On the Road with Julie

Time to Read:

Lovely Riga, where would I be without you?

Riga, Latvia was just lovely. Absolutely lovely. I can’t think of a single word to better describe the place and my experience of it than that.

It wasn’t lovely in a loud, in your face, mind-blowing, sensory explosion kind of way. It was lovely in a few deep breathes after a steep climb kind of way. It was lovely in a refreshing stretch and rejuvenating morning-yawn kind of way. It was lovely in a way that feels simple, enriching and nice.

There were plenty of fun things to do and beautiful things to see and delicious things to eat in Riga, only some of which I took advantage of during my time there. But the overriding feeling was in the simplicity and ease of going through a day without complication, without fuss, where the rhythm of life moved in a gentle kind of way.

My favorite moments in Riga were peaceful ones, like laying down in a park, breathing in the crisp spring air under a blue sky, at the foot of a sprawling tree until I fell into a wonderful afternoon nap. Or sitting on a bench with my Russian teacher talking in Russian about life and music, under that same blue sky filled with comforting clouds as people quietly criss-crossed their way across the canal through the green of the central city park. We sat there, chatting and doing our best to convince the ducks at our feet that, unlike prior bench residents, we had no crumbs or seeds to offer them.

I was told by a handful of my Russian teachers that I was quite lucky in the type of spring weather I was seeing – that it is not uncommon for the spring to bring gray skies. For the bulk of my two weeks in Riga, I was greeted by crisp blue and a sunshine that shone through the trees and reflected so perfectly off the sheen of water snaking through the city’s canal.

From the second I arrived in Riga, I was overcome by the sense of peacefulness there. So much so that my first two nights in Riga consisted of some of the best sleep I’ve gotten on this whole trip. After two weeks filled with sensory indulgence in Italy, the quiet simplicity of life in Riga was the perfect counterbalance.

When I first arrived there and my host was showing me the bus route to my school, I immediately remembered my cultural preparation, reminding myself that, in Latvia and other slavic cultures, it is not standard to smile at strangers. It is such an ingrained habit in me, I had to physically fight the urge. I double checked with my host when we were first getting on the bus – “It is not normal to smile at strangers, right?” “Right.” She said. “If you smile at strangers, people will think you are drunk or crazy.” Well, I’m not drunk.

Some of the younger generation might be subscribing to new cultural norms and I was getting some serious mixed messages from this beautiful coffee cup.

Now, mind you, this was a coffee cup that was being used to house hot chocolate that I received while in a coffee shop that had massive stuffed animals to share the tables with you. So I was definitely already smiling.

I will be honest, it was a tremendous relief on my first day of classes when I hung out with a group of students, one of them a Dutchman that was even more smiley than me where I was free to be as smiley and bubbly as my American self wanted to be. Not that all Americans are smiley and bubbly, but, our spectrum of variance encompasses a very different range from that of Latvians. Even for an American, I am more smiley than most. Don’t get me wrong, I am very much an east coast American and I can be seen completely unsmiley in some moments, focused only on what I am doing and where I am going. But, generally speaking, it is my instinct to do all the things that don’t fit here, so I am willing myself to show respect for cultural norms as best I can. I would imagine that this particular Dutchman was on the upper crest of the Dutch smiley spectrum as well. It was a very freeing experience. I know, to some people, the American reputation of smiling is not seen as a sincere thing. For me, it is quite sincere and I felt such a relief to not have to bottle them up and hold all that friendliness in. I have learned, in each country, to try to take the cue from others what level of that boisterousness is welcomed. No matter which country I’m in, that usually means dialing it down A LOT! Sometimes it’s nice to just be as I am and let the friendliness floodgates open with someone that is on that same page.

But, though smiles between strangers are not to be found, when you are with someone in Riga in a personal interaction, the smiles are bountiful and so pure and tremendously beautiful. In my experience of my travels, though the customs relating to smiles and chit chat and ways of interacting are quite different from one culture to the next, ranging in all sorts of different ways, the heart and spirit of humans caring for and connecting with other humans is what comes through every time.

I learned a good amount about Riga, about Latvia, about it’s history and architecture and culture and people in my two weeks there.

However, I was so focused on getting my footing in my Russian studies that, combined with my desire to plug into this more relaxed vibe, my tourist dial was turned way down. Other than the tours that were offered me by the school I was attending, I don’t know that I took a single ounce of initiative to explore Riga’s cultural and historical offerings. I just lived my life and went to school and enjoyed the heck out of it. I am hesitant to report too much of what I did learn about Riga or Latvia during my time there, since all that I learned was communicated to me in the Russian language. Falling victim to the “game of telephone” phenomena is even more of a risk when your grasp of an entire language is also in question. That said, I think I understood well enough to get an appreciation for the varied history of this town that had been under control of so many different countries and cultures over the years and generations, leaving the linguistic landscape as a set of historical maps to what had happened and where.

Most of the younger generation, under 40 at least, spoke Latvian and English quite well and either couldn’t speak Russian, or weren’t interested to do so as a result of Russia’s actions in the Ukraine. At the same time, the older generations, 40 and above typically spoke Russian and Latvian and very little English. If you were to go one more generation older, you then begin to find German speakers. Even on some of the historical buildings, you would see language in German.

Being there for a linguistic immersion, this ,of course, is not the most ideal scenario, but putting my own very selfish preferences aside, it was a really special, interesting and enriching environment to be in with so many languages and their associated dynamics as part of the landscape. When I was outside of my school environment, I had very limited experiences of getting to speak Russian out and about – but, there were a couple of times, and each of them were quite special.

I’ve already described a bit about my experience of studying Russian while in Riga – so, it is time, now, to do my reporting on the other elements of the experience – the place, the people and, of course, the food.

Let’s start with the food, shall we.

Mmmmm….the food.

After two weeks of sustaining myself primarily on various arrangements and rearrangements of carbs in Italy, I was immediately relieved to get my first meal served to me in Latvia. It was a delicious home-cooked meal with, wait for it, vegetables! It was such a delicious cabbage salad and the most warming, flavorful and needed chicken soup.

Did I eat more vegetables in Latvia than I did in Italy? Yes, definitely yes.

Did I eat more meat in 3 days in Latvia than I did in my entire two weeks in Italy? Yes, I did. I ate sausage. I ate ribs. I ate fish. And that was just in one meal. I figure, if I just take my last week in April and eat mostly vegetables, then if you average out my meals over the course of the month, it should equal a balanced diet.

In Riga, they know how to do fast food right. Yes, there was Burger King and a McDonalds, both of which I walked right by. But Riga has another fast food joint that, not only can you find one every few blocks or so, but I ate it almost every day I was there. It’s called Lido and it is fantastic. It was basically a buffet of actual real food. hot, fresh and at the ready. I absolutely loved it. When Ryan showed up for my last two days in Riga, he quickly became a fan as well.

One of my days was spent with an absolutely fantastic couple, Natalia and Vladimir. They took me to the seaside town of Jurmala, just 20 minutes outside of Riga. We walked around, I ate ribs (or course) and we spoke in Russian. Vladimir spoke a little bit of English, but, luckily, not enough to take away the opportunity to stay in Russian all day. Thanks to being forced to communicate all day in Russian, it was definitely a highlight of my time.

My first week in Riga, I stayed with the most wonderful host. For better or worse, she spoke really great English. I’ve learned, over the course of this trip, that it takes a very specific kind of patience to converse with someone in a language that they are still learning. And, if you know the word they are struggling to find, for many people, it is hard to not just give it to them and move on. The struggle is where the learning happens, so I was grateful for the times where I found myself on adventures with teachers and guides that only spoke Russian. Communication still happens, but through the pathway of a bit of struggle and discomfort.

My host and I got along like old friends. Fortunately, that means I had an absolutely lovely time living in her spotless and comfy home. Unfortuantely, that means, I didn’t get near as much Russian practice as I had hoped. Anytime I was struggling, it didn’t take long before she switched to English and I lazily followed suit. Eventually, I found myself just jumping right to English when I was struggling. A few times, we both were very committed that we would speak in Russian, so I did get in a few good conversations and the conversations we had in English were so enjoyable that it was well worth it. She was such a warm, wise, caring host and it was so nice to be cooked for and watched over so lovingly for a week. I slept well. I ate well. I lived well.

At the same time, her house was a 20 minute bus ride outside of town, so I looked forward to staying my second week in an AirBnB right around the corner from my school.

Alas, I have strayed from the important topic of food.

For better or worse, I found myself a coffee shop that had an entire desert case FILLED with gluten free, dairy free treats. I essentially took up residence there for the duration and gorged myself on every new scrumptious option they had. I got to experience the slavic delicacy of honey cake, cheesecake, black forrest cake and, for the first time in my allergetic life – tiramisu! I was very excited, while in Italy, studying Italian, to learn that the name for Tiramisu literally refers to the emotional affect it is intended to have on one’s spirits. “Tira” means – Pull, “Mi” means – me, “Su” means – up. The word Tiramisu actually means “Pick me up”. It is a delectable pick me up and it did it’s job!

I also found out that this coffee shop had unsweetened Hot Cocoa that they could make with Almond Milk. As someone that is essentially campaigning, through my actions, to make chocolate a food group, Hot Cocoa almost feels unfair. Not only do you get to have chocolate, you don’t even have to do any work to do it. Just pour it right down the hatch. Next stop – IV. Man, did I enjoy that hot chocolate. Answer – yes. Answer – every day.

On the topic of food, I also had the good sense to accidentally eat peanuts while I was in Riga. I am allergic to peanuts. Therefore, believe it or not, eating some of them was not a particularly enjoyable experience. The worst part about it – they were in the salad I had selected from the slew of different options at Lido. This is not a good feedback system to get me to pick up the pace on the vegetable eating.

This one was definitely on me. I did not check the ingredients as vigilantly as I usually would with an unfamiliar dish. It was the first day Ryan had arrived in Riga for the fourth of his 5 visits to me during my travels and I was fairly excited to see him. I have heard it said that love can make you do crazy things – like forget to check if what you are eating might be something that can poison you, specifically.

I never even thought to check for peanuts in a green salad. My tongue did the checking for me. Luckily, I survived the reaction without much ado. It wasn’t pleasant. I wouldn’t want to do it again.

And yet, I decided to anyways.

Yes. I ate peanuts AGAIN, the NEXT NIGHT!

I have probably eaten peanuts accidentally less than 10 times in my whole life. Two of those times were consecutive days in Riga. The second time was while eating another delicious VEGETABLE dish while telling Ryan how glad I was that the reaction was over and that I was not interested in going through that again for a little while. Twenty seconds later, I was putting down my fork and saying, “Wait a second, my throat hurts.” I double checked the ingredient list and this time, the fault was on my dumb old eyes. There was clearly a “5” marked next to the item I ordered. “5” means peanuts. But my stupid 46 year old eyes were like, that looks like a “6” to me. Mind you, the dish was ALL vegetables and SO delicious.

So, I popped another antihistamine and buckled in. Luckily, this reaction was shorter and milder and it makes for a good story about how fun it is to live life on the edge – the edge of stupidity – but an edge nonetheless. It’s all part of the fun.

Peanut ingestion aside, my food experience in Riga was absolutely delectable and still has my mouth watering thinking about it.

One of the defining qualities of my time in Vienna was how clean the city was and how many things the Viennese made look so easy where I found myself thinking – “why oh why do we not do it this way”. I think Riga gave Vienna a run for it’s money on the “let’s do things the easy way” front. Gosh, everything just ran so smoothly. The public transportation system was “chef’s kiss” as they say. The airport was squeaky clean. There were parks with paths in all the right places. And, when you went to the squeaky clean airport, you had signs like this at the water filling stations. I mean, come on. How much more thoughtful can you get? Don’t get me started on how fantastically they handle refreshments at the movie theater. Things don’t have to be so hard. Lets take a page out of Riga’s book and just do some of these things the easy way.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that life in Riga is easy. Not at all. There are places where life’s challenges here were visible and places where they were not.

The stairways and courtyards between buildings tell stories of times today and times gone by. I learned from more than one of my teachers and guides about some of the challenges.

I am hesitant to report too much on what I learned lest my Russian comprehension leaves too much to be desired, but the upshot of what I got is this. For many of the residents in Riga that call Riga home, there is a profound and deep love for this place. At the same time, there are economic and political realities that have had significant impact on the population and the economy, especially in recent years. There were times I found myself struck by the emptiness of certain squares that seemed like they deserved to be filled with people. My tour guide told me that there were times when they were filled to the brim. She assured me that the weekend would be more hopping. She was right and I had such a wonderful time at a festival in the old town where good food and good times were being had.

While I would have been satisfied to not have my dairy free, gluten free crepe experience that I have now had in most of the countries I’ve visited on this trip, while at the festival in the old town on a Saturday night, I just happened to see a “crepe” food truck in the mix of various ethnic offerings. And gluten free crepes were on the menu. I knew that most younger folks in Latvia didn’t speak much Russian so I started my order with, “English?” They responded with a smile – “French?” I of course responded, “Oui!” and was so excited to get to have a conversation in French once again. French has definitely been the language that has most consistently followed me throughout my travels and I am now confident enough in it that I can easily use it to order my crepes and get to know a few French folks in Latvia.

To really get to know the heart and spirit that is very much alive in this lovely place, you can look no further than the answer I received when I asked them how they ended up with their food truck at this festival. They responded that they had come to Riga for vacation a handful of years back and immediately decided that it was where they wanted to live. Bye-bye, France. Hello, Latvia.

At the same time that I found myself feeling such a sense of peace and ease during my two weeks in Riga, there was something else I ran up against. Every once in a while, over the course of my time there, I found myself feeling sad. In those moments, the waves of sadness struck me as curious. There was nothing I was feeling sad about. I am pretty good at facing deep, dark, hidden feelings in myself when they surface. I peered underneath my waves of sadness to see if there was something I was sad about that I didn’t know I was sad about. Nope. I was happy as can be, just busy having an absolute blast on this dream trip.

It wasn’t until my last day of class that I understood those waves. I am and was, of course, just a visitor to this lovely place. Just someone passing through. I can’t begin to really know and understand any place from such a vantage point. But, on the last day of classes, I felt as though I understood a little bit more about how all of the pieces fit together, at least of what I had been experiencing.

On the last day, my teacher and I were learning about Russian music. She started playing me a song. I didn’t understand most of the lyrics at first. I found the music beautiful and I could sense that it was a powerful song – but, without really understanding it, I didn’t feel it’s power in my bones. My teacher began describing to me more what the song was about, as an act of vocabulary expansion and also cultural education.

She wanted to help me understand the context of the song before taking me through the lyrics word by word.

The more I learned what the song meant, and the more I understood the words, the more I understood the music. We listened to it again, and, this time, I felt it in my bones and a wave of chills went through my whole body.

It was a few short and simple sentences that my teacher said to me to help me understand. Her words hit me like a wrecking ball coming straight for the chest and, in an instant, all of the pieces came together and I immediately understood this mysterious feeling that I had gone in and out of experiencing over the course of my time in this lovely city.

She said to me:

Жизнь в Советском Союзе была тяжëлой.

Я знаю.

Я там былa.

Man, oh, man those words landed like a boulder.

They translate to this.

“Life during the Soviet Union was hard.

I know.

I was there.”

I wish I had words to describe the look on her face. There was no anger. There was no desperation. There was no angst. There was a simplicity. A steadiness. A strength. An honesty. A complete lack of self pity. And a something else that I do not have words for, but that taught me something I know I will long cherish. The look on her face gave a name to the sadness I had occasionally found myself feeling – not feeling like a personal emotion – more feeling like one feels water on the skin while swimming through a sea.

Riga is not a sad place. But there is a sadness that is alive there, somewhere in the silence.

She said nothing more. She didn’t need to. She wasn’t asking for pity or wallowing in any of it. She wasn’t trying to tell me anything other than the truth and what I needed to know to understand the strength I heard in this song. I was desperately curious to hear more, to understand more, to hear all of those layers and layers of lived experience that were stacked so richly and deeply into those three simple sentences. I wanted all of that life lived to take shape in actual words that I could hear and understand. But, this wasn’t my story to tell, and not my story to decide whether it gets told or not. She said exactly what she wanted to say, how much she wanted to say and how she wanted to say it. And the message was quite received.

I now understand what I had been walking through and swimming through for two lovely weeks. This was a place filled with generations of people that had been through something – something I can’t even begin to comprehend. And, that didn’t define who they were. That didn’t define the place. But it was there in the history. It is part of what shaped the present and there was life built in it and through it and around it and also in places that had nothing to do with it. There was a tremendous texture to it that was personal to this geography and these people and their story. There is even a part of the texture of that history that is personal to the story of my own family that once lived in Riga before coming to America at the turn of the 20th century.

And, with all of this historical inheritance, this is a people and a place that has found their way through the hardest parts of life all with a spirit that this song showed me was absolutely unstoppable and powerful. This was not a people that was busy painting themselves as victims. This was not a people that was seeking sympathy or waving the flag of their past pains in other people’s faces. I, myself, actually longed to see more of that pain expressed in outwards ways – but that is my way of relating to life. I understood, now, the sadness I occasionally felt amidst the peace and ease of people just doing things without loudness without bragadaccio, but with a quite beauty and a sturdy heart.

It’s not history, or pain or struggles that painted the primary face of the experience I had in Latvia. It was the opposite. It was just so much loveliness. So much ease. So much going about life without complaint and with quiet joy. But, there was history and pain there to be observed and felt if you were willing to listen to the spaces in the silence.

I wish I had words to describe the beauty of the smiles of the people I met in Latvia. Something shone through in those smiles that was hard won and pulsating with life and spirit and resilience and joy that stays alive even when harder things abound. And it touched me deeply.

And even though this particular moment of what my teacher said was one of the ones that hit the hardest, I have a list of stories that I could have chosen to tell as well, that were just as poignant and just as telling in their succinctness. They didn’t characterize the whole experience, not at all – but they were part of the experience in the silence between moments, in the spaces between the branches where sunlight shone threw onto a beautiful, peaceful, easy day.

There is one more single sentence story that I need to include to even come close to painting the full picture of my time in Riga. Another one of the teachers I had the pleasure of learning from over my 2 weeks studying at the Russian Language Academy Born was also a tour guide. She was in charge of offering the walking tours of the city to the school and I also had another private tour with her. She was absolutely overflowing with enthusiasm, excitement, knowledge and love for her hometown. She even told me that she was married twice and that the first one didn’t work out because he had wanted to move out of Riga. She exclaimed with glee and the purest love of place and home that one could possibly contain within themselves, that she told him,

Я не могу без Риги! Я не могу без Риги!

This literally translates to – “I can’t without Riga!” What it really means is, “I can’t live without Riga.”

A more beautiful and heartfelt love could not be more palpable. And I felt that in countless ways and countless quiet moments in my time there.

My time in Riga was lovely, truly lovely. There is so much more I could say and still feel that I’ve only scratched the surface of this quiet and lovely place that is brimming with treasures both on and beneath the surface.

I actually can and will live without Riga. But, I sure am glad that I got to live with it a little bit, too.

Спасибо, Рига.