless choices in the insanely capitalist system of the United States, where it's assumed that if you can't collect Fiestaware in at least forty colors, none of which are ever allowed to go out of circulation, then life is clearly not worth living. Nor would it be if one could not choose from twenty different kinds of laundry detergent, all of which are distinguished by primarily color and scent and not by their ability to actually do what you are buying it for.
There are a number of bookstores, some that sell Russian books exclusively, but I have yet to see a CD or record store. This probably reflects the fact that music is now streamed and you don't buy music so much as buy the service that provides the music. There are music stores -- a number of them, in fact, that sell and service instruments, which tells me that Latvians are more likely to make music than to simply listen to it.
The supermarkets are really interesting to me. There are so many of them. The big three chains -- Mego, Maxima, and Rimi -- are all within blocks of each other; I can walk to all three of them in fifteen minutes. Even odder to me is there are multiple stores of the same chain within spitting distance from each other. The big Mego is five blocks from a smaller Mego; the big, brand new Maxima is three blocks from a smaller Maxima; the big Rimi is four blocks from the smaller Rimi. (There's also a medium-sized Elvi in town.) Because they are all concentrated in the downtown area, everybody comes here to shop, taking the trams home if they past the railroad tracks that divide the city center from the more residential neighborhoods. How do they all stay in business? They do, clearly, so there are some retail rules in play in Latvia that are baffling to an American.
This post is simply observation. Though I have speculated here and there on how the retail business sector of Daugavpils works, I can't really figure it out. I expect that there are things I am missing or simply can't see because of my American blinders. But I still have to ask: how many hair salons does a medium-sized city really need? Three or four dozen? Because that's how many I can walk to. How many more are there beyond that?
I am first surprised -- no, actually, astonished would be a better word -- by the enormous, and I mean enormous number of clothing stores. Many of them are very small stores, even smaller than boutiques, so that ten of them might equal one clothing store in the States. Still, they are everywhere. The mall Ditton Nams has a large hangar-like area that is filled with hundreds of small retailers selling cheap clothing, reportedly much of it imported from Poland and, I presume, points east. It's rather like being dropped into a Russian-speaking souk. I don't entirely know what to make of this. Daugavpils' population is only about 100,000, so there simply isn't enough market here for the number of clothing stores. Nor do I see people constantly wearing new clothes. So what is going on here?
Unless they are buying new clothes and giving the old stuff away to what we call thrift stores -- that is, secondhand shops. There are a huge number of these as well, and they deal almost exclusively with clothing and textiles; none of that housewares stuff or furniture that you might see in a typical American thrift. I can walk to fifteen different ones in about as many minutes.
Having been to Rīga twice now, I can say pretty confidently that Rīga is where the money is at in Latvia. Daugavpils is where it isn't, for the most part. Though there are as a wealthy neighborhood out by the lake that's in town, this part of Latvia is poorer than the rest of it, being rural farmland and a bit off the beaten track. This might explain all the clothing and thrift stores: people put their money where it can be seen, literally on their backs, and can do so on the cheap. I don't say this as a slam at all. Where I come from, Maine, shopping in thrifts is a point of pride. And thrifts in New England are incomparable to the rest of the country -- you can get anything at a Goodwill at 90% off its usual price. And I would point out that people here are not dressed poorly. If anything, Latvians are a surprisingly fashionable lot in ways that I find very pleasing. (More on that later.)
I'm also surprised by the sheer (no pun intended) number of stores that sell curtains. Curtains are in fact a necessity, but it would seem that one or two shops could reasonably serve the entire city. There are at least a dozen, maybe more. I cannot explain this. Nor do I totally understand the number of shoe repair stores, not to mention shoe stores. Again, these are very small stores, so that might explain part of the reason there are so many of them. But how many curtains can one buy? If you have four windows in your flat, the answer would seem to be four pair. Is there something here I do not understand?
On the other hand, I have not seen a computer store anywhere. (A computer repair store, I think so, though I haven't gone in to see exactly what they do or sell.) I find it hard to buy housewares. The big super- and hypermarket chains have a housewares section, but it is not very big, and it sells limited kinds of things -- some pots and pans, some linens, and some kitchen tools. It may be that I am used to endless choices in the insanely capitalist system of the United States, where it's assumed that if you can't collect Fiestaware in at least forty colors, none of which are ever allowed to go out of circulation, then life is clearly not worth living. Nor would it be if one could not choose from twenty different kinds of laundry detergent, all of which are distinguished by primarily color and scent and not by their ability to actually do what you are buying it for.
There are a number of bookstores, some that sell Russian books exclusively, but I have yet to see a CD or record store. This probably reflects the fact that music is now streamed and you don't buy music so much as buy the service that provides the music. There are music stores -- a number of them, in fact, that sell and service instruments, which tells me that Latvians are more likely to make music than to simply listen to it.
The supermarkets are really interesting to me. There are so many of them. The big three chains -- Mego, Maxima, and Rimi -- are all within blocks of each other; I can walk to all three of them in fifteen minutes. Even odder to me is there are multiple stores of the same chain within spitting distance from each other. The big Mego is five blocks from a smaller Mego; the big, brand new Maxima is three blocks from a smaller Maxima; the big Rimi is four blocks from the smaller Rimi. (There's also a medium-sized Elvi in town.) Because they are all concentrated in the downtown area, everybody comes here to shop, taking the trams home if they past the railroad tracks that divide the city center from the more residential neighborhoods. How do they all stay in business? They do, clearly, so there are some retail rules in play in Latvia that are baffling to an American.
This post is simply observation. Though I have speculated here and there on how the retail business sector of Daugavpils works, I can't really figure it out. I expect that there are things I am missing or simply can't see because of my American blinders. But I still have to ask: how many hair salons does a medium-sized city really need? Three or four dozen? Because that's how many I can walk to. How many more are there beyond that?
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Art Nouveau Riga
Rīga is famous for being a world center of Art Nouveau (also known as Jugendstil) architecture and design. The tourist information brochures claim that there are 800 buildings in this turn-of-the-last-century style. I assume by this that they mean 800 buildings that are considered to be officially of historical importance because my own sense is that there are far, far more than 800 of them. It seems that Rīga enjoyed a boom in the early twentieth century and pretty much adopted Art Nouveau, which was very much in vogue at the time, as the municipal style for apartments, retail businesses, you name it. The buildings that I snapped photos of here are nothing special, by which I mean that they are pretty standard, ordinary buildings. Trust me, there are far, far fancier buildings. These are sort of run of the mill. You should see the ones where the architects decided to get busy and really jazz up the façades. It is also notable that all of them were within three blocks of my hotel. Art Nouveau styling is everywhere here, and you can see tourists gawking up at buildings everywhere, thinking, "What could have possibly inspired that particular gewgaw at the roofline?"
Here's a typical apartment building. I would enjoy living in something like this. The open balcony at the top had a couple drinking their morning kafija when I walked by:
Here are a couple more. I like how the buildings sort of talk to each other in the streetscape. Every one of them is saying to its neighbors, "Hey, look at me. No, look at me." Click on the photos and check out all the funky detail.The corner buildings are in particular a delight because they often have fanciful towers wrapping around the corner, as it does here.
Some sensitive building owners have seen fit to light their buildings up at night in order to highlight all the detailing, such as with this beauty. And as you can see, the Art Nouveau folks were totally into the Baltic little balcony design motif that I have already referenced.
Rīga is fun to walk around because there are just blocks and blocks of these highly ornamented buildings in the so-called Art Nouveau district. Some of them need work; all that ornamental plasterwork must be difficult to maintain, and finding the master craftsmen who can restore it can't be that easy any more. If I am correct, it is not carved stone. Generally, the buildings are brick underneath, and the ornament is a façade that's been hung on the structure, which means it doesn't last as long as stone would. That said, Rīga is well aware that it has a treasure trove of this architectural style in its built environment, and it has done a creditable job of preserving it.
Here's a typical apartment building. I would enjoy living in something like this. The open balcony at the top had a couple drinking their morning kafija when I walked by:
Here are a couple more. I like how the buildings sort of talk to each other in the streetscape. Every one of them is saying to its neighbors, "Hey, look at me. No, look at me." Click on the photos and check out all the funky detail.The corner buildings are in particular a delight because they often have fanciful towers wrapping around the corner, as it does here.
Some sensitive building owners have seen fit to light their buildings up at night in order to highlight all the detailing, such as with this beauty. And as you can see, the Art Nouveau folks were totally into the Baltic little balcony design motif that I have already referenced.
Rīga is fun to walk around because there are just blocks and blocks of these highly ornamented buildings in the so-called Art Nouveau district. Some of them need work; all that ornamental plasterwork must be difficult to maintain, and finding the master craftsmen who can restore it can't be that easy any more. If I am correct, it is not carved stone. Generally, the buildings are brick underneath, and the ornament is a façade that's been hung on the structure, which means it doesn't last as long as stone would. That said, Rīga is well aware that it has a treasure trove of this architectural style in its built environment, and it has done a creditable job of preserving it.
St. Saviour's
St. Saviour's in the Anglican church in Rīga -- to my knowledge, the only Anglican church in Latvia. The Baltics were never particularly settled by the English, though there was trade as early as the seventeenth century. And that was largely the reason for St. Saviour's. English sailors needed saving from themselves, or more specifically, from the gambling, drinking, and whoring that was expected of them in a foreign port. Anglican ministers set up a parish, and that's why Rīga has an Anglican church, right on the Daugava River. All the better to get the sailors before they got into town, I bet. Here it is from the street:
I went to Easter service there, which was of course conducted in English. The congregation was a nice Commonwealth mix: Canadians, Indians, English-speaking Latvians, and of course some Americans including yours truly. The service was wonderful, in large part because it was in English. Even though I know the liturgical script, as it were, being able to follow and take part in the script is awfully nice when you've been living for the most part not hearing your own language a lot. And as might be expected in a community that is heavily expatriate, the spirit of the place was very welcoming and warm. Here's the coffee hour, with (naturally) cake and coffee. This is Latvia, after all.
I was impressed to learn that, on a generally small budget and few resources, St. Saviour's manages a soup kitchen, a weekday concert series, and various adult education courses. The music was very good. Chris Walsh, an American who is living in Latvia, chanted beautifully; Justine Koontz, another Fulbright choral scholar, attends regularly; and the organist and musicians from Rīga Technical University played very well. All technical university students should be so musically inclined. Then again, this is Latvia.
The rector, the Right Reverend Jana Jeruma Grinberga, gave a fine sermon, which is saying something. There aren't that many spins one can give the Easter story because it's so overfamiliar. But walking all of us through Holy Week, as she did, and exploring why all of it matters was a good reminder that ritual is important and meaningful, and therefore it should also be beautifully done. St. Saviour's takes this to heart. If you're in Rīga, do stop in.
There is another sort of peculiar (well, to me) Latvian Easter tradition. Big wooden swings are set up in various places around town. They look rather like wooden, oversized versions of the swing sets that you had in your backyard growing up. The tradition is to swing in the swing, preferably accompanied by Latvia folk music. I asked my adult English students about this. What's up with the swing? "Tradition," they said, which didn't exactly answer my question, but there you have it.
I went to Easter service there, which was of course conducted in English. The congregation was a nice Commonwealth mix: Canadians, Indians, English-speaking Latvians, and of course some Americans including yours truly. The service was wonderful, in large part because it was in English. Even though I know the liturgical script, as it were, being able to follow and take part in the script is awfully nice when you've been living for the most part not hearing your own language a lot. And as might be expected in a community that is heavily expatriate, the spirit of the place was very welcoming and warm. Here's the coffee hour, with (naturally) cake and coffee. This is Latvia, after all.
I was impressed to learn that, on a generally small budget and few resources, St. Saviour's manages a soup kitchen, a weekday concert series, and various adult education courses. The music was very good. Chris Walsh, an American who is living in Latvia, chanted beautifully; Justine Koontz, another Fulbright choral scholar, attends regularly; and the organist and musicians from Rīga Technical University played very well. All technical university students should be so musically inclined. Then again, this is Latvia.
The rector, the Right Reverend Jana Jeruma Grinberga, gave a fine sermon, which is saying something. There aren't that many spins one can give the Easter story because it's so overfamiliar. But walking all of us through Holy Week, as she did, and exploring why all of it matters was a good reminder that ritual is important and meaningful, and therefore it should also be beautifully done. St. Saviour's takes this to heart. If you're in Rīga, do stop in.
There is another sort of peculiar (well, to me) Latvian Easter tradition. Big wooden swings are set up in various places around town. They look rather like wooden, oversized versions of the swing sets that you had in your backyard growing up. The tradition is to swing in the swing, preferably accompanied by Latvia folk music. I asked my adult English students about this. What's up with the swing? "Tradition," they said, which didn't exactly answer my question, but there you have it.
Saturday, April 15, 2017
Languages 4
I have been told that Daugavpils is the most diverse city in Latvia, even more so than Rīga. In terms of languages, this is probably true. It's not only that Russian is spoken very extensively, but also that Daugavpils also has Polish, Belorussian, and Lithuanian communities. In addition, it's located in the province of Latgale, the easternmost part of Latvia, where one can still hear the very old language Latgalian. I am not sure if this language is more of a dialect than a separate language, but the lowdown is that Daugavpils is a very interesting mix of languages. Given where it's located -- where Latvia, Belarus, and Lithuania all converge, with Russia nearby for good measure -- this doesn't come as a surprise.
Which raises the question of what language use will look like in Latvia's future. The official status of Latvian seems to have assured its survival, especially because it is taught in the schools. I have yet to hear a Russian speaker who could not switch over to Latvian when necessary. I am sure that they exist, but it seems that with an entire generation (and almost two generations now) of Latvians who learned the language either at home or at school, it seems that there are fewer and fewer people who can't demonstrate some facility with Latvian.
That said, I would hate to see Russian lost. I don't think this would happen, though language policies could be and have been put in place to give it less priority. I understand why because, after all, Russian was the language of the oppressors in Soviet times. But it's also important to remember that Russian does not equal Soviet: they are two separate concepts. One is a language and culture, and the other is a political institution that went terribly awry. I don't mean to suggest that I think that Russian would ever be spoken nationally in Latvia. I am told, in fact, that as you travel west in Latvia toward the Baltic coast, you hear less and less Russian, and people are more adamant about the Latvian language being the language of the nation. But it seems to me that Daugavpils and its region is in a very enviable position. Russia is a major trading partner, economic power, and world culture. Daugavpilians effortlessly go back and forth between the two languages. Why not capitalize on this advantage? Why not make Daugavpils a trade center for East-West exchange? The Baltics have always had this function for the rest of Europe, and as unfortunate as the historical situation has been about the relationship of the East-West spheres of power, the reality is that the powers are there and Daugavpils has a leg up on the rest of the nation by being essentially bilingual. Or, if it isn't -- and I'm not the best judge of how bilingual it is -- then it has a leg up on becoming so.
I realize that this discussion is very, very politically charged. This isn't surprising. As I say the very first day of my history of the English language course, nothing is more political than language. That's because nothing is more tied to one's cultural identity than one's language, and no politics hit home quite so hard as identity politics. But I think it's also important to remember that one doesn't have just one identity; Daugavpils is a place where identities intersect, and thousands of Latvian Russians have been living that intersection for generations now. And they are not the only ones: French Canadians speak French but don't give up their Canadian identity in the process because Canada has figured out ways to honor both identities. This is the struggle that the United States has and will have increasingly in the future over Spanish-speaking Latinos who are being told that they need to speak English in order to "be American." My first response is "they do." Study after study shows that new immigrants learn English, despite belief to the contrary. My second response is: why? Why shouldn't America be a bilingual country? (Or, better yet, trilingual? Nothing would make me happier than to see the French language really take off in Maine.)
When I first arrived in Daugavpils, I despaired over the fact that I would have to navigate two languages, not just one, and figured out that I wouldn't learn much about either of them. Now I can't imagine being anywhere else in Latvia because the place is just so linguistically complicated. And I like to think of that as a very good thing.
Which raises the question of what language use will look like in Latvia's future. The official status of Latvian seems to have assured its survival, especially because it is taught in the schools. I have yet to hear a Russian speaker who could not switch over to Latvian when necessary. I am sure that they exist, but it seems that with an entire generation (and almost two generations now) of Latvians who learned the language either at home or at school, it seems that there are fewer and fewer people who can't demonstrate some facility with Latvian.
That said, I would hate to see Russian lost. I don't think this would happen, though language policies could be and have been put in place to give it less priority. I understand why because, after all, Russian was the language of the oppressors in Soviet times. But it's also important to remember that Russian does not equal Soviet: they are two separate concepts. One is a language and culture, and the other is a political institution that went terribly awry. I don't mean to suggest that I think that Russian would ever be spoken nationally in Latvia. I am told, in fact, that as you travel west in Latvia toward the Baltic coast, you hear less and less Russian, and people are more adamant about the Latvian language being the language of the nation. But it seems to me that Daugavpils and its region is in a very enviable position. Russia is a major trading partner, economic power, and world culture. Daugavpilians effortlessly go back and forth between the two languages. Why not capitalize on this advantage? Why not make Daugavpils a trade center for East-West exchange? The Baltics have always had this function for the rest of Europe, and as unfortunate as the historical situation has been about the relationship of the East-West spheres of power, the reality is that the powers are there and Daugavpils has a leg up on the rest of the nation by being essentially bilingual. Or, if it isn't -- and I'm not the best judge of how bilingual it is -- then it has a leg up on becoming so.
I realize that this discussion is very, very politically charged. This isn't surprising. As I say the very first day of my history of the English language course, nothing is more political than language. That's because nothing is more tied to one's cultural identity than one's language, and no politics hit home quite so hard as identity politics. But I think it's also important to remember that one doesn't have just one identity; Daugavpils is a place where identities intersect, and thousands of Latvian Russians have been living that intersection for generations now. And they are not the only ones: French Canadians speak French but don't give up their Canadian identity in the process because Canada has figured out ways to honor both identities. This is the struggle that the United States has and will have increasingly in the future over Spanish-speaking Latinos who are being told that they need to speak English in order to "be American." My first response is "they do." Study after study shows that new immigrants learn English, despite belief to the contrary. My second response is: why? Why shouldn't America be a bilingual country? (Or, better yet, trilingual? Nothing would make me happier than to see the French language really take off in Maine.)
When I first arrived in Daugavpils, I despaired over the fact that I would have to navigate two languages, not just one, and figured out that I wouldn't learn much about either of them. Now I can't imagine being anywhere else in Latvia because the place is just so linguistically complicated. And I like to think of that as a very good thing.
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Languages 3
It seems entirely appropriate that my graduate student Eliza and I read Brian Friel's wonderful play about linguistic colonialism Translations this past week. The play concerns 1830s Ireland and British cartographers coming to rename everything -- in essence, to make Ireland English. What looks innocent enough is actually a military invasion to take over Ireland once and for all.
But the play is really about language and how exactly it defines a culture. Friel is far too subtle to simply say that the Irish language definitively defines the Irish. Of course it doesn't; thanks to the English, Ireland is a predominantly English-speaking nation, and its sense of Irishness is generally intact. But language does embody, if not culture, identity, and that's a huge issue for the Irish, especially the Irish-speaking Irish. That's why the play struck Eliza so close to home.
She comes from a Latvian-speaking family, and she studies at university in a Russian-speaking city. Of course it's not as simple as that -- in fact, it's really complicated. Daugavpils is primarily Russian-speaking, but it's not only Russian-speaking. Most people also speak Latvian and go back and forth between the two effortlessly. But not everybody; some older Russian speakers never learned the language when they came to Latvia, though there are fewer and fewer of such citizens. Some Latvians are adamant about speaking and using Latvian and Latvian only. Most are practical about it; in a country where 40% of the population, give or take, know and use Russian, it makes sense to know and use it as well.
It seems that every generalization I have come across about language in Latvia has been contradicted by another generalization, so it's hard to know where things stand. A little background, first of all: when Latvia declared its independence in the early '90s (1991, I think), it declared that Latvian would be the official language of the country. As a small nation with a small population speaking that language (currently only about 2 million), this move was certainly intended to ensure that Latvian didn't disappear into the larger Russian language that's currently spoken worldwide by about 220 million people, in large part because the Soviet Union was so good at exporting the language into its republics.
That's what happened here. When the Soviet Union started cranking up industrialization in the Baltics in the 1940s and '50s, it moved plenty of ethnic Russians in to work in the factories. This is especially true in Latvia and even more so in Daugavpils. That said, it's worth noting that Daugavpils has been Russian for much longer than Soviet times because the area was part of the Russian Empire. At the turn of the last century, it is estimated that less than 2% of Daugavpils was actually Latvian.
I have heard various estimates about how Russian Daugavpils is -- 50% is the official number, according to the Latvian Institute; 70% to 90% are other figures that I have heard bandied about. Of course, the issue is further complicated by the fact that being ethnically Russian doesn't necessarily mean speaking Russian, though you hear plenty of Russian in Daugavpils. (I am only now sure which language I am hearing on the street, Latvian or Russian, and I still sometimes get it wrong.) In Soviet times, Latvians were understandably resentful that Russian-speaking Soviets had taken over the country in many respects, language being but one of them. Latvian was not taught in schools and had no official standing, a stance typical of the Soviet Union toward its many republics. So when Latvia became a nation again, Latvian became the official language. If you didn't speak and read some Latvian, theoretically you couldn't fully function.
In fact, to get official Latvian citizenship, you had to demonstrate some facility with Latvian. The new government initiated a language test in order to qualify for citizenship. The bar was not set very high; there are officially four levels of competency, "4" being near native fluency, and sub-levels within each level. I think a Russian speaker needed to pass an exam set at one of the "1" levels. (I'm not sure that these are the terms that Latvians use for this, but I think they are the equivalents.) Keep in mind here that many, even most, Russians were not Latvian citizens and that they had been in Latvia for 40 to 50 years. But they weren't exactly Russian any more, either, because they were moved on the premise of being Soviet. And given the economic upheaval in Russia after the break-up of the Soviet Union they didn't want to return. And they understandably resented being told in no uncertain terms that they were second-class citizens in what was, after all, their homeland. Some (generally older) Russian speakers never bothered to learn Latvian, others flat out refused to, Latvian classes sprang up all over the place for adult learners, and Latvian was made official in all sorts of ways. Regardless what you hear on the street, what you see is Latvian on road signs, street signs, in shopping malls, in all documents, in advertising. Even so, there are Russian-language newspapers, Russian radio and TV advertisements, shop signs, and so on. The disconnect between what you hear and what you see is confusing in a place like Daugavpils: what exactly is the language here?
Latvian also became the language of the educational system, which it generally still is. When you went to school, you learned Latvian, though there are Russian schools now as well. (Daugavpils also has a Polish school; more on that later.) This means that regardless of your mother tongue, if you are under 30, you learned Latvian to the point of fluency. But the language that you learn and know "officially" isn't necessarily the language that you use in your daily life, and Latvian remains, for better or worse, a dual-language country. Actually, the linguistic picture is even more complex than that, but in general I think that statement is pretty accurate.
Granted, many people don't give this a moment's thought. They just go back and forth between the two languages as they need to, with varying levels of fluency. But it does make it tricky to talk about Latvian identity because there are actually a number of them. And for a small country that has spent most of its history under the thumb of every one of its neighboring powers, this is a vexed historical issue -- who are we, exactly? -- in which language is a major, complicated piece of a much larger puzzle.
But the play is really about language and how exactly it defines a culture. Friel is far too subtle to simply say that the Irish language definitively defines the Irish. Of course it doesn't; thanks to the English, Ireland is a predominantly English-speaking nation, and its sense of Irishness is generally intact. But language does embody, if not culture, identity, and that's a huge issue for the Irish, especially the Irish-speaking Irish. That's why the play struck Eliza so close to home.
She comes from a Latvian-speaking family, and she studies at university in a Russian-speaking city. Of course it's not as simple as that -- in fact, it's really complicated. Daugavpils is primarily Russian-speaking, but it's not only Russian-speaking. Most people also speak Latvian and go back and forth between the two effortlessly. But not everybody; some older Russian speakers never learned the language when they came to Latvia, though there are fewer and fewer of such citizens. Some Latvians are adamant about speaking and using Latvian and Latvian only. Most are practical about it; in a country where 40% of the population, give or take, know and use Russian, it makes sense to know and use it as well.
It seems that every generalization I have come across about language in Latvia has been contradicted by another generalization, so it's hard to know where things stand. A little background, first of all: when Latvia declared its independence in the early '90s (1991, I think), it declared that Latvian would be the official language of the country. As a small nation with a small population speaking that language (currently only about 2 million), this move was certainly intended to ensure that Latvian didn't disappear into the larger Russian language that's currently spoken worldwide by about 220 million people, in large part because the Soviet Union was so good at exporting the language into its republics.
That's what happened here. When the Soviet Union started cranking up industrialization in the Baltics in the 1940s and '50s, it moved plenty of ethnic Russians in to work in the factories. This is especially true in Latvia and even more so in Daugavpils. That said, it's worth noting that Daugavpils has been Russian for much longer than Soviet times because the area was part of the Russian Empire. At the turn of the last century, it is estimated that less than 2% of Daugavpils was actually Latvian.
I have heard various estimates about how Russian Daugavpils is -- 50% is the official number, according to the Latvian Institute; 70% to 90% are other figures that I have heard bandied about. Of course, the issue is further complicated by the fact that being ethnically Russian doesn't necessarily mean speaking Russian, though you hear plenty of Russian in Daugavpils. (I am only now sure which language I am hearing on the street, Latvian or Russian, and I still sometimes get it wrong.) In Soviet times, Latvians were understandably resentful that Russian-speaking Soviets had taken over the country in many respects, language being but one of them. Latvian was not taught in schools and had no official standing, a stance typical of the Soviet Union toward its many republics. So when Latvia became a nation again, Latvian became the official language. If you didn't speak and read some Latvian, theoretically you couldn't fully function.
In fact, to get official Latvian citizenship, you had to demonstrate some facility with Latvian. The new government initiated a language test in order to qualify for citizenship. The bar was not set very high; there are officially four levels of competency, "4" being near native fluency, and sub-levels within each level. I think a Russian speaker needed to pass an exam set at one of the "1" levels. (I'm not sure that these are the terms that Latvians use for this, but I think they are the equivalents.) Keep in mind here that many, even most, Russians were not Latvian citizens and that they had been in Latvia for 40 to 50 years. But they weren't exactly Russian any more, either, because they were moved on the premise of being Soviet. And given the economic upheaval in Russia after the break-up of the Soviet Union they didn't want to return. And they understandably resented being told in no uncertain terms that they were second-class citizens in what was, after all, their homeland. Some (generally older) Russian speakers never bothered to learn Latvian, others flat out refused to, Latvian classes sprang up all over the place for adult learners, and Latvian was made official in all sorts of ways. Regardless what you hear on the street, what you see is Latvian on road signs, street signs, in shopping malls, in all documents, in advertising. Even so, there are Russian-language newspapers, Russian radio and TV advertisements, shop signs, and so on. The disconnect between what you hear and what you see is confusing in a place like Daugavpils: what exactly is the language here?
Latvian also became the language of the educational system, which it generally still is. When you went to school, you learned Latvian, though there are Russian schools now as well. (Daugavpils also has a Polish school; more on that later.) This means that regardless of your mother tongue, if you are under 30, you learned Latvian to the point of fluency. But the language that you learn and know "officially" isn't necessarily the language that you use in your daily life, and Latvian remains, for better or worse, a dual-language country. Actually, the linguistic picture is even more complex than that, but in general I think that statement is pretty accurate.
Granted, many people don't give this a moment's thought. They just go back and forth between the two languages as they need to, with varying levels of fluency. But it does make it tricky to talk about Latvian identity because there are actually a number of them. And for a small country that has spent most of its history under the thumb of every one of its neighboring powers, this is a vexed historical issue -- who are we, exactly? -- in which language is a major, complicated piece of a much larger puzzle.
Thursday, April 6, 2017
Triviana Latviana 2
More in the long line of somewhat random observations about what makes Latvia tick:
I am curious about the little felt hats that I see people wear in the sauna at the University gym, where I swim regularly. In the sauna, many people wear a felt pointed hat that is sometimes printed with the word pirts, which is Latvian for an outdoor sauna, usually a wooden shack heated with a woodstove. I wonder if it's designed to heat your body even more, as if being in a sauna were not making you hot enough.
I have also noticed that only in Latvian supermarkets can you find supplies for your pirts. If you don't have a bundle of birch branches to swat yourself with (supposedly, it releases toxins in your skin and is therefore good for you), you can actually buy them already tied together and bundled for you. They are next to the little felt hats printed with pirts on them.
Latvian windowsills are generally quite deep, which means one can put lots of flowers and plants in them. It seems that there might be a federal law mandating this, because all windowsills have them, even those in public stairwells. I don't know who waters the public area plants, but I have yet to see one with even a single brown leaf on any of them. Orchids are especially popular, but any kind of flowering plant will do. If there is room, there must be several of them.
The Humanities Building of Daugavpils University has locked classrooms which you need a key to open so that you can teach your class. Therefore just inside the front door is a little office that looks like a ticket booth at a train station and contains arguably the most powerful person in the university: the Keeper of the Keys. Keys must be signed out and returned. This is initially bewildering for an American visitor, which has no such system. This means you can't just walk in to your class at 7:59 for an 8:00 class. Your students will be waiting for you, and you had better have remembered to get the door key.
Even plebian, everyday Latvian beers like Aldaris are pretty darn good, but the microbrewed ones are amazingly good. In particular, I am now enamored with something called Valmiermuižas, which is brewed in Rīga. They brew unpasteurized beers that, as my mother would say, would grow hair on your chest. They don't make an enormous number of beers -- a light, a dark, a wheat beer, a porter -- and I am working my way through all of them. Locally, the brewery in Daugavpils, Latgale, makes a very respectable light and dark. The dark is better, but I bet I could drink gallons of the light in the summer.
Next entry on the growing list of TINDs (This Is Not Done): Do not put your coat on the back of your seat in a restaurant or public space with seating. Latvia abounds in standing coatracks, and coats are, logically enough, supposed to be hung on them. There is probably one near your table; there always is. It only holds six coats, you say? It seems to be buried under the weight of at least twenty coats, you say? This is irrelevant. Add your coat to the pile. This Is What is Done.
One of the pleasures of Latvia is the endless array of pastries that, in the name of intercultural research, I am obligated to gobble my way through so that I can report to you about them. You have already read about honey cake (medus kūka), which I am getting addicted to. But there are kūkas galore, not to mention little apple strudels that I eat at least twice a week for breakfast, cherry-filled somethings that I eat at least twice a week for breakfast, and a rotation of others filled with raspberries, prunes, and apricots that I eat the remaining three days of the week. If this seems excessive -- and, well, it is -- it's worth noting that a single pastry costs maybe 30, 40 cents. In the U.S. a single pastry would be $1.50. I am single-handedly closing the Latvian trade deficit by eating pastries.
Daugavpils reminds me a lot of Flint, Michigan, where I grew up. Like Flint, Daugavpils had a lot of industry (thank you so much, Soviet Union) that collapsed when the Soviet Union did. Therefore there are a lot of crumbling factories in town, looking the worse for the wear. (In Flint they have been mostly razed.) Recently having met a very cool British guy and his equally cool Latvian wife who are designers in the largest sense -- graphic designers, interior designers, industrial designers -- it struck me that Daugavpils could well be on the verge of a kind of renaissance, as artists and creative types who are looking for cheap space could move in and do their thing. I'll have more to say about this in a later post on where I think Daugavpils might be headed in the future, but it strikes me that Daugavpils is where Flint was ten years ago, on the verge of rethinking and rebranding itself. It could be very cool, and I don't say that just because Allen and Natalja now live here, though they are certainly helping matters out.
Fast food is not very common in Latvia, but the two major burger chains, SubBurger and HesBurger, are fascinating to visit. Many travelers sneer at the idea of going to a fast food chain when visiting a foreign country. Not me. Fast food, an essentially American concept, is totally worth seeing translated into other cultures. First, the restaurants are bright and cheery and look exactly like a fast food restaurant anywhere else, except you sort of need subtitles. It's when you order that things get slightly weird: what are potato chips doing on a burger? And why is that particular combination called an Arizona Burger, when there is nothing remotely desert-like about it? Why is mayonnaise the condiment of choice, so much of it in fact that the burger keeps sliding off the bun? The one thing I really like is the portion control: there is no super-sizing in Latvia. A Coke is a small Coke. That is your choice, so that you can't overeat the way fat, overfed America does. And I must say that Latvian French fries are excellent.
I am curious about the little felt hats that I see people wear in the sauna at the University gym, where I swim regularly. In the sauna, many people wear a felt pointed hat that is sometimes printed with the word pirts, which is Latvian for an outdoor sauna, usually a wooden shack heated with a woodstove. I wonder if it's designed to heat your body even more, as if being in a sauna were not making you hot enough.
I have also noticed that only in Latvian supermarkets can you find supplies for your pirts. If you don't have a bundle of birch branches to swat yourself with (supposedly, it releases toxins in your skin and is therefore good for you), you can actually buy them already tied together and bundled for you. They are next to the little felt hats printed with pirts on them.
Latvian windowsills are generally quite deep, which means one can put lots of flowers and plants in them. It seems that there might be a federal law mandating this, because all windowsills have them, even those in public stairwells. I don't know who waters the public area plants, but I have yet to see one with even a single brown leaf on any of them. Orchids are especially popular, but any kind of flowering plant will do. If there is room, there must be several of them.
The Humanities Building of Daugavpils University has locked classrooms which you need a key to open so that you can teach your class. Therefore just inside the front door is a little office that looks like a ticket booth at a train station and contains arguably the most powerful person in the university: the Keeper of the Keys. Keys must be signed out and returned. This is initially bewildering for an American visitor, which has no such system. This means you can't just walk in to your class at 7:59 for an 8:00 class. Your students will be waiting for you, and you had better have remembered to get the door key.
Even plebian, everyday Latvian beers like Aldaris are pretty darn good, but the microbrewed ones are amazingly good. In particular, I am now enamored with something called Valmiermuižas, which is brewed in Rīga. They brew unpasteurized beers that, as my mother would say, would grow hair on your chest. They don't make an enormous number of beers -- a light, a dark, a wheat beer, a porter -- and I am working my way through all of them. Locally, the brewery in Daugavpils, Latgale, makes a very respectable light and dark. The dark is better, but I bet I could drink gallons of the light in the summer.
Next entry on the growing list of TINDs (This Is Not Done): Do not put your coat on the back of your seat in a restaurant or public space with seating. Latvia abounds in standing coatracks, and coats are, logically enough, supposed to be hung on them. There is probably one near your table; there always is. It only holds six coats, you say? It seems to be buried under the weight of at least twenty coats, you say? This is irrelevant. Add your coat to the pile. This Is What is Done.
One of the pleasures of Latvia is the endless array of pastries that, in the name of intercultural research, I am obligated to gobble my way through so that I can report to you about them. You have already read about honey cake (medus kūka), which I am getting addicted to. But there are kūkas galore, not to mention little apple strudels that I eat at least twice a week for breakfast, cherry-filled somethings that I eat at least twice a week for breakfast, and a rotation of others filled with raspberries, prunes, and apricots that I eat the remaining three days of the week. If this seems excessive -- and, well, it is -- it's worth noting that a single pastry costs maybe 30, 40 cents. In the U.S. a single pastry would be $1.50. I am single-handedly closing the Latvian trade deficit by eating pastries.
Daugavpils reminds me a lot of Flint, Michigan, where I grew up. Like Flint, Daugavpils had a lot of industry (thank you so much, Soviet Union) that collapsed when the Soviet Union did. Therefore there are a lot of crumbling factories in town, looking the worse for the wear. (In Flint they have been mostly razed.) Recently having met a very cool British guy and his equally cool Latvian wife who are designers in the largest sense -- graphic designers, interior designers, industrial designers -- it struck me that Daugavpils could well be on the verge of a kind of renaissance, as artists and creative types who are looking for cheap space could move in and do their thing. I'll have more to say about this in a later post on where I think Daugavpils might be headed in the future, but it strikes me that Daugavpils is where Flint was ten years ago, on the verge of rethinking and rebranding itself. It could be very cool, and I don't say that just because Allen and Natalja now live here, though they are certainly helping matters out.
Fast food is not very common in Latvia, but the two major burger chains, SubBurger and HesBurger, are fascinating to visit. Many travelers sneer at the idea of going to a fast food chain when visiting a foreign country. Not me. Fast food, an essentially American concept, is totally worth seeing translated into other cultures. First, the restaurants are bright and cheery and look exactly like a fast food restaurant anywhere else, except you sort of need subtitles. It's when you order that things get slightly weird: what are potato chips doing on a burger? And why is that particular combination called an Arizona Burger, when there is nothing remotely desert-like about it? Why is mayonnaise the condiment of choice, so much of it in fact that the burger keeps sliding off the bun? The one thing I really like is the portion control: there is no super-sizing in Latvia. A Coke is a small Coke. That is your choice, so that you can't overeat the way fat, overfed America does. And I must say that Latvian French fries are excellent.
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