International Women’s Day

On a visit to Riga and the Hotel Latvia in March in addition to enjoying the Skyline cocktail bar we decided to eat there as well.

The food was excellent and there was a reasonably priced self-service buffet but what was especially good about his meal was that it happened to coincide with ‘International Woman’s Day’ and there were free cocktails for all of us and flowers for the girls.

To be honest I had never heard of ‘International Woman’s Day’ before, it certainly isn’t that big in the United Kingdom, and to be honest I have to say that I thought it was a bit odd to have it on a Saturday, which is a day really reserved for sport, but it turns out that this was just an unhappy coincidence because IWD is held every year on March 8th and is a day of day of global celebration for the economic, political and social achievements of women around the world.

It all started in New York when in 1908 fifteen thousand women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.

Then, in 1917, with two million soldiers dead in the war, Russian women chose the last Sunday in February to strike for ‘bread and peace’. This turned out to be hugely significant and a contribution to the overthrow of the Romanovs and four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote.  That historic Sunday fell on 23rd February on the Julian calendar, then in use in Russia, but on 8th March on the Gregorian calendar that was in use elsewhere.

It has since become very important in Eastern Europe after a 1965 decree of the USSR Presidium that International Women’s Day was declared as a non working day in the USSR “in commemoration of outstanding merits of the Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, their heroism and selflessness at the front and in rear, and also marking the big contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples and struggle for the peace.”

Another interesting thing is that although Latvia doesn’t care to remember or celebrate much about the Russian occupation they seem happy enough to continue with this day off from work arrangement.

In these days of equality it is important to be fair of course and I am pleased to say that ‘International Men’s Day’ is an international holiday, celebrated on the first Saturday of November.  It was first suggested by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1999 and was supported fully by the United Nations.

A Wintery Day in Riga

My first visit to Riga was on 29^th November 2005 and I was hoping for snow!  Not the couple of centimetres that we get in the UK which disappears after an hour or so but really deep snow that would come over the top of my boots and lays thick and frosty on the ground.

On the first morning the sun was shining and the roofs of the buildings opposite were covered by a white blanket of snow with a cold frosty sparkle.   Outside the hotel front door an old lady was efficiently clearing the snow from the taxi rank and the footpaths by scraping away with an oversized plastic shovel that seemed to be most effective.

First of all today we found the fabulous Art Nouveau buildings that were all quite close to our hotel.  There had been a lot of restoration activity and the pace of regeneration to repair generations of neglect was very impressive.  The buildings were bathed in soft winter sunshine with snow on the roofs and when we had done enough neck craning to peer upwards towards the statues and friezes we left this part of the city and walked through the spacious parks towards the city centre.

The snow was still largely undisturbed and looked sensational in the bright sunshine.  The canal, which runs around the city, was frozen solid where hooded crows were scavenging unsuccessfully and stranded ducks were optimistically looking for running water.  After an aimless wander through the parks we emerged at the Freedom Monument just in time to see the eleven o’clock goose-stepping changing of the guard ceremony where the young soldiers that had stood there in the cold for the last hour looked mighty relieved to see their replacements.

Next on the itinerary was the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, which had also been recently restored in an ugly duckling transformation from a grimy communist grey to a resplendent sandstone yellow under black domes with gleaming crosses.  The renovated brickwork was clean and sharp with red brick stripes and elaborate white columns soaring into the blue sky above.  The communists had closed the cathedral as a place of worship and had converted the building into a planetarium but the place was surely more heavenly than ever now that it had been returned to its intended purpose.

The interior was bright and cheerful, was adorned with shining icons and smelled of incense and to one side there was a service of some kind attended by a standing congregation who were in a very solemn mood.  We discovered that it was a funeral service because there was corpse laid out in a casket but I wasn’t tall enough to see over the shoulders of the congregation and I though it rude to intrude to close to the front because of a macabre interest.  The service was attended by nuns in black robes and pointy hats who looked like extras from the Lord of the Rings and was led by a priest in a lavish scarlet and gold robe.

At the market square we watched people skating and strolled through a small winter market.  There was a lot of snow clearing activity with a man in a tractor with a snow plough working quickly and efficiently to clear the square and he made a really good job of it too.  The city clearly had an efficient risk management strategy with a comprehensive snow clearance plan.

Next stop was a trip to the top of a church tower to see the city from an elevated perspective and from here we could better appreciate the patchwork quilt of coloured roofs and pastel facades looking even more attractive under the snowy mantle that decorated them.  Luckily we didn’t have to climb to the top and there was an attended lift that raised us to the summit.  We had ten minutes at the viewing platform which was about nine more than we really needed considering how cold it was with a bitter wind that felt like icy needles being driven into our faces so we were careful therefore that we didn’t miss the descent when the lift came back to collect us and return us to the ground floor and back to the street.

We resumed our walk through the city and made for the old Jewish Quarter called Little Russia, which took us through the market on the way.  This area of the city was interesting for consisting of buildings constructed of timber that are fighting a losing rearguard action against decay and neglect and caught in a catch twenty-two situation, too expensive to repair and restore and too culturally important to be demolished.  Adjacent to this area was the Academy of Sciences building, constructed by the communists in the style of the Seven Sisters skyscrapers in Moscow  and although impressive in its appearance was seriously ill conceived in respect of location.

The sky was still clear so we decided to make the Skyline bar for the sunset, which the guidebooks described as not to be missed.  We walked back through the market, this time through the old zeppelin hangers that had been converted into a huge indoor market with an impressive array of produce.

The Skyline Bar is a great place to relax in the early evening after a day sightseeing and a good spot for watching the sunset.  At the bar we found a grandstand seat by the window and settled down for the sunset that we estimated to be due at quarter past four.  We got that wrong and had to wait until five o’clock but there was a pleasing atmosphere in the bar and we watched the last puddles of sunshine laying on the rooftops of the city until the sun quickly dipped below the horizon and it went dark.

The Baltic States Join The European Union

On 14^th September 2003 the people of Estonia voted in a referendum to become members of the European Union.

When the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia made their accession into the European Union in 2004, few people were even remotely aware of where the mysterious sounding capital cities of Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn actually were.  Up until the end of the 1980s, and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, these countries were subsumed in any World Atlas into the smear of scarlet that represented the USSR and these once great cities had been hidden behind the Iron Curtain for so long that they had disappeared from the consciousness of many of their Western neighbours.

Even after they were restored to independence the view of most people was that many years under the jackboot of communism rendered them greyer than an Old Trafford sky on the first day of an Ashes Test Match and they didn’t feature on many travel itineraries.   But Estonia has caught up quickly, it has more internet access than any other EU country, is the birthplace of the internet application Skype and in 2009 it was ranked sixth in the Press Freedom Index, which is an annual ranking of countries, compiled and published by ‘Reporters without Borders’ based upon an assessment of press freedom records.

Estonia is located in the North East of Europe (the most northerly of the three Baltic States) and South of the Gulf of Finland, which separates the country from Scandinavia. It has nearly four thousand kilometres of coastline and one thousand, five hundred and twenty islands in the Baltic Sea. It is one of the smallest countries in Europe (148th in the world), and although it is larger than both Belgium and the Netherlands the population is a little over 1.3 million.

Whilst Estonia is a member state of the European Union it hasn’t met the economic criteria to join the Eurozone and this is a country that makes financial transactions in thousands rather than tens of units so for the first time since Croatia in June we had a wallet full of unfamiliar notes and we enjoyed the self deception of feeling like millionaires when we visited the city in December 2009.

A Taxi Ride With A Red Army Tank Driver

On 21^st August Latvia was declared independent and I am glad of that because I have visited the country several times and am happy to include it in my list of favourites.  On one visit with a group of friends we visited Sigulda, a tourist must see town, about an hour’s mini-bus ride away from the city of Riga.

The mini-bus driver worried us a little.  He was a big sinister looking man who barely spoke a word and looked for sure as though he was an unemployed ex KGB agent.  Right from the start this wasn’t the most straightforward journey that I have ever taken and it was punctuated by a number of disorganised stops along the way.  First at a supermarket to buy umbrellas that we didn’t really need and then later at a café for a drink, where we all disembarked and went inside only to be told that they were expecting another tour bus and that they couldn’t possibly accommodate us as well.  The next stop was to meet our tour guide for the day but there was a mix up over the meeting point that involved a further fifteen minutes delay waiting in a worn out little town that still had a communist hangover with depressing buildings and melancholy people and an overbearing drabness that was exaggerated by the dreary weather.

After the guide arrived we set off again but even the driver had had enough by now of all the messing about and his patience finally snapped when he was held up in a queue at a level crossing that had brought the traffic to a torpid standstill.  He reacted to our lack of progress by swerving violently out of the line of traffic and driving frenziedly in a bid to push his way to the front; in doing so completely disregarding the flow of oncoming cars, who one by one had to take dramatic evasive action to avoid head on collision.  I concluded that in a previous existence, not too long ago, he had probably driven a tank for the Russian Red Army.

We arrived finally at Sigulda in the Gauja National Park, a heavily wooded area of outstanding natural beauty and not unsurprisingly because of its Alpine nature called ‘Little Switzerland’.

First we went to the thirteenth century castle that lay in ruins next to a nineteenth century New Castle which was really more of a country house but which had a friendly restaurant where we sheltered from the rain and had a most enjoyable and inexpensive lunch.  Afterwards we walked around the castle under our umbrellas and then as the rain thankfully began to ease off we made our way to a cable car station to take a ride across the Gauja Valley and the river a long way below.   The views were spectacular and once across the other side we were entertained by a pair of storks constructing a nest in an improbable location on the top of a water tower.

Our next destination was the Turaida Castle and Museum, which we went directly to after we had been reunited with the mini-bus that had temporarily misplaced us and had been waiting at the wrong place to meet us after our cable car ride.  We were collectively worried about this in case his patience had been put to the test again and would trigger another angry driver explosion but he was calm now and the short journey was uneventful.  The castle and museum were well worth the visit and as the weather continued to improve our charming guide entertained us with tales from Latvian folklore, which she delivered in good English that was sometimes punctuated with amusing mispronunciations and some inappropriate vocabulary.  We enjoyed the stories all the more for that.

At the end of this stage of the visit we enjoyed Latvian canapés at a delightful restaurant just out of town and we accompanied this with a chaotic debate about what to do tomorrow.  Alona was desperate to please everyone so worked hard to achieve a consensus that proved hopelessly optimistic.  This took some considerable time and once completed required the tour guide to handwrite for everyone an individual and personal itinerary for the next day.  This was a nice touch but was probably going to be a complete wasted effort knowing how chronically afflicted we all were with changeable minds.

I’m afraid that Alona wasn’t a very quick learner and no sooner had we ended the tortuous deliberation about tomorrow than she prompted another about where to eat tonight, and that proved equally as painful.  I’m a great believer in the democratic process but sometimes someone just has to make a decision.  I could sense that people were getting irritable so I was grateful that on the fourth recount following a confusing voting procedure that we finally agreed to stay at this location and order dinner.  I was only too pleased that the restaurant staff that witnessed the pantomime were bestowed with unnatural amounts of patience and didn’t close the place in despair because this was a very good decision indeed and we enjoyed an exceptional meal and washed it down with an appropriate amount of wine.

Latvia From A Russian Taxi Driver’s Perspective

For evening meal we choose the out-of-town Lido amusement park where we had been before on our previous visit.  After the meal the journey back to the hotel was one of the highlights of the holiday! We left the Lido and looked for a taxi and it was just our luck to select one with a lunatic escaped from an asylum for a driver.

Kim made the first approach and asked if he could take some of us back to Riga and to our surprise he indicated that he could take all five of us in his Renault Megane.  This was a vehicle that was clearly unsuitable for accommodating five passengers and probably not licensed to do so either!  Kim doubted this and just for clarification enquired a second time and clearly running short on patience he gave her his “why can’t this stupid woman understand look”, and immediately increased his carrying capacity to an absurdly optimistic eight!  Kim looked even more startled by this and even examined the interior of the car for concealed seats by sticking her head through the open window.  He responded by raising his eyeballs so far into the top of his head that if he’d had laser vision he would have fried his brains.  This was our cue to accept the five in a taxi invitation and we piled in.

Then the fun really started!  He immediately quizzed us about our national origins: “Where are you from?” He enquired, “England” said Micky, “London?” he followed up.  This is a standard opening conversation with a European taxi driver that frequent travellers will be familiar with; the only place they really know in England is the capital, and sometimes Manchester, so they always make reference to it “No, Lincolnshire” Micky informed him without managing to raise a flicker of recognition and immediately closing down this topic of conversation.

Taxi driver “Do you know Tony Blair”                                                                          Micky “Well, not personally, no”

The scary driver went on to explain how from his personal perspective life was desperately unfair in Latvia.  From his explanation of conditions we discovered that he was a Russian living in Riga and by his own self-assessment suffering all sorts of discrimination (which is hardly surprising really when they (the Russians) had spent forty years or so kicking holy shit out of the place!   His solution to the problem was the advocacy of a red revolution and I for one thought it sensible not to disagree too robustly.   He spoke with a thick Russian accent and had the unfortunate habit of preceding each statement with an unpleasant phlegmy hack that was half cough and half retch and definitely only half human.

“Times are hard, it is very expensive to live in Riga”, “No way” said Micky, half mocking him now, “This place is very reasonable!” This led to a few seconds of choking laughter and uncontrollable hacking by the driver and after a few more cost of living exchanges Micky, fully mocking him now, did eventually concede that life was getting a bit tougher in the west; “Yes,” he said “I have to agree, things are getting harder in England too, look at us, we used to have two wives each but now we can only afford one and a third to share between us!”

Then the driver lamented that it would cost him a month’s wages to stay three nights in a Riga hotel and again Micky put him straight and corrected his estimate to just the one night. This man was good fun and he even thought it was amusing when we directed him to the wrong hotel and he had to make readjustments to his route to get us to our intended destination.  And it only cost ten Lats, that’s what I call good value, a taxi ride  and excellent entertainment thrown in.

Actually Russians have had a bit of a hard time since independence because when Latvia broke free in 1991, it granted automatic citizenship to those who had lived in the first independent Latvian state, between 1918 and 1940, but not to those who immigrated here after the war, when Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union.

Under Soviet rule during the Stalin years thousands were arrested and sent to Siberian labour camps, or executed. Later, hundreds of thousands of Russians, Belarussians and Ukrainians flooded into the republic under a deliberate policy of Russification. The Latvian language was squeezed out of official use.  Latvians were resentful citizens of the USSR and by 1991 they comprised only half of the population of their own country, while in Riga only a third were Latvian.

Today Latvia is determined to revive the national identity. It says that its policy towards Russians who immigrated there during the Soviet period is aimed not at punishing them for the ‘crimes’ of the Soviet regime but at ensuring that they learn Latvian and integrate fully into society. In order to naturalise, Russians must take a test in Latvian, and pass an exam about Latvian history in which they must ‘correctly’ answer that the country was occupied and colonised, not liberated, by the Soviet Union on 5^th August 1940.

The Skyline Bar in Riga

When it comes to a favourite cocktail bar there is one that stands out above all the rest.  Quite literally stands out because it is on the 26^th floor of the Hotel Latvia, which is the tallest building in Riga.

I have had the pleasure to go there several times but I am certain that I was there on 31st May 2006 because this was the date when my friend Nick Worth got hopelessly pissed.

The Skyline Bar is a great place to relax in the early evening after a day sight seeing and a good spot for watching the sun set. It’s also a place to be seen, and the modern, trendy furniture and décor suggests that there’s a level of exclusivity to this place which is in contrast to its total accessibility.    Just wander in off the streets and take the external lift to the top and you are in the best cocktail bar in the city.  One of the best views is from the men’s toilets where there is full length window and the panoramic view from is quite stunning but I don’t advise going in there with a camera as I did because you can get some very funny looks!

Getting one of the seats by the windows is essential but can be a chore when the place is busy and competition is fierce, and you really need one that looks to the west to enjoy the stunning view of the City and the Russian Orthodox Cathedral that stands nearby.  Sometimes you have to wait and stay alert for window seat opportunities but it is worth the effort, especially if there is a sunset to be seen.  With a view like this it really doesn’t matter when the service is slow.

It is supposedly designed to resemble a Manhattan bar but as I have never been to New York I am unable to confirm whether it has achieved this objective.  The place has a relaxed atmosphere and a friendly ambience and it certainly doesn’t have Manhattan prices with generous cocktails costing on average only about £3.50.  There are many suggestions for the origin of the word cocktail, almost as many as the choice of drinks available at the Skyline Bar. Some say that it was customary to put a feather, presumably from a cock’s tail, in the drink to serve both as decoration and to signal to teetotalers that the drink contained alcohol but my favourite is that after a cock fight it was customary to mix a drink with a different shot of alcohol for each remaining feather in the winning bird’s tail.

 

Rosa Klebb and a Riga Route March

It was the first day of a group visit to Riga in Latvia and we drove  to the city to rendezvous with our Latvian guide for the afternoon who was going to take us on a walking tour of the city.  We had no idea when we started the tour that this experience was designed as a severe endurance test based on the welcome to the Soviet Army initiation week for new recruits.

She was a lovely woman, and rightfully very proud of her city, I called her Rosa Klebb, but she hadn’t fully made the transition out of the communist era and she pushed us through the city at a punishing pace, even at one time refusing a perfectly reasonable request to stop for a just a brief moment to purchase drinks.

We saw all of the major tourist sites including the House of the Blackheads where we were chastised for buying postcards from a street vendor because she considered them too expensive; the Cathedral, where we took a ride to the top of the tower and marvelled at the view over the city; the house of the Black Cats with its graceful feline art nouveau statues; and the city main square with an inviting selection of pavement cafés where sadly we were not permitted to stay and sample the wares.

After an exhausting afternoon we eventually said a relieved goodbye to Rosa and to celebrate our liberation looked for a bar to sit and recover from the ordeal but sadly the weather had changed very quickly and some threatening black clouds were rolling in and it was starting to rain.

We sheltered for a time while we had a tedious deliberation about transport back to our respective hotels and dining arrangements for later in the evening.  I knew that there was going to be trouble when Alona revealed her plans for a table dancing restaurant and Kim’s jaw dropped like a brick.  There was only one thing to do, go into the canvas topped open air bar and have a drink, which we did while the others continued their debate about proposed evening activities.  I could tell that Kim was getting somewhat irritated and another unnecessary discussion about taxi passenger arrangements didn’t help matters or improve her humour so I was extremely pleased to get back to the hotel without a major incident.

It didn’t take long for Kim to decide that she wasn’t going to the table dancing restaurant and I wasn’t especially keen either, but this put me in an awful dilemma.  I wanted to stay with her but as tour leader felt obliged to meet up with the others.

Kim had displayed better judgement than me because the place was awful, loud, cheap and with young girls employed as female enticement to dance in the window in bikini tops and draw in the leering stag parties.  This was sexual exploitation and I didn’t like it, they were roughly the same age as my own daughter and it occurred to me that I would hate it if they were my children and I was somewhat ashamed to be there.  I ordered my meal and paid for it but left before it arrived and I walked back swiftly to the Hotel.

A Russian Perspective on Latvian Independence

On a visit to the Latvian capital of Riga in May 2008 we had an educational ride in a taxi on the 4^th.

Kim made the first approach to the driver and asked if he could take some of us back to the city from an out of town restaurant  and to our surprise he indicated that he could take all five of us in his Renault Megane.  This was a vehicle that was clearly unsuitable for accommodating five passengers and probably not licensed to do so either!  Kim doubted this and just for clarification enquired a second time and clearly running short on patience he gave her his “why can’t this stupid woman understand look”, and immediately increased his carrying capacity to an absurdly optimistic eight!  Kim looked even more startled by this and even examined the interior of the car for concealed seats by sticking her head through the open window.  He responded by raising his eyeballs so far into the top of his head that if he’d had laser vision he would have fried his brains.  This was our cue to accept the five in a taxi invitation and we piled in.

Then the fun really started!  He immediately quizzed us about our national origins:

“Where are you from?” He enquired

“England” said Micky

“London?”

This is a standard opening conversation with a European taxi driver that frequent travellers will be familiar with; the only place they really know in England is the capital, and sometimes Manchester, so they always make reference to it.

“No, Lincolnshire” Micky informed him without managing to raise a flicker of recognition and immediately closing this topic of conversation.

“Do you know Tony Blair?”

“Well, not personally, no”

The scary driver went on to explain how from his personal perspective life was desperately unfair in Latvia.  From his explanation of conditions we discovered that he was a Russian living in Riga and by his own self-assessment suffering all sorts of discrimination (which is hardly surprising really when they (the Russians) had spent forty years or so kicking holy shit out of the place!)   His solution to the problem was the advocacy of a red revolution and I for one thought it sensible not to disagree too robustly.   He spoke with a thick Russian accent and had the unfortunate habit of preceding each statement with an unpleasant phlegmy hack that was half cough and half retch and definitely only half human.

“Times are hard, it is very expensive to live in Riga”

“No way” said Micky “This place is very reasonable!”

This led to a few seconds of choking laughter and uncontrollable hacking by the driver and after a few more cost of living exchanges Micky did eventually concede that life was getting a bit tougher in the west;

“Yes,” he said “I have to agree, things are getting harder in England too, look at us, we used to have two wives each but now we can only afford one and a third to share between us!”

Actually Russians have had a bit of a hard time since independence because when Latvia broke free in 1991, it granted automatic citizenship to those who had lived in the first independent Latvian state, between 1918 and 1940, but not to those who immigrated here after the war, when Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union.

Under Soviet rule during the Stalin years thousands were arrested and sent to Siberian labour camps, or executed. Later, hundreds of thousands of Russians, Belarussians and Ukrainians flooded into the republic under a deliberate policy of Russification. The Latvian language was squeezed out of official use.  Latvians were resentful citizens of the USSR and by 1991 they comprised only half of the population of their own country, while in Riga only a third were Latvian.

Today Latvia is determined to revive the national identity. It says that its policy towards Russians who immigrated there during the Soviet period is aimed not at punishing them for the ‘crimes’ of the Soviet regime but at ensuring that they learn Latvian and integrate fully into society. In order to naturalise, Russians must take a test in Latvian, and pass an exam about Latvian history in which they must ‘correctly’ answer that the country was occupied and colonised, not liberated, by the Soviet Union in 1945.

Riga to Jurmala, not one of the Great Train Journeys of the World

We have been to Jūrmala both by mini-bus and by taxi before but this time on 9^th March 2008 we decided to travel by train.  Thankfully this only involved a journey of about thirty minutes or so because take it from me; this was not the Orient Express and certainly not one of the great railway journeys of the world.

Latvia’s national railway company is Latvijas Dzelzceļš but the development of the Latvian railways since independence in 1991 has not been a great priority for the Government and due to lack of investment the system has suffered badly as a result.  Many trains are poorly maintained and delays are common, but luckily for us the routes to the satellite towns and villages around Riga on an electrified line generally have a better service than the intercity and international routes.  Riga’s central station is Centrala Stacija and although it has been modernised in a fashion it still appears stark and authoritarian with an alarming absence of modern customer care basics.  I shouldn’t complain however because to put things into some sort of perspective the return journey to Majori was only one Lat, twenty-five cents, or about £1.40 in real money.

We found the platform and the waiting train in its bright blue and yellow livery and got on and found a seat and one thing that can be said about Latvian railways is that they are punctual because this one left dead on time.

This train was not the best one that I have ever been on; it was utilitarian, grey, uncomfortable and a living testimony to finest Communist engineering and style.  The interior of the carriage was a no-frills affair with hard bench seats and a complete absence of modern travelling refinements.  It was grubby and without charm and it creaked and groaned as the tired old engine pulled the carriages out of the station and out of the city over the river Daugava and into the outskirts of the city that were a total contrast to the cosmopolitan city centre.  Here it was easy to understand why people from Latvia give up a life in their own country to come and live in Lincolnshire.  Progress between worn out stations was painfully slow and the train passed through suburbs strewn with litter and rubbish and with a marked absence of civic pride.  About half way to Jūrmala there was a huge estate of decaying communist high-rise apartment buildings that had probably been constructed hastily in the 1960s to house the seven hundred thousand Russian workers who were sent here by the Soviets to colonise Latvia in a deliberate policy of Russification.   Life must have been quite good for these privileged colonists under the old regime but when Latvia gained independence in 1991 they were in for a shock because it only granted automatic citizenship to those who had lived in the first independent Latvian state, between 1918 and 1940.

There was good reason for this because Latvia had suffered hugely under Soviet rule. During the Stalin years thousands were arrested and sent to Siberian labour camps, or simply executed for being part of the Latvian partisan groups who opposed occupation. To replace them, hundreds of thousands of Russians, Belarussians and Ukrainians flooded into the republic and the Latvian language was squeezed out of official use.  Latvians were resentful citizens of the USSR and by 1991 they comprised only half of the population of their own country, while in Riga itself only a third were Latvian.

Today, the government is determined to revive the Latvian identity and it says that it’s policy towards Russians who immigrated here during the Soviet period is aimed not at punishing them for the sins of the Soviet regime (as some suspect) but at ensuring that they learn Latvian and integrate fully into the new society.  In order to naturalise, Russians must take a test in Latvian, and pass an exam about Latvian history, in which they must ‘correctly’ answer that the country was occupied and colonised, not liberated, by the Soviet Union in 1945.

The train lumbered on and a lady ticket collector examined our tickets.  This appeared to be a throwback to the Soviet days because each carriage seemed to have its own ticket inspector, which seemed to be a very generous staffing allocation.  There were not many tourists on the train and the announcements were made in impenetrable Latvian and the stations had a confusing absence of any helpful place names but luckily there was an old lady sharing our bench seat who guessed that we travelling to the town of Majori and gave us helpful advice on where to get off.

Getting off of the train was another interesting experience because there was no platform in any sort of fashion that we would recognise and it was necessary to leave the train down steep steps that stopped about fifty centimetres from the tarmac that involved a final jump that only the most able bodied would ever be able to manage.  There were no signs of measures to combat disability discrimination here I can tell you.  In fact, on account of the lack of engineering refinements on board, the whole railway journey experience seemed fraught with danger and this was well illustrated by a sign on the heavy metal doors that seemed to indicate that male passengers in particular should be careful not to trap their man bits in between the closing doors as this could be very, very painful indeed.  And to emphasise this the letters can be rearranged into that well-known warning ‘tite bals nastie’.

International Women’s Day

On a visit to Riga and the Hotel Latvia in March 2008 in addition to enjoying the Skyline cocktail bar we decided to eat there as well.  The food was excellent and there was a reasonably priced self-service buffet but what was especially good about his meal was that it happened to coincide with ‘International Woman’s Day’ and there were free cocktails for all of us and flowers for the girls.

To be honest I had never heard of International Woman’s day before, it certainly isn’t that big in the United Kingdom, and to be honest I have to say that I thought it was a bit odd to have it on a Saturday, which is a day really reserved for sport, but it turns out that this was just an unhappy coincidence because IWD is held every year on March 8^th and is a day of day of global celebration for the economic, political and social achievements of women around the world.

It all started in New York when in 1908 fifteen thousand women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.  Then, in 1917, with two million soldiers dead in the war, Russian women chose the last Sunday in February to strike for ‘bread and peace’. This turned out to be hugely significant and a contribution to the overthrow of the Romanovs and four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote.  That historic Sunday fell on 23^rd February on the Julian calendar, then in use in Russia, but on 8^th March on the Gregorian calendar that was in use elsewhere.  It has since become very important in Eastern Europe after a 1965 decree of the USSR Presidium that International Women’s Day was declared as a non working day in the USSR “in commemoration of outstanding merits of the Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, their heroism and selflessness at the front and in rear, and also marking the big contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples and struggle for the peace.”

Another interesting thing is that although Latvia doesn’t care to remember or celebrate much about the Russian occupation they seem happy enough to continue with this day off from work arrangement.

In these days of equality it is important to be fair of course and I am pleased to say that International Men’s Day is an international holiday, celebrated on the first Saturday of November.  It was first suggested by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1999 and was supported fully by the United Nations.