Jurmala....The Baltic Shore

Tuesday Bob and I took the train from the Central Station in Riga to Majori to walk along the beach on the Baltic Sea. It was a warm, sunny day and we were able to relax. We passed people biking, walking, pushing baby carriages, a school group playing soccer and others sitting with faces lifted to the sun. After a lunch we took the train back to Riga and bought saldejums, ice cream, in the park.

It was a wonderful day.

Centraltirgus....Central Market

To get a sense of the vastness of the Central Market try this link to google maps and you can see the five large pavilions each one dealing with a different product: meat, fish, produce, cheese and clothing. These pavilions in Riga were built in the 1930's and each is 12m high and covers 75,000 square meters following the design for Zeppelin hangers. Inside are the various counter areas not unlike the deli in our supermarkets. Outside the pavilions are permanent rows of stalls and open areas with benches to display products. The flower rows are extensive and the berries and mushrooms are plentiful. We were told that some of the first laborers to emigrate to Ireland from Latvia were the mushroom pickers. The indoor stands are permanent and some of the people behind the outdoor benches have only a few items. Some of the benches were empty, so we wondered if on Monday some people don't come to sell products. One elderly man had only two containers of raspberries, and several locations had a with a wide variety of mushrooms including chanterelles and morels. Some of the flower sellers had permanent stalls and other flower sellers like the two women in the photo look like they brought in flowers from their home gardens. The fish came in all combinations, salted, seasoned, frozen but mostly fresh; mostly salmon but also eels, herring, trout, cod and caviar. In the meat building everything was available from liver to chops to pig's heads. We bought a bouquet of flowers, dill and a cauliflower. I plan to return with my large cloth shopping bag for the produce looks fresh and the prices are good. It seemed many Riga citizens were doing their shopping here at the Centraltirgus.



http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=56.943488,24.115119&spn=0.002335,0.006394&t=h&z=17&om=1

Apavu Labosana

Shoe repairs. Yes, with all the walking around Riga and up the three double sets of stairs to our apartment at least once a day, I'm already wearing out shoes. So, I have the need for a shoe repair person. I found apavu labosana in the yellow pages in the apartment phone book, found that there was one on terbatas iela with the building number. Terbatas is one block over from us, we've walked terbatas when we go in to vecriga, so off I went. After walking past the numbered spot I saw no shoe repair place but I did see an upscale shop selling shoes. I went in an asked if anyone spoke English, the young girl said she did so I asked about a shoe repair shop. She said I'll show you, and pointed me into the courtyard behind her shop and there was number 37. It was a small 10 by 10 shop with many shoes on shelves and a customer talking with the repair person. Since I had my questions written down, vai jus varat salabot sis kurpes? I was able to communicate my question and ask if he could fix the shoe. Actually, showing him the shoe probably was how I communicated. He pulled out the insole, looked at how it was put together and shook his head and showed me some twine. My impression was he couldn't fix it to make it the way it was constructed. The shoe was a clog and fastened with staples, I think he is going to sew it. I asked Cik maksas? How much, he wrote down 2Ls and then I asked...by showing him the written out sentence Kad bus kurpes gatavas? When will the shoe be ready. He wrote the time and the day and I confirmed that yes it would be piektdiena, Friday, and he was sure to show me his darba laiks time of working, on the door at 17.00 which is 5 o'clock. I'll find out Friday if I really was able to communicate when I go with my receipt to pick up my shoe tomorrow.
I need to learn some Latvian...as Bob always said, adult learning is on an as needed basis, so I tried to study some more pages of Latvian last night and this morning....I'm not real sure when something requires the dative or the genetive and I don't know those endings yet. However I do know that the noun and pronoun endings change because of the use in the sentence. At this point I am trying to learn vocabulary words.
When I asked for water, udens, at the Attistiba cafeteria with Bob, I think she might have heard, or I might have said, uguns which is fire. I need to find out how to add Latvian fonts on the computer so I can get the lines over the letters like the u in udens has one and the u in uguns does not....so my posts are more complete and correct.

Last night Bob and I went to an organ concert in Rigas Domas and heard the huge organ. It was a program of Bach, Bizet and Glaas. The Bizet was from L'Arlesienne and was wonderful. We might go back for more since this is part of a two week Music in Cathedral series.

Sociala Darba Un Socialas Pedagogijas Augstskola "Attistiba"

Bob took me to visit Attistiba the "Social Work and Social Pedagogy Higher Institute called Attistiba where he is teaching for the Fulbright Award. He has finished his first 3 day intensive course on Social Work Ethics and will teach it again several times in various formats. He has a translator who does a superb job. Juris first translated all of the power point slides into Latvian, translates with Bob during class, and then helped him translate the open response answers to the exam, a lengthy process. The technology worked without any glitches.

The institute is a cheerful bright two story building. The flower plantings outside are lovely, marigolds, begonias and some foliage plants. The walls are warm colors, yellows and that southwest kind of clay reddish/orange tone. We ate in the cafeteria and I had gulass, kartupeli un bietes salati un udens all for about 2 Ls, one dollar. Yes, our Laviski is focusing on food words at the moment. I had a meat stew with carrots, potatoes and a cold beet salad with water to drink. It does help to know some German since occasionally a word like kartupeli sounds like kartoffelns which I happen to know...It was all delicious. The words I write in Latvian are not exactly correct since I haven't figured out to put Latvian fonts on the computer, so I am missing the marks over and under some of the letters. We took the tramvajs back to Riga center, the institute is in pardaugava, over the Daugava River from Riga center and then walked the blocks to lacplesa 29. A good day.

Latvia Ethnographic Open Air Museum

Saturday we took the city autobus to the Open Air Museum and walked around the wooded paths. There are restored and old country houses that have been moved to this site beginning in 1924. The buildings are arranged in village clusters representing four regions of Latvia. Bob was very interested in the types of fencing and I was interested in the suspended cradles next to the mothers bed with a piece of wood above which rocks the cradle. There were a few craftspeople such as the women basket weaver you see in the photo. She explained how she uses bulrushes for the weaving. The roofs were of reeds, not as flexible. Bob spoke with one woman in German and another wouldn't speak to us at all. She was younger and shook her head when we asked if she spoke English or German. The elderly women seemed much more talkative. The flowers in the gardens were dahlias, marigolds, and daisies. We saw heather and blueberries along the wooded paths. Each village had a windmill high on a hill for grinding grain and we were able to walk to all four levels of one of them.

St. Peter's Church

St. Peter's Church is in Vecriga (Old Riga) and has been destroyed and rebuilt several times. It is dedicated to the patron saint of Riga and is mentioned in documents as early as 1209. The view from the steeple is spectacular looking over the Daugava River and the roofs of Old Riga. We walked around the inside of the church to view a contemporay art display of landscapes in water colors, saw the wooden carved altar area and some of the original stone work that was saved when the city hall was destroyed and the original statue of the knight Roland that was rescued during WWII. A new statue of Roland sits in Ratslaukum (City Hall Square). Yes there is a German influence in Riga which figures to the time of the Hanseatic League and the first German settlers were traders in 1202. Then we climbed two flights of stairs and took an elevator to the observation platform, windy, narrow but with wonderful views as you can see.