Latvija /Rīga/ (I)

Our small plane to Riga

So… the journey from the Tallinn hotel to the airport was smooth (Remember we DID take the same bus halfway to the airport on our arrival!). Judging by how short the bus journey takes from the city centre to the airport, Tallinn is in fact quite small. And we arrived at the airport way too early we could have taken an earlier flight to Riga!

The reason why Riga came into the picture in the first place was solely because I found really cheap flights from Tallinn to Riga. That’s pretty much it! I knew nothing about the place and nobody told me anything about it beforehand. I remember timidly proposing Riga to Gaz only to (amazingly) find out there is actually Latvian blood in him! I swear it’s a complete coincidence! Therefore, as it turned out, part of the Riga journey was devoted to tracing his family tree at the Latvian National Archives which yielded interesting findings! We are certainly 2 very atypical tourists!

I thought Riga would be somewhat similar to Tallinn and didn’t expect much from it really. By the time the airport shuttle left the airport, I instantly spotted some differences. The first impression I got was Riga seemed bigger and a bit more prosperous (or maybe a bit busier) than Tallinn. But because of its seemingly bigger size and availability of space, it doesn’t feel as cosy.

 

Churches are many and varied in Riga town centre

Like Tallinn, there is a historic centre (or old town) in Riga as well. Unlike Tallinn, not much of the medieval city wall remains, though there are still old churches and houses everywhere. So, you would easily have strolled out of the old town unknowingly due to the absence of the city wall boundary.

Sadly, I can’t really say I thoroughly enjoyed Riga. Perhaps it’s because I had a really good time in Tallinn and in comparison Riga’s just not as great. I mean it’s certainly an interesting place to come to, which virtually applies to every new place one visits, mind you – to be bombarded by a brand new culture and all that, but what sums it up is, I’m afraid, the sense of insecurity there. We had random strangers coming up in broad daylight asking if we spoke English (we had no idea why and didn’t want to find out either) or mumbling things we didn’t understand. We almost had to constantly look over our shoulders to make sure things were ok while we were in town.

The highly recommended Museum of Occupation

I did, however, enjoy the Museum of Occupation even though it was not meant to be “enjoyable” – if you know what I mean. The exhibition in the museum was anything but that. It documented how Latvia was being occupied twice by the Soviets and once by Germany. A tragic past to say the least. I was deeply intrigued by all the exhibits. I cannot recall the last time I was in a museum where I read every single word on the descriptions. In the end, it almost became too much to bear and we both walked out of the museum with heavy hearts – all the more for Gaz because of his (new-found!!) Latvian connection.

Just a brief one on our visit to the National Archive. (I’ll try to be brief but so many things happened!!) Before the trip, Gary wrote to the Archive for info regarding his great-grandparents. After not hearing from them for days and been worrying sick, Gary was relieved when an email from a researcher at the Archive arrived while we were in Helsinki. We scheduled a time/date, met up with the researcher at the Archive and were handed highly-revealing info, including his great-grandparents’ marriage certificate, birth certificates etc. 

Freedom Monument, Riga

Originally, Gary was thinking just to meet up with the researcher, talk with her and see to the possibility of tracing some old info etc. When we turned up, the researcher has already prepared a pile of documents for him, each one officially stamped and translated (as most of the documents were in Latvian or Russian). That was wicked and we didn’t see that coming AT ALL!! After all the explanations by the researcher, just when Gary was about to suggest giving some donations to the archive… she told us there’s a cost to all those papers (TYPICAL!!) It cost a total of 53.38 Lats (about HKD$800 I think). Considering the efforts spent, it really was not a lot of money to be honest. It’s just that he was completely blindsided by the way things were handled.

Now the problem was they would only take cash. Since we were in Riga for less than 3 days, we didn’t have much Lats with us. The two of us emptied our pockets and came up with 53 Lats (really on the dot!). But can you believe it? The cashier looked at us and asked us for the 38 cents!! Gaz told her that was all we had and if she really insisted, we could go withdraw/exchange some money from a bank. Luckily, she let us go. *Phew*

We entered the Archive with our pockets half-full and came out of it all emptied! Ha… Surely a very eventful morning and definitely added up to part of our delightful Baltic adventure! To be honest, I am really grateful I was part of all this!