Day 1 - travel day and first impressions - June 24-25

We've been preparing for this trip since January when we bought our tickets and had been counting down since then. The main reason for the trip was to be there for my sister's wedding. This was also AAs first trip out of the US and my first trip to Latvia; where all of my grandparets were born. We took the bus to the O'Hare airport as the daily parking fees are astronomical. The all exciting picture in the bus:

We met up with my parents at the airport, as they were on the same flight as us. AAs backpack got searched on the way in because of the styluses in our Nintendo DS (apparetnly they look like sharp objects in the x-ray machine). Our flight left at 4:30 pm. One very cool and unexpected thing on the plane was that on the back of every seat there was a screen. There were over a dozen movies to choose from, games to play and a very cool feature where you could look at cameras that were attached to the front of the plane, or the bottom of the plane looking down. So we got to see some pretty cool views. The first part of the trip was from Chicago to Stockholm, Sweeden. This was about 8 hours. This got to be quite long for AA as his legs are so long. We all slept a little, except for my mom who got addicted to the game, Shanghai. We had about a 3 hour layover in Stockholm. There was some pretty cool art in the airport, and we were antsy to start taking some pictures. So here is the Stockholm airport:

Cala lily - my favorite!

Then we took a propeller plane from Stockholm to Riga (the capital of Latvia). I was quite scared flying on this plane, as you could feel every little bit of turbulance. Then, I saw Latvia! Everyone else was sleeping, but I could not keep my eyes off of it. For 27 years I have been dreaming of going, and I was about to land! Here are a couple of the pictures from the plane, none of which truly describe the feeling;

We finally landed at about 12:30 pm Latvia time (they are 8 hours ahead of us). Then we got our baggage (which by the way we spent hours packing and repacking the night before to make sure that none of the bags exceeded 50 pounds - we had 3 bags). Luckly nothing got lost. Diana and Karlis were waiting for us at the terminal. The complete opposite of the O'Hare checkpoint, there was no security at the checkpoint to get into Latvia. We did not even get a Latvian stamp in our passport. D and K had a van cab waiting for us and had fresh piragi! (For those of you who do not know, these are our favorite Latvian food. It is fried ham, bacon and onions with seasoning wrapped in bread.) AA and I decided that we were on a mission to eat at least 100 piragi while in Latvia. I have a recipe to make them, but it takes about 5 hours to make about 250. So if you can get someone else to do the work - that is good. My sister also greeted my mom and I with 3 gerbere daisies each. It is customary to bring flowers to people when you meet with them. When you go to visit them at their house, even if you know them very well, you usually will bring flowers with you. (Pastries or breads are a good second choice.) Because of this there are many s flower stands on the streets of Latvia. Many of them have beautiful bouquets and you will never see even a slightly wilting flower. Back to the original point here. As we were driving into Riga to D and K's apartment, K was describing some of the buildings and pointing things out to us. Two things struck me at this time. One is that people drive like maniacs in Latvia. On a typical 2 lane street - most people in Latvia will usually make this a 3 lane street. Now this is just city traffic. Once we get outside of the city, I have more stories about that kind of driving. Also, the trolley buses and regular buses get right of way over cars, so if one pulls out ahead of you, you better make way. Luckly everyone uses their turn signals at all times (contrary to the US). The second thing that I noticed was that during the Solviet times many buildings were not taken care of. I was shocked to see the state that some buildings were in, but happily surprised to see how much reconstruction was going on in the city.

As AA put it, he knew that Latvia is small (about 1/2 the size of Wisconsin) and was not sure what to expect of the capital/largest city. AA was surprised at how big the city was. Including metropolitan areas, about 1.1 million people.

The taxi took us to D and K's apartment. Now this next bit of information is something that I knew going into this, but tried to push it out of my mind as much as I could. Now reality sunk in. They live on the 6th floor of their apartment building which has no elevator. So here we are, tired and exhausted from traveling 20 some odd hours and had 6 people and 7 large bags and 4 carry-ons. You do the math, all of us were exhausted by the time we got to the top of the 111 or 112 stairs. (I counted the first time and decided that it is much better for morale to not pay attention to that when climbing the stairs).

Their apartment was a pleasant surprise. As it is on the top floor, they have many skylights as windows, so it is very open and airy. They have one bedroom and an office/closet and an open kitchen/livingroom/dining room. Then they also have a very small loft room up a small set of stairs that by no means are 'up to code' in the US. I tried to stay away from going up there, as the stairs were a little scary. Also, this was set up more as the 'man room', so AA and K spent time up there talking about us crazy sisters. :)

We unwound a little and watched some Latvian music videos - AA enjoyed seeing this. There was one video that K did some camera work for. It was pretty cool to hear some of the stories about some of the bands. K was in a very hot band in the Latvian world from the 80s into the 90s. They still get together every once in a while for short tours or shows here and there. So he still has the connections to a lot of very famous people. (Example, this past weekend - July 5th - they were at a baptism for their new Godson and there were two TV stations and three magazines as well as the president of Latvia).

Then we took the trolley bus into vec-Riga (old-Riga). The trolley buses are hooked up to electric lines - quite green for such a little country.

You can see the two 'sticks' as K calls them, in the middle of the bus. We did a little bit of site seeing. We walked in some parks. Here my sister and I are sitting on a monument to Oskars Kalpaks:

He was a commander for the Latvian army, and the little Latvian school that we attended in Milwaukee was named after him. While walking through the park, something just completely wierd, and that you would never see in the US. This is one of the kid jumping blow up bouncing things - of the Titanic...

Something that apparently shows up every summer and the kids enjoy.

The next big thing that we got to see was the Latvian version of the Statue of Liberty. I cannot even tell you how many times I have seen pictures of this monument. Everyone that is Latvian and goes to Latvia gets their picture in front of this monument. Finally it was my turn. The lady at the top is named Milda.

On the day that we went, there were not guards there. Usually there are two guards that stand there for hour shifts. Like in the UK - still as can be and cannot be distracted. My grandpa used to have a shift there too. Here is a picture with the guards on a different day we were in Riga:

In this closer view of AA and I, you can see that there are some areas in the stone that have divets. These divets were put into the monument in 1991 when the communists came through Riga with gunfire (Latvia regained it's independance on May 5, 1991). The were debating whether to leave these as a reminder or to patch them up. I think they made the right decision to leave them.

The saying on the monument "Tevzemei un Brivibai" translates to "for my homeland and for freedom".

Here is a famous clock in Latvia. Laima is the name of the most famous chocolate maker in Latvia. It is in a pretty central location in Riga, so it is a famous meeting point. We took a photo of my sister and mom in front of it because Laima is both of their middle names. Laima is the name of the goddess of good fortune in the old Latvian religion.

The streets were all cobblestone in vec-Riga. Very historical, but hard to walk on. We had flip flops and tennis shoes. Local ladies wore stilettos. There are about 4 women to every man in Latvia. So the men can be slobs and the women always need to look more than perfect. Some of the fasion choices that we saw were... interesting.

We stopped at a couple of the little stands to look at the amber jewelry and other Latvian items for sale. That evening we went to a bar called Kiploku Krogs - translated Garlic Bar.

We ordered appetizers which included all garlic or garlic infused items.

In the middle of the big plate is roasted garlic. You just plucked it out with a toothpick and ate it. On the right are garlic breadsticks and the green stalks are the stalks that grow out of a garlic if you leave it too long. Then at the bottom of the plate is garlic fetta, then garlic cloves marinated in a marinara type sauce, then garlic infused mushrooms and garlic infused olives. We all drank Bauskas alus (alus = beer - the first Latvian word that AA ever learned). All of the beers that we drank are all of micro-brewery quality. Also, because beers are so much better there, many are drunk at room temperature - something that was a little hard to get used to. We have yet to drink any American beers, as we are sure they will taste like water to us after being spoiled by Latvian beers. To the right of the beer you can see my Evian water. First bit of culture shock. First of all you are not brought a glass or water when you sit down at a restaurant like here. You need to order it. Second everyone drinks carbonated mineral water. So you need to make sure you ask for non-carbonated water. It cracked me up that they brought me a wine glass to pour my water into. Lastly, if you want ice for your water, you have another thing coming to you. Luckily, water, unlike beer usually arrives cold. There was also a basket of dark bread. Which I am usually not a big fan of, but for whatever reason, it tasted much better in Latvia. On the left you can see the two sauces for the bread. One was a mild garlic butter and the other a spicy garlic pesto. Both were extremely good. I don't like olives, but decided that a garlic infused one might be alright. So here is proof that I tried it. As you can see from my sisters face, she does not like olives either.

I have to say that even garlic infused olives are no better than regular olives.

After the garlic bar, we sat out at a beer garden. These are a dime a dozen in Riga (no complaints here!). As you can see the arcitecture of the area is just so much richer than in the US. Riga just had it's 880th birthday!

Here you see a church clock tower. It shows 10:30 pm. Although it is a little cloudy - it looks like 6 pm is here this time of year. In Latvia at this time of year it is somewhat dark from about 12:30 am to 3:30 am. Later you will see more proof of this crazieness. Let me tell you - it made sleeping very hard!

Mara and Joel came to meet us at the beer garden. They just recently got engaged and are getting married in Mexico next year. They are both teachers at international schools and are in the process of moving to Mongolia! Mara was not so pleased with Joel's new choice for facial hair...

But they are a very cute and fun couple to hang out with! Joel has been intensley working on his Latvian, and it is extremely good now!

Culture shocker #2. Bathrooms. Here we are so used to having bathrooms readily available for us to use at any time. In Latvia, you must be a patron to use bathrooms, and most of the time they are small, don't always smell the greatest and sometimes you are lucky if you get toilet paper. If it is free, even better. So at this beer garden, there were outside toilets that cost 20 santimi. (Latvian currancy is Lats and Santimi. 100 Santimi = 1 Lats. Conversion was approximately 1 Lats = $2.25 US dollars). So you do the shuffle to use the restrooms. One person goes in, comes out, and holds the door open for the next person - if you can get your 20 santimi to open it in the first place... Sometimes it just didn't work and it stole your money. Needless to say, we always made sure that we had change... I will tell you that there is a great bathroom story later in our trip.

We eventually made our way back to D and Ks apartment, up the 6 flights of stairs. Most of us crashed, but AA and K went into the man room and talked the night away about us crazy sisters. I am just so glad that the two get along so well together. Too bad we don't live closer - on second thought, it maybe OK, as they seemed to stay up late often together...