8/16 Last day in Riga: Roses, Grimm Fairy Tale, a Frieze

Our bus to our next stop, Siauliai in Lithuania, didn’t leave until 3 so, after packing our bags, we meandered back to the Old Town to explore some of the sights we wanted to see either more fully or for the first time. 

To say that the Old City is an island is rather fanciful, but it is entirely surrounded by water. There is a small canal that runs through a series of attractive parks so that was our first destination. The canal is certainly not as magnificent as my hometown’s Rideau Canal is but the parks all had well attended flower beds throughout. 

In one of the parks near the Freedom Monument is Bastejkalns, the ‘high point’ of the city but not really more than a hiccup with little waterfalls and pleasant terraces by the canal. Five stones nearby commemorate the film cameramen and policemen killed there during the Soviet attack in January 1991.

The Swedish Gate, below, built in 1698, is the only gate left in the city walls and through it, the condemned were led to their fate. The executioner lived in the apartment next door; he would place a rose on his window ledge on any morning he had to perform. Not a very pleasant association with roses, huh!

 

The street on the other side of the gate is lined by the yellow James’ Barracks erected by the occupying Swedes. 

Just steps away were old houses built against the red-brick city wall that has been partially restored. At the end of the street is Pulvertonis, the Powder Tower, the last of the 18 city towers.

The country's Parliament was blockaded by Latvian citizens against Soviet attack in 1991. Images from the building:

The sculpture below by Parliament recalls the pivotal days of January 1991 when the people of Riga took to the streets following the threat of direct presidential rule from Moscow and the stationing of Soviet tanks.

We hadn’t had our daily dose of religion yet today so we strolled over to St. John’s Church that started life in 1234 as the chapel of a Dominican abbey. In 1330 it was enlarged and its buttresses became the dividing walls of the new side altars. It was taken from the Dominicans during the Reformation, and, in 1582 a divine service in Latvian was held there for the first time. 

The interior was particularly stunning we both thought. Hope you agree, too, after seeing the photos below.

I was especially awestruck by the intricacy of the church's vaulted nave.

This image was on the side of a pew in the church. Perhaps it heartened back to the House of Blackheads we had seen a couple of days ago?

Outside the church is the Statue of the Bremen Town Musicians from the Grimm fairy tale. It was a gift from the city of Bremen, Germany, the home of Bishop Albert, founder of Riga. We heard a tour guide tell his group that the most luck is granted to those able to touch the highest animal in the statue!

A short walk away was the Mentzendorff House, below, which was a prosperous German's home in the 17th-18th century although the building itself dates back to the 16th century. Among the former owners was the head of the city's Small Guild and the Master of the Order of the Blackheads who established a pharmacy on the property.

Next up on our list of final things to see was the House of John Reutern, a striking Baroque mansion where exhibitions are often held. The home was build by this rich German merchant in 1685 during the Swedish occupation. We had read about a frieze under the roof showing a Swedish lion devouring a Russian bear. Wish you could have seen us, looking and looking among a gazillion friezes for that particular one! Glad that Steven was able to find it before our necks gave out because there was NO way we were about to leave before we spotted that frieze!

A ten minute walk further on, on narrow Peitavas iela (street in Latvian), we took a few minutes to reflect on the splendor of a synagogue that had been beautifully restored. How sad to learn that it is the only Jewish place of worship in Riga that survived the Nazi occupation of Latvia. It was spared only for fear that a fire might spread to other nearby buildings.

This was the first synagogue I have ever entered that took us immediately to the second floor; in other words, to the women's and children's section, which meant it was an Orthodox synagogue. We later discovered the door on the right of the entrance which led us to the first floor.

Like so many other synagogues we've been in in many other countries, the interior was painted a very peaceful shade of pale blue. I have no idea if that holds any particular significance or not. Ivy, Elaine or Rose: Do you know by chance?

A very unusual building interspersed among the Baroque masterpieces still in the Old Town:

Loved these flower beds by St. John Church as we finally made our way back to the hostel:

Couldn't resist taking a picture of this sign in front of the kitchen sink at the hostel!

Great getting back to the hostel with enough time to relax for a couple of hours before we needed to leave for the bus station for the next stop in our adventure. We had checked out of our room this morning when we left for our own final discovery tour of Riga but the hostel staff had kindly agreed to store our luggage for us and said we could come back to eat lunch, watch the Olympics on TV, etc. The hostel had a fast internet connection so I spent most of the time loading pictures into a couple of blog posts so they at least would be ready for my descriptions, etc.

The moment we left the hostel, the heavens opened and we got drenched as we lugged our backpacks and duffle bags the ten or so minute walk to the bus station back over by the Central Market. Oh, what fun!

8/15: Riga, Latvia: Persecution, Old Believers & Art Nouveau

Many of you who have read our blogs in past years know of our love for farmers' markets all over the world. That is why we made our way first thing over to Riga’s Central Market which is comprised of five 66ft high Zeppelin hangars built by the Germans in southwestern Latvia in WW1 and brought to Riga in the 1920’s to house the market. It is thought to be one of Europe’s largest markets as it has more than 3,000 vendors and 75,000 people passing through daily! 

Each hangar has its own specialty: meat, dairy products, produce, seafood and …I didn’t find out what the last one was! I greatly admired all the many vendors' exquisitely hand knitted socks as I love to knit but, unlike my mother and my friend, Darlene, that is not a talent I've acquired.

Latvian cuisine takes its history from both Germany and Russia as those nations had the greatest impact on the country. Fish is the most traditional cuisine as it can be smoked and salted to last an entire winter. Who knew that Latvians are the third largest per capita consumers of potatoes after only Ireland and Belarus? The most consumed beverages, we learned on the walking tour, are vodka and beer.

It was very refreshing walking out into the fresh air after smelling the very intense smoked fish and seafood odors. I sometimes wonder what my fellow students must have thought of me when I worked every Wednesday during my third year of university for a full year at a seafood store in Ottawa and then took an evening American Colonial History class. I imagine I smelled as ripe too!

Inhaling the lovely scents from the wide array of flowers was indeed a welcome relief! Many of the flowers were, to us, very cheap - only two or three dollars.

There were hundreds of vendors selling their wares in stalls surrounding each of the hangars too. What a scream seeing Nathan's Coney Island hot dog truck here in Riga as we had seen the 'real thing' in Coney Island just a few months ago as we drove up the coast from Florida to NY and onto Canada!

Located a stone’s throw from the market was the Spikeri or Creative Quarter by the shores of the Daugava River. Regular art exhibitions, music concerts are hosted in the beautifully renovated storage buildings before the port was relocated. 

Steven and I couldn’t resist looking at, and admiring, this intriguing netted playground structure after all the planning and installation of a new playground in our neighborhood just days before we left Denver. Kathy: Bet you would have like it as much as we did!

Just a block away is all what’s left of the city’s once vibrant Jewish Quarter. Before WW11, Jews comprised between 8% and 10% of the city’s population, or about 60,000 to 70,000 people. After the war, there were only 200-300 Jews left. The deportations were begun by the Russians, Latvia’s occupier at the time. If anyone expressed any anti-Russian views, they were deported to Siberian camps immediately. It was no wonder, then, that the Germans were welcomed by the Latvians because they were seen as they couldn’t be any worse than the Russians. How sad that such comparisons between two such evil regimes were made and that the Germans came out the 'winner.'

As we toured the Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museum that had only opened in September of 2010, we learned that there had been more than 200 synagogues and prayer houses in Latvia, most of which were built prior to WW1. 

Riga Ghetto House: This two-story wooden house was built in the middle of the 19th century in the Moscow suburb where the Riga Ghetto was located during WW11. It was moved in 2011 to the Museum in 2011 where it was renovated. More than 30 people lived in this 1,000 square foot home! 

This room, which comprised the entire main floor, had models of 21 Latvian synagogues.

In front of the house was a square with Jewish symbols, Hebrew alphabet letters and the memorial sculpture, Tree of Hope, dedicated to Latvian rescuers of Jews.

The fence and gates, below, were made in the same way as they looked during the Nazi occupation. I didn’t realize til later that the cobblestones we walked on had been brought to the Museum from one of the main streets of the Riga Ghetto. The Memorial Wall contains more than 70,000 names of Latvian Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

The photo below shows a railroad track laid by the Germans to transport fuel to a site in Bikernikei Forest where the Nazis burned their victims' corpses to erase the vidence of their crimes before fleeing the city.

The exhibition ‘Berlin-Riga One Way Ticket’ was installed in a railway transportation car similar to the ones used to send thousands of Jews from Nazi Germany to Riga to almost certain death.

25,000 Jews were deported to Riga from all over Western Europe before being exterminated. In one of the most heartrending sights of Jewish life during Hitler’s reign of terror we have ever witnessed, one large room had a display of some of the murdered Jews’ photos and documents affixed to lampshades while haunting music played gently in the background.

 One was the story of Dadaism founder Walter Serner below.

On the edge of the Central Market and the Museum is the Moscow District known locally as ‘Little Moscow’ and is where ethnic Russians have lived for centuries. The area was a vibrant center for Jewish life in Riga until that was extinguished by the Nazis.

We hadn’t seen so many19th century wooden houses like these ones since we had visited two cities in Siberia back in 2013 when we traveled across Russia on the Trans Siberian train. It was sad to see that the dilapidated buildings have yet to benefit from Riga’s growing prosperity.

In the middle of the District, was the Empire State building replica (below on the right) that belonged to the Academy of Sciences. Our walking tour guide had joked the day before that since Riga is the biggest manufacturer of drugs in Eastern Europe, Latvians were not at all surprised that Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova had recently been banned from playing the game after using Latvian performance enhancing drugs! By the time Latvians finish high school, they normally are pretty fluent in four languages: Latvian, English, Russian and either German or French. Wouldn't it be great if American students, by contrast, had to have a passing knowledge at least of Spanish before graduation?

We decided to be a tad adventurous next and got the tram to the place of worship for the city’s Old Believers which was further out in the Moscow District. Old Believers settled in Riga after fleeing religious persecution in Russia in the late 17th century. 

The church now has the largest parish of the faith in the world, with a congregation of 25,000. I had so looked forward to seeing the church even though it is not well known and even the city’s Tourist Information staff was barely aware of its existence. You can therefore imagine my profound disappointment when we had schlepped quite a ways out for me only to discover that, according to the Russian-speaking guard when he pointed to the sign on his window, pants were not considered proper attire for a woman to be wearing to visit the church. I even had worn my headscarf since head coverings are normally mandatory for women in East European churches even though mine happened to be one I picked up in Haifa, Israel in 2014. Notice that 'made up lips' are not allowed either.

I was so bummed but managed to slip Steven my camera so he could be my eyes as he walked inside. Photos were not permitted either but he exercised great caution so he could show me AND you the inside of the church. He made sure to remove the battery in case anyone asked to see the camera.

The intertior of the Old Believers' Church:

More photos of the Moscow District:

We got the tram back to town – here are better shot of the Market’s hangars from the inside of the tram. We were SO glad to get off that tram after a passenger got on toting his smoked fish – I can still remember that scent now – phew!

Pretty shot of the National Opera which was where we got off the tram.

In the former US Embassy, is the temporary home of the Occupation Museum. The guard inside joked it was the safest museum in the city because of the barricades outside! The museum retraces Latvia’s plight under the German and Soviet occupations from 1940-1991. The moving exhibits depict the life of Latvians deported to Siberia and those who fought the Soviets in the forests.

Some Latvian history if you’re a nerdy wonk like me! If not, skip ahead several paragraphs. Latvia was a fully independent nation at the end of the Great War and was a member of the League of Nations until 1940. The Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1940 divided up Eastern Europe and, as a result, the USSR formally annexed Latvia in August of 1940. 

Then Nazi Germany took over the country in 1941. They, of course, had no plan to reestablish an independent Latvia. 70,000 Latvian Jews and 20,000 foreign Jews were murdered while the Germans were in control. 200,000 Latvians were drafted into the German and Soviet armies which resulted in Latvian fathers fighting against their Latvian sons and brother against brother.

After the German capitulation in the summer of 1944, the Red Army invaded Latvian territory that fall and resumed control of Latvia once again. During the second occupation of Latvia by the Russians in 1944-45, 150,000 Latvian protesters and sympathizers were deported to distant parts of Russia and 700,000 immigrants from other parts of the Soviet Union were relocated to Latvia. It is no wonder that the percentage of ethnic Latvians dropped from 75% of the population in 1935 to only 52% in 1989. Latvians faced the threat of being a minority in their own country.

Latvia remained under the chokehold of the Soviet Union for the next 46 years. Latvia became the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic within the USSR. Soviet occupation authorities persecuted all resistance until the end of the 1980s – more than 47,000 Latvians were arrested and prosecuted. The largest post WW11 Soviet terror action in Latvia was the mass deportation of inhabitants in March of 1949 when 42,000 Latvians were deported.

Figured we hadn’t had enough of our Russian fix by then so walked over to the stunning, five golden domed Russian Orthodox Church aka Nativity of Christ Cathedral. It had been gutted by the Soviets for use as a planetarium and restaurant during their rule before being lovingly restored. It was build from 1876 to 1884 for the city’s growing Russian community but became a Lutheran church during the brief German occupation of Riga in WW1. 

What a sobering visit it had been to the Occupation Museum. That visit, combined with our time earlier in the day to the ghetto, might have been enough tragedy and angst for many tourists in one day but our journey through Latvian history continued.

Hopping between puddles and trying to escape getting hopelessly wet from the intermittent rain that had threatened us since we had arrived in town a few days earlier, we went next to the Museum of Jews in Latvia housed in a historical building of the former Jewish theater. Because all Jewish-related buildings are under threat world wide, we had to get buzzed in. What a sad testament to the world we live in these days. 

The small museum which was established in 1989 was dedicated to the achievements and history of Latvian Jewish history that began in the 16th century. It was moving to see the section dedicated to the rescue of Jews in Nazi-occupied Latvia.

Not sure what to make of the German funding for the exhibition.

We needed something more joyous at that point so we walked over to the city’s Art Nouveau District as that style celebrated the triumph of the bourgeoisie at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. A new wave of architects jumped at the task of designing residential blocks, academies, schools, department stores, libraries, banks, restaurants and factories. The result is that nearly one in three buildings in Riga – some 40% of the boulevard city that grew up in the 1900s – is in Art Nouveau.

The individual features of scores of these buildings, testaments to high-spirited urban living, made a walk around Riga a joy. We were but two people of many, many other tourists with cameras slung around their shoulders and necks craned upward looking at the magnificent details of one building right after another.

After a sobering day full of so much reflection on atrocities committed against our fellow man, it was gratifying spotting the beauty in art and flowers at the end of it.