Riga

The second part of our Berlin / Riga trip took us to the Baltic nation of Latvia. Latvia is a country of around 2 million inhabitants, although many have left since Latvia has joined the EU to look for jobs in better places. So the number may actually be a bit smaller than this. About 1 million of the population lives in or around Riga, which is the capital city. It's an old town (I don't have an concrete dates, but we ate in a restaurant that claims to have been built some 800 years ago). It was cold and snowy while we were there, which marked the first time I had seen snow since leaving Ohio (which has experienced quite the coldness / snowfall this winter).

Anyway, Riga's downtown seemed almost if it was a façade to hide the poorness of the surrounding region. We took a train to the Baltic Sea which is about 20 miles away. Many of the buildings on the way were decrepit and abandoned. But, the city center is being revitalized, and there is an abundance of very expensive cars (I saw more Bentleys over a three day period than I've ever seen in my life), but apparently the influx of new money and banks into Riga has caused the citizens to take out loans and buy new homes and cars. Who knows if they can actually afford it, but at least they can pretend to live the capitalist lifestyle, right? So for these reasons, Riga left a bit of a bittersweet taste in my mouth. The people were all very nice but there was always a feeling on the back of my neck that something wasn't completely right. It could be the hints of corruption and oligarch money that underlie the foundations of the nation. Who knows. If you end up going to Latvia, we can talk about it some time.

Here are a few pictures:












Panorama:



A Random Latvian:



Broken down building on the Baltic Sea:



More Baltic Sea:





Soccer on the Baltic Beach:






I'll leave you with this image:





More photos from Paris / Brussels soon. I promise.