A nice easy start to the day with a 10am free tour.
Obviously, it’s only free if you’re a deadbeat who doesn’t chip in a reasonable amount, and Edvards did an amazing job, 1h45 of entertaining, fact-packed description of some key information about Riga/Latvia’s history and buildings.
What we learned:
- Riga was founded in 1201, by Bishop Albert of Bremen (basically as part of a mission to convert the last, Baltic, corner of paganism in Europe.
- Germany ran Latvia for ~300 years, then Sweden took over for ~40 years, then Russia until 1918. Latvia was independent for a whole 22 years, before being annexed by the Soviet Union, then Nazi Germany, then back to the Soviets until 1991. So Latvia has only been independent for A TOTAL of ~60 years!
- Latvia therefore has a lot of influence from Germany – cuisine, some structures e.g. trading guilds, the Hanseatic league etc. Lithuania was independent or part of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth for ~300 years, by comparison.
- Latvian and Lithuanian language are a bit similar but not enough to be mutually understood. Modern Latvian is kind of artificial – in the 1860s when Russia ended serfdom, the language was reconstituted and harmonised and rolled out uniformly as it was the start of schooling. So everyone speaks the same, there’s basically no regional accents either!
- Music education is provided for free by the state. Russian is spoken by ~40% of Rigans. There was a referendum in 2022 to make it an official language – it didn’t pass. 2 months back, the government decided to halt teaching of Russian, even as a second language, in public schools. Quite a big deal.
- Latvia have had to invent their shared cultural heritage, as there’s no body of literature, or very old buildings. They were basically pagan peasants until the Germans bossed them around and various states took the reins. For example, the legend of the Bear slayer (Latvia) Vs the Black Knight (all their enemies). Brilliantly, even in this folklore, Latvia doesn’t win! “The fight continues…” which seems pretty fair.
- The Baltic Way was a 2 million strong human chain across the Baltic states in 1989. Amazing to think that was a third of the entire population, and organised before mobile phones and internet!
- Lithuania are proud of their ice hockey prowess. The president announced a national holiday the day after they won the Bronze medal at the 2022 world championships!
The 1528 daily train to Vilnius was on time and a nice modern train. The conductor checked tickets (quick scan of seat reservation QR codes in my Dropbox pdf) then reappeared to hand out bottles of water and Brownies! Then she was back to offer us coffees (yes please) and menus (not right now, thanks). Power sockets at the seat.
I did eventually crumble and bought some drinks – nice kombucha, but I confess, I didn’t realise it was non-alcoholic. That would explain why they don’t sell beer! No booze on Baltic trains – probably sensible.
Timsformational 