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.