Down with Comedy!

This is my new favorite phrase after yesterday. Read on to find out why... but, we'll pick up from the beginning,


I’m realizing the time it takes to write everything I want to write eats into the time I want to take to see everything. It’s a tough spot, and I’d say I should learn to type faster, but I already do pretty well, and I’m not willing to take time out of the trip to do speed practices an hour a day. I'd ditch the computer and give up the writing, but it gives me a way to process all the things I'm seeing and experiencing, and I'm definitely someone who has to stop and process things often. I’ve lost track of the days now, so I’ll have to start going by dates, which I likely should have done from the beginning anyway.

8 August, 06
I caught the night train from Petersburg to Riga, the capital of Latvia. Overall I did pretty well with the whole train arrangement. I’m realizing that one of the things making parts of this trip tough is that I’m doing all sorts of things I’ve never done before in English, and trying them first time out in not just foreign languages, but Very foreign languages.

The train is the perfect example of this. I’ve never ridden a train before, other than a metro in major cities. Nevertheless, I hiked to the station (not too far from my hotel, but seemed further with the backpack) found my way to the platforms, wondered if I was supposed to go through customs on the way out, decided against it, found the boards with the proper train number and times, and patiently, but nervously, waited around until the blank section that I expected to be the platform number came to life. The only thing that threw me was the fact that there wasn’t a train where I thought it was supposed to be up until about 20 minutes before we departed. Especially confusing since all the other trains were there a good hour or two ahead of time. It was the reassurances of a  sailor from Riga who seemed to be waiting in the same place as early as I was that he was going to Riga as well that kept me from panic. He struggled with English, but was a good preview of what to expect in Latvia – super friendly and multi-lingual and happy to go out of his way to help. From what I was able to understand he is a low ranking officer on a ship that measures 1024 meters, which I’m pretty sure must be a mistranslation, but one I couldn’t sort out, more likely it’s 124 meters, I think.

He’d been at sea for 6 months, which was longer than his usual 4 months on 2 months off schedule, and then to add insult to injury, the company bought him a train ticket home instead of the usual plane ticket. Apparently there is a shortage of able seamen, which is why his tour was longer than usual, and he was very anxious to see his family, though not so anxious as not to note that the woman who was taking our tickets was a tall blonde, and that was good. I’d sorted out that I was in car 5, and he showed me further down in a place I’d have never figured out, that I was in berth 13. After we boarded the train, he made a point to come back to my compartment, and find me, and tell me that if I needed any help in English during the trip, he was in compartment 7 and I should come find him. It sounds condescending when I type it now, but his wording made it clear how carefully he was trying to make himself understood. “I am  seven, you are four, so only tree down. Ja?” Ja is Latvian for yes, though it wouldn’t surprise me if he spoke German as well as Russian and English, and Latvian, of course.

The train ride was nice. There was only one other person in my four person compartment (second class), seemingly a businessman from Russia who did a great deal of traveling. He didn’t speak any English other than “USA? Florida? California?” I answered “Texas!” and he laughed and said “Te’has!” Yes… that’s right Tejas. He spent most of the first part of the trip playing some sort of game on his cell phone, and after we’d crossed the border into Latvia the next day, pulled out a small sandwich bag with eight or ten Sim chips and replaced the one in his phone. That and the many stamps on his passport are what lead me to believe that he does a lot of traveling regularly.

I made a half hearted attempt to get some dinner in the dining car, but my lack of Russian, and inability to find the right words to ask if the one complimentary meal we received was from there, or served in our car led to great frustration on the part of the non-English speaking waiter. I gave up, went back to my car and snacked on a snickers bar I was smart enough to pick up in the station and went to sleep. My question was answered the next morning when my complimentary breakfast was served. An airline food style plastic container with bread, cheese, butter, and pudding.



The only other really notable thing about the train ride, other than the scenery until the sun went down was the difference between the Russian and Latvian borders. We hit the Russian checkpoint around 4:30am, and the train was seemingly turned upside down by a multitude of Russian Federation soldiers, We then waited with more soldiers occasionally walking by the compartment until a woman border official came and looked at our passports. Now, when you come into the country, you fill out your immigration card, and they tell you to be sure to hold onto the half of that you get back. I kept mine in my passport, assuming that they would look at it and be done, especially when I’m on a train at the border instead of at the airport in Moscow or Petersburg. No… this woman had a book easily eight inches thick of printed pages and very small type and she looked up my information, which was apparently in there, as is every other person currently in Russia with documentation, and thoroughly checked everything before stamping my exit visa. My berthmate was subjected to even more scrutiny despite likely having made the trip many times. So finally we leave Russia and after about a 45 minute trip, we are stopped at the first Latvian stop on the line. I don’t think we’d been there more than ten minutes when the young (early twenties, at most) blue eyed soldier came to our compartment. Once again, my bunkmate was subjected to some scrutiny, but just a few questions this time, and then he took my passport. He seemed puzzled over a couple things, but after a couple moments of flipping through the pages looking for stamps, he looked up at me and asked, “Is this your first time visiting Latvia?” I was so surprised to hear his perfect English all I did was nod stupidly. He stamped my passport and handed it back and wished me well, “Enjoy your stay, and I’m sorry for delaying your voyage.” In other words, Welcome to Latvia.

9 August

Once through both borders we went back to sleep and I crashed pretty hard, sleeping more soundly than I did during the night. (that’s how it’s been going, leftovers from the nine hour time change I assume, I toss and turn till 4am or so, then crash hard and have trouble getting up before ten). We arrived at Riga around 10am local time, one hour behind St Petersburg, and after a bit of confusion caused by not realizing which side of the train station I exited and a giant sign with the name of my hotel, but no obvious entrance to the building, I walked around the other side of the station and found the right place without a problem. The Hotel Saulite is swank compared to where I stayed in Petersburg, with several floors of rooms and a very professional staff. The shower rocks, the towels are big and fluffy and the bed is comfortable, but definitely just a single. All for $25L a night, or about $44.00. (The room in Petersburg was $2200 rubles, or around $95 a night). Which reminds me, I’m pretty good with math, so estimating currency conversion isn’t a big deal, but going from a place where $1 = 27rbl and you pay for things with 100, 500 and 1000 notes to a place where $1 = .57 L is quite a change. It took a full day before I had to use anything other than the spare coins in my pocket to pay for anything, which of course shows that the coins are definitely not "spare change." Far removed from Russia where anything less than a one ruble coin is measuring fractions of a cent. Things are cheaper here too, a 1.5 liter bottle of water from the grocery last night cost me the equivalent of 40 cents, and that from a grocery on the main street. It gets even cheaper once you get away from the tourist areas.

Anyway, after a quick nap, I headed for “Old Town” which is basically the original city (established around the 12the century) with many original buildings. The whole thing is an established World Heritage site through the UN and definitely has the feel of medieval Europe, other than catering to the tourists now with a certain amount of bright signage and its own McDonalds. I wondered through it and then headed for the river, and stumbled on the Museum of Occupation.



This is a statue from the front, one of the few Soviet era statues still standing. The building itself is a perfectly designed black rectangle that sits off the ground about nine or ten feet, and you have to walk under its oppressive presence to enter the museum. The museum is pretty new, and completely free, and made me love Latvia even more than I already did. It’s one thing reading about how Stalin and Hitler signed the secret agreements and divided up eastern Europe, but an entirely different thing seeing copies of that document and photos of the meetings and reading the history of the people whose country has the bad luck of sitting directly between the two most brutal dictatorships of the 20th century. Since 1905 when the Russians invaded, these guys have been struggling to just live the way they want to, as a democracy. Despite losing a third of their population during WW2 and the struggle for independence in the ten years afterwards, they were still the first ones to declare themselves a sovereign state when Gorbachev started loosening the reigns in the mid and late eighties. They were just a bit too early, and the Soviets came into Riga and killed five people before Latvia was finally granted self rule, at which point all the other dominoes began to fall. You can’t really walk too far in the city without some reminder of the struggle to have their own country, and after so many years of apathetic democracy in the US, or anger at the government with no real action behind it, being somewhere that actually appreciates what they’ve got is a good feeling.

Anyway, to backtrack a bit, one of the things that made me laugh amongst a pretty grim display was some ballots from the first election afer the Latvian government was forced to become a protectorate of the USSR. There was obviously one slate of candidates, all Soviet approved, and for the most part they all won office with 92% to 95% of the vote. (Incidentally, the percentage of the time they won office was not unlike that of a US Senator, so Skal! to the people of Conneticut for throwing out Joseph Lieberman so they can elect a real Democrat.) Nevertheless, the Latvians weren't happy about it, and took to writing slogans on their ballots. The one that was my favorite was "Down with Comedy!", a reference to a Soviet Propoganda poster supporting the elections that said something to the effect of "Down with Oppression!", which is pretty comedic, when you think about it, a fact that was obvious to the Latvians even from the beginning of WW2. They had some of the ballots there at the museum, amongst other things. Maybe the most poingant items there were notes that were thrown from trains by people being shipped off to Gulags, letting their families know where they were.



To the issue of appreciating freedom, this is the Freedom Monument. It sits in the center of the main path between Old Town and new Riga, and there are always flowers at its base, though you can't quite see them in the shadows. The reason is, during the Soviet era, putting them there was a subtle act of resistance, basically a statement supporting the independence movement, and getting caught doing it was pretty much guaranteed to get you sent to a gulag in Siberia. Just to the West of that tower are five slabs of stone, memorials to the five people who died in 1991 when the Soviet machine tried one last time to bring the Latvians back into line.



There is a  canal that separates Old Town and the rest of Riga, and the Freedom Monument and the stone memorials sit in the park that follows the canal, sort of their version of a Greenbelt. This park is maybe the best place I’ve been on the trip so far. It reminds me a little of Central Park, in that it's all winding walkways and paddle boats for hire and obviously in the middle of a populous city.



At the same time, Central Park always feels crowded and a bit uncomfortable to me, as though as big as it is, it’s not quite big enough for the number of people. This park, despite being so much smaller just feels perfect for the city around it.



There are a fair number of statues, and most of the public art in the city has a minimalist style that I associate with the Soviets, but I’m sure has name. I’ve always liked the style – its as if the form was the important thing, and the detail less so, which in many ways is how I design.



There are times detail is important, obviously, but I’ve never been a person who could start with that detail. I always have to sort out the large form first. Anyway, these photos of the dancers are my favorites that I’ve taken on the trip so far.







The sculptures aren’t very big, and they are relatively close together, without any notes or details (I’ll have to look them up later) about who did them or when, but they have a great energy to them.

While meandering around the park, I heard some music at the top of a steep path and wound my way to the top. There I found a wide circular stone area with a low wall and benches around it, and a group of women and two men. One of the women was playing the fiddle, and another of the women was dressed in a red skirt with flowers in her hair, and dancing with the two men, barefoot. All the other women were dressed in black dresses, and laughing and clapping as they watched the dancers. There was also a woman taking photographs, and I was trying to sort out what was going on while watching them dance. The men were good dancers but the girl was fearless, getting swirled around wildly on the stone in her bare feet with the men wearing shoes. All of the dances involved some super serious footwork by the men, and I was curious as to whether the women always got off lightly or if she was just going easy on the stomping and footwork since she was in bare feet and maybe didn’t want to get stepped on. She might have had it easy on the footwork, but as I said, she was getting pulled and spun around the wide area with a speed and energy that amazed me. I don’t know how in the world there were no toe casualties.

I watched them do about four or five dances, each one different, but each one with the same energy and speed and some of the same footwork and spinning steps. Then they started a dance and as they finished one round, it involved the man and woman stopping, pointing fingers at one another as if to say “No no no!” clapping once, and then the girl went off to another partner. She switched back and forth between the men a couple times, then seemed to surprise the other girls by going over to two young guys sitting on the benches. She tried one of them, and then the other, but they wouldn’t budge, neither obviously wanting to be embarrassed despite having the chance to dance with a beautiful girl. I had a feeling I was next, but she worked on them for quite a while with no success and then actually pouted a little, not in a show off way, but in a real way, as though she was really disappointed, and then she spotted me. I’d never get up and dance a dance I didn’t know in front of strangers back home, but part of this trip is trying to break myself of those habits, so I’m trying to say Yes to pretty much anything here.

Anyway she came up to me and grabbed my hands and said, of course in English and of course with a gorgeous accent, “Come and dance traditional Latvian dance with me!” How could I refuse? I stood up and, having seen it already, picked up the basics in just one round, though the heavy footwork was beyond me, and then we did another round with me leading her in a wide circle, but not spinning her with nearly as much force as the other men did, and then we shook our fingers at one another, clapped and she said, “Thank you!” and headed off to another guy sitting and watching. After me, the rest of the men pretty much fell into line, dancing with her one round to learn it, and another for real before turning her over to the next one. Some of them did better than others, but I have to say I might have been the best of the bunch. She hit about 5 other guys, then did one round each with the original two, and that seemed to end the whole thing. They chatted for a while, then packed up their things and started walking down the hill.

So, about ten or fifteen minutes later, I was walking along the canal and saw the same group, sans the men, with the girl in the red skirt once again the focus of all the others, but this time dipping her socks in the canal and wringing them out. This despite the fact that she was distinctly not wearing socks up top, even when she put her shoes back on after they were done. Curious, I walked down and edged over, and asked one of the other women what was going on. I was told that the girl in the red skirt was about to be married, and that this day was her traditional bridal ceremony, and right then, she was doing her laundry because, and I quote, “obviously she is marrying the perfect man and he will always do her laundry from then on, so this is the last time she will ever do it.” (said with a laugh, of course) Yet another reason to love this country! Where else does the traditional bridal party involve her going out and dancing one last time with all the men and then doing her laundry for the last time ever? We all chatted for just a bit longer, as they all spoke English, and then I got all of them together and took their picture, and then the bride asked to have her picture taken with me, which I felt was quite an honor, and couldn’t refuse. Then one of the bridesmaids and I exchanged emails so that we could share the pictures and they continued on to the next task, whatever that might have been. Knowing the entire story now, I’m really glad that I got up and danced with her, and now I also know why she said “Thank you” to me afterwards when she didn’t say it to any of the other men. It made me realize how even the simplest things, like being embarrassed and not wanting to dance with a stranger in the park can have consequences far beyond what one might think. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if no strangers had danced with her during her “bachlorette party” but I’d have felt horrible finding out later what I turned down. In the end, after we had our picture taken, I told her she was a beautiful bride and a beautiful dancer and I hope she never, ever had to do laundry again.



And so, this is Latvia, known to me before now only as a haven of clowns, and that fictional (for those of you not in the Austin theater scene, Physical Plant Theater recently did a show called Not Clown, in which clowns were an oppressed minority and many fled to Latvia). I have to think Steve chose well, sending those seeking to live their own lives the way they want to to this little country, and I'm very glad I came here and am picking up a bit of their history and traditions. They pretty much got their asses kicked from 1905 with the first Russian invasion...



... to WW2 when they were handed to Stalin, then invaded and occupied by Germany and finally blown off by the rest of the world in the post WW2 negotiations and posturing between Stalin, Truman, and the other world leaders. They've been free for around 15 years now, and here's hoping the 21st Century is much, much better to them. May their marriage to the European Union be a happy one, and may they never have to do their own laundry again.

Velo viso to labako, (all the best)

Stephen