Riga dispatch

For some reason my wife wanted to visit Latvia, and despite certain reservations I went along with her idea. Tallinn has become a popular destination for stag parties; Lithuania is generally felt to be the most down-market and uninspired of the three Baltic states, so Latvia it was.


In latitude about the same as Orkney, in early July this part of Europe tends to enjoy warm, even hot, albeit brief summers, and we arrived to find temperatures in the high twenties. These clement conditions would not last long, we were warned, so make the most of it before the first chilly breezes of autumn arrive, usually in September. By October winter, or what we would call winter, has arrived, so like the Scandinavian countries, the summer holiday here is short.


But when you are basking in low humidity, high 20s temperatures it is hard to think about the snow and ice of their long winters. And so we did make the most of it, travelling up the coast of the Gulf of Riga to find the far point of land where the Gulf gives way to the chilly waters of the Baltic Sea. We found a lovely, near-deserted beach and braved a brief swim. The waters were, shall we say, bracing; certainly it was cold enough to have your feet going numb within five minutes of entering the water.


The next day we drove in the opposite direction, eastwards through lush green countryside to the ancient town of Cessis, which features one of the few medieval buildings not destroyed either by the Germans or the Russians in their various predations of this land which has been coveted by so many other countries for hundreds of years. Here is the old castle, which withstood a siege laid by Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century, having fallen to his predecessor some 70 years earlier, before extricating itself in a bloody war. I love a castle with real history behind it, and here was a fine example, only lightly restored and still showing scars from the huge cannonballs which were fired at it by Ivan's artillerymen.


The principle memory which will stay with me of Latvia, however, is Riga's famous Art Nouveau district, which features fifty or so of some of the most beautiful town buildings I have ever seen. Here Art Nouveau found its most spectacular flowering perhaps anywhere in Europe. You wander down Elizabeta Street with your mouth open in amazement as you pass one after another stunningly adorned building, each one more gorgeously appointed than the last. Seeing them at the "golden hour" which occurs around 6 pm in the summer offers an experience not to be matched by any other northern city- greater certainly than anything to be found in Copenhagen, Oslo or Stockholm. I recommend this wonderful city to anyone thinking of a northern European city break- oh, and it's considerably cheaper than the ones I just mentioned. The people are warm, friendly and many have a grasp on the English language, which is a requirement considering our lack of Latvian or Russian, the latter language remaining a lingua franca despite the passage of nearly thirty years since the Russians moved out. And even now you can still detect a palpable sense of relief among the people that they have been finally left to their own devices.


Finally, I feel I should mention the women. Here cut-off denims are de rigeur, and worn by young women who can get away with them: the obesity epidemic has not yet reached this part of the world- not yet, anyway...