Riga - April 2023

 Hello, good evening and welcome to the first edition of An English Fool Abroad With His Sketchbook, Spring 2023 edition. What, you didn’t know I was going on a sketchpedition this Easter? Well, be fair, neither did I until Saturday.

I will come clean. After Poland and Alicante last year I did think that I would not be making another trip until Copenhagen this July. Well, there was no chance of going in the February half term what with Jenn’s wedding. I did think about the possibility of raiding my picture/holiday fund and seeing if Jenn could find me something cheap and cheerful this Easter break, but knowing me I wouldn’t have actually done it. Then out of the blue, Mary passed a comment along the lines of – we haven’t got you anywhere to go set up for this holiday, have we? Next thing I know Jenn is ringing me up and offering me Belfast or Riga. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt that Belfast is well worth a visit too, but it had to be Riga. Which is a pretty bold decision considering that I know so little about Latvia that I’m still not 100% convinced that it isn’t the place ruled by Doctor Doom in the Marvel comics. So to cut a long story short Jenn got cracking and so it was that yesterday morning I found myself waiting at the bus station for the first leg of the journey, Port Talbot to Cardiff, Cardiff to Bristol, Bristol to Riga Airport, Riga Airport to Riga Central Railway Station, Riga Central Railway Station to . . . well, thereby hangs a tale. We’ll get there. Mind you, so did I, although I did my level best to get hopelessly lost. I’ll come to that.

The journey was pretty uneventful, although we were a little late getting to Bristol airport because the police had closed off the M49. But as it was the bus was due to get to the airport 3 hours before my check in, so no real panic there. Now, mine was a budget airline flight. A budget airline flight late in the afternoon. Well, if you’ve ever used a budget airline before – and no names, no pack drill. I don’t want them cancelling my flight home out of spite – you’ll know that they have such a short turn around time that it’s hard for them not to lose time as the day goes on. So I wasn’t surprised when we didn’t start boarding until the time we were due to take off. I was surprised it took us half an hour before we actually did take off. To be honest, they were a bit of a rum lot, this particular flight crew. I do not think I have ever in my life heard anyone speak English as quickly as the captain did on what I can only guess was his welcoming speech. It could not have been more obvious how much he wanted to get it over with even if they’d had little signs proclaiming it next to the no smoking and do your seatbelt up signs.

We got there. It was about 10:30pm local time. All that was left was passport control. Oh boy. Now, you know the way that when you’re in the supermarket, the line next to yours always moves faster? And when you’re held up on the motorway it doesn’t matter which lane you pick because you will be in the slowest? Well, this was what genuinely happened to me in passport control. The line next to mine was practically whizzing through – Next – stamp stamp – on yer way, son. Not my line. Oh no. I had the officious passport officer. The one who kept picking up the phone and making serious faces. The one who sent two people away into an office. The one who looked at every passport three or four times. When I finally got to the window she looked at me and said,

“Why are you here?” I considered giving the old Spike Milligan Goon Show answer to the same question, (queue silly voice)

“Well, everybody’s gotta be somewhere.” If I’d have given that answer I’d probably have still been there now. So I answered seriously, “Sightseeing . . . holiday. . . drawing, your honour. (Alright, I probably didn’t say Your Honour, although I was that flustered and knackered I can’t swear that I didn’t.)

“When are you leaving?” – Again, I felt like answering “I’ll get me coat” in a Mark Williams voice. Again, it’s probably a good thing that I didn’t.

Okay, so things started looking up. A bit. I found where the bus to the railway station left from. And there was already a bus there waiting! All I had to do was buy a ticket. Which was another cause for celebration when I found out that a five day travelcard is ridiculously cheap. Yippee. Nothing like that to gladden an international cheapskate’s heart. Now, I think that the driver of the bus must have been a fan of Bob Newhart, because he expertly closed the doors and drove off just as I was about to get on.

At this point can I heartily commend to you the benefits of having a travel agent daughter? If you don’t possess such and article, can I suggest that you get one? It was as I was getting onto the bus – by now it was gone half past eleven – that Jenn range me, because the hotel/guest house wanted to know where the hell I was and why I hadn’t checked in yet. Apparently their 24 hour reception closes at midnight! They agreed to keep checkout open for me, for a price. So all that remained was to get off at the station and find the guesthouse. Okay. Now the unfortunate thing was that the station was two stops before the end of the route. But it wasn’t actually called anything like the word Station – the Latvian word does actually start with Sta. So I had the mortifying experience of being kicked off the bus at the end of the route. Which led to the even more mortifying experience of having to ask someone for directions. My nearest and dearest will confirm that being a bloke I would rather almost anything than speak to a complete stranger. I blame my Mum – she was the one who taught me not to speak to strangers. Mind you, I was only tiny at the time.

Well, this stranger couldn’t have been nicer or more helpful. He walked to within what I found out was about 10 feet from where I needed to be. So what did your intrepid hero do next? Seeing no sign that resembled anything like the name of the place I was looking for I went marching off down the street in the wrong direction. Eventually, after asking for directions from the Hotel Ibis down the road, and ringing Jenn, she used google street view to direct me to the place. Now, on the booking it says the City Flower Guest Rooms. NOWHERE either outside or inside the building (and I’ve searched on 3 floors since ) have I found that name on any sign at all. There you go.

To be fair, though, I have had a cracking day out and about in Riga. Last night when the guy was walking me from the bus stop he made a point of saying, “It isn’t always as cold as this in Riga.” It was snowing and below zero, you see. I was tempted to give him both barrels in my best 4 Yorkshiremen voice “Cold? Cold! Oh we dreamed of having only a tiny bit of sleet and 1 degree below zero when I was in Reykjavik. Luxury!” But he did have a point. It was cold and snowing as I went for my McDonalds healthy and nutritious breakfast. Look, 1) the McDonalds is right next door to the guest rooms. 2) I arrived far too late to do any shopping last night and I was bloody starving. 3) They didn’t tell me the wifi code yesterday when I arrived and McDonalds has free wifi.

So, what have I achieved during the day? Well, firstly, not only have I ridden on a tram, but I’ve also ridden on a trolleybus. What do you mean so what? Now, I’ll be honest, if there were trams close to home – (the nearest ones to Port Talbot are West Midlands trams) and I used them all the time then maybe I wouldn’t get so excited about them. But who knows? You can see that I’ve drawn one of them, an older style tram a bit reminiscent of some of the trams in Prague. This is my ideal kind of tram, the type where you can stand at the back, grinning from ear to ear with every squeal it makes trundling around a corner. AS for the trolleybus, that was fun, if still not quite a tram. It took me to see Milda.

Milda is the local nickname for the Freedom Monument. Basically, it’s a large, off white monument topped by the statue of the woman, Milda to the locals, Mother Latvia to the rest of us. If you didn’t know she was erected in the 1930s you’d have been able to have a pretty good guess looking at the rather Expressionist style. So I’ve read the Monument stands where a statue of Peter the Great once stood, which ‘went missing’ during World War I. During the Soviet occupation quite a number of Latvians ‘went missing’ too, just for laying flowers at the base of the statue. I didn’t visit the Museum dedicated to the Occupation today, but it’s definitely on my list.

Once I left Milda to her own devices it was a short walk into the historic old town. Now, you know me, I like an old town. It reminded me a quite a bit of Warsaw’s old town which I visited last year, except that this seemed bigger, and frankly, a lot more confusing. I say confusing because whichever direction I thought that I was going in, I kept coming back to the Museum of Art. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is a very nice museum. It’s housed in the former Riga Stock Exchange building, completed in 1855. I’d like to think that the museum has brought more pleasure to more people than the former stock exchange ever did. I spent a couple of hours in there. The exhibition occupying the main exhibition space was a funny old thing on the Art and Culture of India. That in itself is not funny. The funny thing was that most of the exhibits were, erm, how should I put it? Younger than me. Much younger. Quite a few being early 21st century. Sorry to be pedantic but strictly speaking we ain’t even reached mid 21st century yet. Well, I did make a sketch of a Greek or Roman bust in the permanent collection upstairs. I don’t know that it comes out in the sketch, but she just seemed to have this expression on her face which seems to be saying “Ooh, would you look at the muck in here?”

I enjoyed the Museum, even if I knew very few of the artists whose work was on display. I did not enjoy it quite so much when I ended up passing the said museum 4 or 5 times while trying to find my way out of the old town. Mind you, it was on one such fruitless meander that I came upon the statue of the Musicians of Bremen.

In all honesty the only way I know anything about this particular folk tales is through the excellent Muppet Musicians of Bremen which I watched many years ago. This statue was actually gifted to Riga by the city of Bremen. It was the home city of the Bishop who actually founded Riga. There’s a number of interpretations of it, but basically it can be said to stand for the people of Riga standing up to defend themselves and what’s theirs, as did the animals, and also of them looking out onto a new world of new opportunities, inspired by the excitement of the times engendered by perestroika.

I did eventually get out of the old town, by retracing my steps to Milda and from just round the corner I was able to take a tram to the market.

The Latvian word for market is not exactly the same as the Lithuanian word for the same, but it’s close enough, so when I saw this was a few stops away I was definitely up for it. It’s a very large indoor market and the food section of it is fantastic. I had a terrific savoury pancake for about the price of a packet of crisps at home, so McDonalds next door are going to have to be bucking their ideas up if they want to get any more of my business, especially since I’ve been given the wifi password now. As if that wasn’t enough, there was also a Maxima supermarket next door to the market. Back home supermarkets are a permanent fixture in my ‘necessary nuisance’ category, but whenever I’m abroad I love going in a supermarket. When I heard Peter Kay’s routine about his Dad’s delight in finding a Spanish supermarket selling Cadbury’s chocolate fingers I laughed, but only because I was recognising myself in that.

I’ll be honest, I’m starting to run out of a little bit of steam now. It was about 1am when I finally got to bed last night, and it’s not that often nowadays that I go to bed much later than 10pm. So that’s your lot for today. Tune in tomorrow for episode 2 (Riga, this time it’s personal.)