Riga

If you haven't read my previous post, 'london to riga', then you might miss out on the context a bit :)

The sun was shining as I walked across two massive bridges into the beautiful and well-historied city of Riga, capital of Lativa. All signs were good. There were tramlines. Graffiti on the bridge depicted a smiling girl with her middle finger in the air and the words 'Fuck the Crisis!'. Further down wisened men stripped copper from a washed up boat and then as if by magic I wandered into this huge, joyous market, both outdoor and indoor, selling everything a vitamin-lacking hitchhiker could want. I kid you not, there was a room the size of an aircraft hanger full of fish, the next one full of meat, the next full of veg and then next one...... full of CHEESE!!!! I had landed. I sat in a corner of the market with a huge grin eating pomegranites, raspberries and sticks of individually wrapped honeycombs, watching an old man selling flatcaps and his neighbouring female stall holder who sold ties gently arguing and joking with each other, and the veg seller nearby being ridiculed for eating some sort of kale raw...

Riga, it turns out, is quite a tourist spot, with a huge notra-dame esque cathedrals and dozens of beautiful old buildings clustered round squares filled with cafes and oak trees, with acorns stuck between the translucent cobble stones. After Poland and knowing that I was now deep in ex-soviet territory I was expecting something colder, harder and more concrete. This was naive. Latvia was occupied by the Red Army twice, with Hitler taking over for 4 years during WW2. Each promised 'partnership', but the museum there told of unspeakable horrors meted out on the population, as well as deportations to siberia of anyone who might have in the past or future thought badly of Stalin and his wicked ways. Over 30 years a total of 1/3rd of the population was either killed or deported.

Consequently, and from my limited perspective, it felt like the city (Riga holds 1/2 of Lativa's entire population and apparently things are quite different everywhere else in the country) was still buzzing from its independance and revelling in its national identity. Theatres and concert halls were prominent, cafe culture was in full swing and (in contrast to what i was to find in Moscow), even the people in uniforms had a smile tingling somewhere near their lips.

My hosts, a gang of 4 arty 20-somethings, epitomised this mood. They had just thrown their hat in the ring and started 'Cafe DAD', a flawlessly decorated cafe with a piano and guitar in the corner, their friends' art on the walls and spinach soup with massive croutons floating inside. My link with them was tenuous (a bandmate of a bandmate) but they played host real nice, and on the last night i realised why the first question I was asked was what my religion was, and why there were evangelistic 'god can make you rich if you believe enough' books on the shelves- they all met in church and were the young, preppy, experience-led christian believers that make christianity seem to have its place in our generation.

I did read a slim volume called The Prophet http://leb.net/~mira/works/prophet/prophet16.html - for a taste

During the day i would walk around the huge parks and through narrow streets, pretend to pray in churches so i could look at the pictures on the walls for free, and sit on benches watching numerous young couples in love with a whole range of vague and spongy emotions. In the evenings I busked hard. The first night, in an underpass, the acoustic was excellent but the takings were poor. On the second night i occupied a spot that the night before I had seen a man playing bob marley riffs whilst his friend rapped over the top to the delight of a gathering crowd. It was at the apex of three narrow streets, near the entrance to a TGI fridays, and as the Mbira's polyrhythm bounced off the stone walls I got good money and even a box of chocolates (which I later gave as a present to a couchsurfing host and found they all had marzipan inside which neither I nor my host liked but hey).

Later 3 underage boys asked for some of my money. I told them that they couldn't take any of my money, but they could have a go in my spot playing mbira and singing. One of them picked a cup out of a bin for a hat and for a couple of feeble minutes they tried, but then one of them shouted a warning and they scampered off. The police drove past.Nearby an engineer tried to send tourists to a strip club. A few minutes later the boys were back, and this time I taught them a brief mbira song (they didn't speak english) and i played as they sang. But once more a shout went up, they disappeared into thin air, and sure enough the patrol car drove past again through the narrow street. When they appeared the third time i gave them the empty cup and tried to explain that if they sang a song that everyone knew with heart they woudl make money. When, shortly after, they ran again and the police came again, I figured it was time to go. I left some of what I had made with another, older, beggar who seemed to know them and he thanked me with vodka-stained breath and left in the direction they ran.

The next morning i went back to the market, bought more cheese, salami, rasperry jam and fruit, then got myself on an overnight train to Moscow, got out the food and started eating it...