Riga, Grey Skies and a Quick Thaw

When I woke I could hear the sound of the old lady snow clearer scratching away at the pavement below and I thought this sounded promising so I rushed to the lobby where I knew Micky would be waiting following his early morning walk.

He assured me that there had been some snow but unfortunately it had recently turned to rain and this had washed away the two or three inches that had fallen earlier that morning.  Was he teasing? I couldn’t tell but a step outside confirmed that the old lady was simply scraping away the dirty brown slush that remained in the taxi rank.  I certainly would not have predicted this but the temperature had continued to rise and the snow that only two days ago looked a permanent feature had almost completely gone.

After breakfast Kim cleaned her boots and emptied the shoeshine machine of all of its wax and polish for at least the third time and we walked again through the art nouveau district then through the parks to the city centre.  This time we had to negotiate sprawling puddles of melted snow and the whole place was suddenly less attractive.  The Orthodox Cathedral was less impressive under a grey sky, the statue at the top of the Freedom Monument looked unhappy and the guards at the base were miserable.  The canal was no longer frozen but at least the ducks had somewhere to swim again.  Now and again some bits of blue sky skidded past but there was never enough to replace the leaden grey skies.

So we needed to find some things to do inside.  First we went to the little café at the House of the Blackheads and then we went inside to the see the museum.  This building was completely destroyed in 1945 and there were photographs inside to prove it.  In fact most of the Town Hall Square outside had been reduced to rubble but had all now been replaced.  The restoration was truly impressive and the building had been completely rebuilt in its original style.  Inside there were exhibits that had miraculously escaped the pillage that had accompanied the various occupations.

After the museum we went for lunch and because of the weather we prolonged this stay longer than we normally would.  Micky gave an informative talk on sheep shagging and Christine contributed to this with an impressive repertoire of lamb impressions.  We had some rambling and reminiscing conversations ranging from ‘what we used to do in the snow’ to the boring things we did as kids including such glorious pastimes as I Spy books and car number plate spotting.

After only a single glass of wine Calamity Christine got up off of the bench and whilst getting her leg-over got tangled up in Micky’s sleeve which resulted in a dramatic headlong crash to the floor.  As if this wasn’t funny enough she spun round, sat up with an accusing glare and shouted “MICKY!” which drew the attention of everyone around.  And he hadn’t even touched her!  Luckily she was unhurt and we were joined in our amusement by all of the other customers in the place.

It was still gloomy and we needed more indoor activity so we walked out of the centre towards the shops and on the way we passed through some streets that were yet to benefit from the city regeneration project.  Here there remained the legacy of the communist era, some original buildings bearing the scars of abandonment and neglect waiting their turn for refurbishment and other ugly functional concrete buildings added during the occupation period.  The Russians especially liked concrete and had added acres of hideous grey cement to the city, overwhelmingly dreary and the most unsightly blots on the environment and hopefully now all waiting their turn for demolition.

There was no chance of improvement in the weather so we made our way back to the Skyline bar for what had become our late afternoon refreshment break.  The lounge lizard was there again and there were more Brit-louts behaving badly in one corner but we didn’t let this spoil it for us.  Because of the weather we stayed there for the rest of the afternoon and had some tasty and reasonably priced plates of food and a final drink or two and enjoyed some last views of Riga.

Back now to that brilliant idea to book and pay for the transport to the airport in advance.  A taxi arrived at the agreed time we piled in and set off to the airport.  It was observant Kim who first noticed that this was not the same driver that we had made the arrangement with so whether he treated himself to a bottle of Balsam and stayed at home tonight or turned up at the Albert and wrote us off as generous time wasters we will never know.  Micky did his best to explain that we had paid in advance but the driver was not responsive so he had to be paid as well!

At the airport Kim played Miss Marple when she spotted some doubtful looking characters checking in with empty bags that thirty minutes later were suspiciously bulging and a quick examination of the rubbish bin into which they had discarded some litter confirmed that they were cigarette smugglers.

We arrived home five minutes ahead of schedule and then the airport and the immigrations conspired to hold us up for forty minutes to compensate for this.  I felt a complaint coming on and challenged the immigration staff for an explanation into this unacceptable treatment and an apology for the delay but naturally received neither.  Finally there was a second fiasco at immigrations when the staff tried to identify passengers from the Riga flight in a search for the smuggled cigarettes.  They should have asked Kim, she knew exactly where they were.  It was a pantomime and a complete failure with a procedure that leaked like a damaged sieve but thankfully it was only cigarettes they were looking for and nothing more sinister.

It had been a good four days and on the way home I reflected on the highlights which for me were the snow, the art nouveau area, the beach at Jurmala, the Spa, the Skyline bar and the amusing taxi Russian taxi driver.

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More posts about Riga…

Jurmala by Train

Jurmala

Riga – The Skyline Bar

Works outing to Riga

Riga- Lunch at the Lido

Rosa Klebb’s endurance sightseeing tour of Riga

Sigulda, Latvia

Latvia Dining – a Chronic Case of Indecision

Jurmala, Latvia

Riga sightseeing

Riga – Festival of the Family and a BBQ

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Riga, A Pedestrian’s Guide

Replenished with hot food we resumed our walk through the city and made for the old Jewish Quarter called Little Russia, which took us through the market on the way.  This area of the city was interesting for consisting of buildings constructed of timber that are fighting a losing rearguard action against decay and neglect and caught in a catch twenty-two situation, too expensive to repair and restore and too culturally important to be demolished.  If something isn’t done soon it is almost certain that Mother Nature will have the final word on the matter.

Adjacent to this area was the Academy of Sciences building, constructed by the communists in the style of the Seven Sister’s Skyscrapers in Moscow and although impressive in its appearance was seriously ill conceived in respect of location.

The sky was still clear so we decided to make the Skyline bar for the sunset, which the guidebooks described as not to be missed.  We walked back through the market, this time through the old zeppelin hangers that had been converted into a huge indoor market with an impressive array of produce.  The meat looked especially good and Micky (being a butcher by trade) gave us a guide to the cuts and the comparative costs to those back home.

On the way back we passed some currency exchange kiosks and Micky panicked because he had already spent about twenty Lats today and he felt the need to convert more sterling just to restore the size of his wad and to be on the safe side just in case the inflation rate hit 1000% overnight.  He became even more concerned when the first kiosk had run out of Lats!  Christine was fortunate not to be arrested when she hung about outside looking suspiciously like a bank robber under a black hood and neckerchief auditioning for a starring role on Latvian Police Five.  The rest of us moved on and kept a discreet distance away not wishing to be involved in a potential incident with the authorities if by chance she had been caught on CCTV.

Walking around Riga is quite safe so long as you keep to the pavements and watch the traffic signals carefully because the drivers are not very pedestrian friendly if you inadvertently stray into their road space when they have priority.  Walking back to the Hotel Latvia we used the pedestrianised central reservation of the boulevard style road, which at one stage required a perilous negotiation of an intersection.

Four of us strode confidently across ignoring the nearby line of traffic waiting at traffic lights with snarling engines and drivers scenting blood with right foot poised to hit the accelerator pedal and lunge forward at the first hint of green.  We made it (but only just) but Sue had hesitated and got caught almost mid way across in a stream of traffic that heavily resented her presence on the highway.  “Hold on” she screamed but I’m not sure if it was directed at us for uncharitably leaving her behind or at the drivers moving in for the kill.  Anyway she judiciously retreated to safety, waited for the lights to change and then carefully but quickly made her way across to join us.

Riga has a curious system for pedestrian crossings, which is designed to deliberately confuse the foreign visitor.  For the person on foot standing at the pavement edge the pedestrian light turns green and it is their turn to go but the traffic ignores this and continues to hurtle uncontrollably forward almost daring the confused visitor to try his luck.  This is followed by a moment or two of nervous hesitation and jerky indecision and then a hokey cokey leg in, leg out test of willpower to see whose nerve will break first, the driver or the pedestrian.

Not a bit of this roadside performance is remotely helpful however unless the pedestrian is prepared to take a deep breath and a massive leap of faith and put a foot down firmly and confidently on the carriageway as though playing a game of ‘chicken’, because it is only at this point that the traffic is finally obliged to stop.  Reassuringly it almost always does but I wouldn’t recommend trying it in front of a Riga tram, which seem to be excused from all of the most sensible traffic regulations and weighing in fully loaded at a little under fifty tonnes or so just might take a bit of stopping.

The Skyline Bar is a great place to relax in the early evening after a day sight seeing and a good spot for watching the sunset and it is the place to be seen with modern trendy furniture and décor that suggests a level of exclusivity to this place that is in contrast to its total accessibility.    It is easy to just wander in off the streets and take the external lift to the top and you are in the best cocktail bar in the city.  One of the best views is from the men’s toilets where there is full length window and the panoramic view from it is quite stunning.

Getting one of the seats by the windows is essential but can be a chore when the place is busy and competition is fierce, and you really need one that looks to the west to enjoy the stunning view of the City and the Russian Orthodox Cathedral that stands nearby.  Sometimes you have to sharpen elbows, wait and stay alert for window seat opportunities but it is worth the effort, especially if there is a sunset to be seen and with a view like this it really doesn’t matter when the service is slow.

It is supposedly designed to resemble a Manhattan bar but as I have never been to New York I am unable to confirm whether it has achieved this objective.  The place has a relaxed atmosphere and a friendly ambience and it certainly doesn’t have Manhattan prices with generous cocktails costing on average less than a fiver.

There are many suggestions for the origin of the word cocktail, almost as many as the choice of drinks available at the Skyline Bar.  Some say that it was customary to put a feather, presumably from a cock’s tail, in the drink to serve both as decoration and to signal to teetotallers that the drink contained alcohol but my favourite is that after a cock fight it was customary to mix a drink with a different shot of alcohol for each remaining feather in the winning cock’s tail.

At the bar we found a grandstand seat by the window and settled down for the sunset that we estimated to be due at four-fifteen.  We got that wrong and had to wait until five-to-five but there was a pleasing atmosphere in the bar and we watched the last puddles of sunshine laying on the rooftops of the city until the sun quickly dipped below the horizon and it went dark.

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More posts about Riga…

Jurmala by Train

Jurmala

Riga – The Skyline Bar

Works outing to Riga

Riga- Lunch at the Lido

Rosa Klebb’s endurance sightseeing tour of Riga

Sigulda, Latvia

Latvia Dining – a Chronic Case of Indecision

Jurmala, Latvia

Riga sightseeing

Riga – Festival of the Family and a BBQ

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Riga sightseeing

The last day we all agreed would be a ‘free’ day and we were woken early again by the solar alarm clock and were delighted to find another gloriously sunny morning.  After the hotels rather below average breakfast we took to the streets to have a leisurely day in the city.  Some of the others returned to Jurmala and others went shopping, neither of those options appealed to us, we just wanted to go sightseeing again.

First of all today we walked around the Art Nouveau district where previously grand buildings that had fallen into disrepair during the communist era were once more being restored to former glory.  Art Nouveau was an international architectural style that flourished in Europe between 1880 and 1914 and was an elaborate statement of bourgeois wealth and influence and a rejection of aristocratic stoic classicism that had previously dominated.  This period happily coincided with a time of growth and prosperity in Riga and it has over eight hundred fine examples of Art Nouveau buildings across the city.  They are the legacy of Latvian Romanticism, which was the classical era of Latvian culture that made Riga one of the European centres of Art Nouveau along with Vienna and St Petersburg.

When I first saw them I was completely astounded by the beauty of these very fine buildings.  Their ornate facades and intricate decoration were perfectly framed against the blue sky and they looked spectacular.  Between the two world wars Riga was a vibrant and grand city, before first the Germans and then the Russians did their worst, it was known as the ‘Pearl of the Baltic’ and visitors referred to it as ‘the Paris of the North’; walking around this area now it is very easy to see why and everywhere there is evidence of a prosperous past that is now beginning to re-emerge.

You can always tell where the finest and most prestigious buildings are in a capital city because the foreign embassies and the financial institutions move in and this is where they all are standing side by side in rows of tall pastel coloured buildings with impressive statues and friezes all competing with each other for superior grandeur.  This is only my opinion of course but if you ignore the Gaudi factor I think these buildings are even better than those in Barcelona.

Another pleasing feature about Riga is the abundance of public green space, which is probably the only positive legacy of the communist era.  Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organisation based on common ownership and that principal had helped to give the cities to the citizens and wide open spaces in which to enjoy them.  Riga is a great example of this.  The parks are laid out with beautiful flower beds and pieces of public urban art and we stayed in one for a while and admired them.  What impressed me most was the obvious civic respect that existed here and none of these fragile and potentially vulnerable exhibits had been vandalised or damaged in any way.   One thing I am absolutely sure of is that they wouldn’t survive a rowdy weekend in most English towns.

We were sitting in an open-air café that was close to the Russian Orthodox Cathedral that we had visited before but agreed that we had to again on account of it being so spectacular.  On top of the black domes the crosses caught the sunlight and shone a bright gold that reflected the rays back in a curious and divine way.  It was quite hot now and in contrast the interior of the Cathedral was cool and refreshing and we enjoyed looking around again as much as we did the first time.

At midday we had agreed to meet the shopping party in the market square for lunch and we located them sitting in the sunshine and enjoying loud and colourful open air entertainment on a temporary stage that had been erected as part of a festival of the celebration of the family that was taking place today.  Actually it was a bit too noisy but it didn’t put us off our lunchtime beer and a little light lunch.

Riga, The Russian Orthodox Cathedral

Next on the itinerary was the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, which has been recently restored in an ugly duckling style transformation from a dirty grimy grey (which was of course the shade of paint that the communists used to paint everything) to a resplendent sandstone yellow under black domes with gleaming crosses.  The renovated building is clean and sharp with painted red brick stripes and elaborate white columns soaring proudly into the sky above.

Although most of Riga old town is restoring its vibrant colours to the buildings there are still examples of the communist absence of finesse or style.  Just across the road from the cathedral for example is a splendid old building that still retains its dreary grey exterior and is awaiting its own overdue transformation.  The Soviet Union must have had the biggest grey paint factory in the world and it was used indiscriminately everywhere.  I imagine that the paint shop colour chart probably had restricted options like, overcoat grey, battleship grey, storm grey, grease grey and so on and so on.

The Nativity of Christ Cathedral in Riga is a magnificent and impressive building that sits between the old town and the new and was built in a Neo-Byzantine style between 1876 and 1883 at a time when Latvia was part of the Russian Empire.  It is the largest Orthodox cathedral in the Baltic provinces and was built with the approval and a blessing of the Russian Tsar Alexander II on the initiative of local governor-general Pyotr Bagration and bishop Veniamin Karelin.

Russian Orthodox Church buildings differ dramatically in design from most western type churches. Their interiors are enriched with many sacramental objects including holy icons that are hung on the walls and  murals often cover most of the interior walls with images that represent the Theotokos (the Mother of God) and scenes from their lives of the Saints.  The cathedral in Riga is especially renowned for its icons some of which were painted by the famous Russian war artist Vasili Vereshchagin. During the First World War German troops occupied Riga and turned its largest cathedral into a Lutheran church but after the war the Nativity of Christ Cathedral once again became an Orthodox cathedral in 1921.

There was more unhappiness for the building under the communist regime because the Soviet Union was the first modern state to have the elimination of religion as an ideological objective and to achieve that objective the communists confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools. The main target of the anti-religious campaign was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of worshippers in Russia and its subjugated territories.  Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labour camps, theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited.

After the Second-World-War things relaxed a little for a while and the number of open churches increased and by 1957 about twenty-two thousand Russian Orthodox churches had become active again but in 1959 Nikita Khrushchev initiated a new campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church and forced the closure of about twelve thousand, including the Nativity of Christ Cathedral in Riga.  Members of the church hierarchy were jailed or just simply removed and their places were taken by state conforming clergy many of whom had links with the KGB.  The Cathedral in Riga was converted into a planetarium and it became neglected and was allowed to lose its magnificent façade.  Now that it has been restored the place is surely more heavenly than ever having been returned to its intended purpose.

We have visited the Cathedral before of course but because it is so fascinating we just had to do so again.  In a side chapel there was some activity and because on a previous visit here there had been a corpse laid out in a casket we suspected that this might be a funeral service but I wasn’t tall enough to see over the shoulders of the congregation and I though it rude to intrude to close to the front because of a macabre interest.  The service was attended by nuns in black robes and pointy hats who looked like extras from a Lord of the Rings movie and was led by a priest in a lavish scarlet and gold robe.

The interior of the cathedral is bright and cheerful, adorned with shining icons and smelling of sweet incense and today there was a lot of frantic activity because inside there were cameras and a film crew and I can only imagine that the were preparing for a broadcast on Latvia Songs of Praise or whatever its equivalent is.  There were a lot of people inside all bowing, crossing their chests, kissing the holy icons and doing their best to look solemn.  I suppose we must have looked a bit conspicuous.  Kim felt obliged to leave after she was rebuked for taking photographs.  I was a little more discreet and didn’t get caught but a little later on was chastised by a priest with a wild wiry beard for having my hands in my pockets.  Little did he know that I was looking for loose change to put in the offertory box but now that I had been told that hands in pockets was disallowed I decided not to bother.

We left the cathedral and retired as usual to the Skyline bar and from our window seats we watched the people flocking into the church and wondered just how it was managing to accommodate them all.  At the front door were some clergy in yellow cassocks who were obviously waiting for someone important to arrive and just before, what we guessed was, the scheduled five o’clock start a black limousine pulled up outside and the occupant was greeted with exaggerated reverence and hurried inside, presumably to get on with the service.  I wished that we had stayed a while longer to see exactly what was happening but I will never know if we would have been welcome to stay for the proceedings.