Until today, summer had seemingly decided to punk out in Latvia. The temperatures had dropped just enough for it to feel significantly colder than it actually is and all I could do was hope that Indian Summer doesn’t pass without me noticing it. Again. Luckily, today is a stunning 23′C and I am happy to traipse around the city in sandals and a skirt.
The last week or two in a nutshell has been: first ever couch surfer, fall vacation planning, repatriation research/planning, a work-organised hike along the north-western coast of Latvia and hanging out with my relatives at their “summer home”.
The CouchSurfer was certainly an experience. He was our first ever CouchSurfer — a deaf, gay ecologist from Washington state, who loved to dance. Love it SO much, in fact, that while on our way to the central market with a friend of mine, he had to stop and participate for half an hour in some dance marathon going on in a fake beach set-up (sand, palm trees, beach chairs, etc.) in front of National Opera House. The things this country will come up with… Anyway, the weekend was spent fairly low-key, enjoying time outside, going to a dance club to let the CouchSurfer burn off some energy. When we were leaving the dance club/bar a local tried talking to the CouchSurfer and asked if he understood Latvian, to which a marginally intoxicated friend of ours replied loudly (in Latvian) “No, he doesn’t understand — HE’S BLIND.” So I was left to explain to the local guy (who was then waving his hand in front of the CouchSurfer’s face) that the CouchSurfer was in fact deaf, not blind. Quite possibly one of the funniest moments of the evening.
Learning some sign language was helpful. I for some reason know and remember the entire alphabet, so spelling words out was a good plan-B if the CouchSurfer didn’t understand from lip reading. The rest of us learned the signs for good, night, dance, breakdance, fall, alcohol, no, and the European sign language for “yes”. It would be interesting to learn ESL. We also learned how to sign “story of my life”, which we have, as I indicated earlier, applied extensively. The Couch Surfer could hear — or distinguish — certain sounds. I had to ask him about it finally because at the market this woman walked by in high heels and he goes “I could hear that from all the way back there!” So I asked him about sound pitch frequencies, since I figured if higher or lower sounds were easier to distinguish I could just talk to him in a scary man voice or in a high-pitched squeal. Turns out normal human voice ranges he can distinguish fairly well, but it becomes harder in larger groups of people. He can also distinguish birdsong. As for dancing, it’s all about feeling the beat instead of hearing it, but that the rest of us had figured out without having to ask him.
Another thing that was surprising was how helpful people in stores were to him once they figured out he didn’t speak Latvian and had some hearing impairment. Surprise may be an understatement, considering Latvia is known as a country in which, should you have the slightest deformation, you are usually determined as needing to be shut up and locked away in some dark corner where no one knows about you.
Taking the CouchSurfer to the market was… an entirely different ball of yarn. After the first Russian woman yelled at him for picking up and shaking a clump of spinach and I had explained to him that you just don’t touch stuff here, he apologised and explained he was used to farmers’ markets in Washington and grocery stores, where you’re allowed to inspect the produce. Alright, that’s cool. But then when buying bananas he got too impatient and started picking his own off the bunches and then I got yelled at by the Latvian woman for his behaviour. Again, not allowed to touch stuff. Luckily he refrained from doing that again during the rest of the trip there, but when he finally bought some spinach and decided after the woman had put them in the bag that it was too much, he turns to me and asks me to have her take half of it out. Me, I stood petrified but finally with much apologising and submissive head bowing was able to convince the woman to (grudgingly) remove a fraction of the spinach. This was another learning experience for me.
The entire weekend was exhausting — I’m not used to showing people around who don’t speak the language and who haven’t really studied a map of the area prior to going out into the immediate world. I’m glad the first couch surfing experience was one that ended safely and without any damage to property and that we met a truly fascinating and kind person in the process. But the end of the year is becoming a difficult time to host couch surfers, and the sudden influx of single men over the age of 35 and from eastern countries who are requesting a place to stay is kind of shady, so I think the three of us involved have decided to take the couch off the board for a while and stick to just meeting up with passers-through if they want some less-malicious locals to talk to.
Another new update is that I got my fall vacation request approved, so will be able to join Ilze and Davids on a week-long stay in Rome (the theme for this trip is “Pizza, Pope, Paparazzi!” and our buttons sport a sketch of the Popemobile. With the Pope inside.). Technically, this will be two countries in one trip, provided we get to Vatican City.
My second week off I haven’t figured out yet what I’d do. I’m still kind of coming to terms with the idea of not working for two straight weeks, which may be a sign of premature work-aholicness. However, I’ve got several ideas, two of which involve locking myself into a quiet space and hashing out my issues regarding graduate school or regarding putting some time into some freelance literary translation to see how I like it. The third and most appealing idea involves going around Latvia with my camera latched to my face to check out interesting graffiti in some other major “graffiti cities” besides Riga. I’ve already started researching this possibility and am starting to think that renting a car, though slightly more expensive than taking public transportation, would allow me to maximise my time and stop in more cities around the country.
I’ve also pre-started the process of repatriation. I have some documents, my mother is collecting some more, the department here has told me to c’mon down and take care of it. While my mother and her side of the family and my dad have been surprisingly supportive of this, I have a really strong sense that my dad’s parents — especially my grandfather — think this is more of a ridiculous desire to do something different. It’s as if I would have told him I wanted a giraffe for Christmas or something. And judging by the reactions I got when I told them I was thinking about repatriation, a giraffe would be a much more likely result than any kind of document I might need. My friends keep telling me to just call the respective registry offices to get the documents I’d need from my father’s side of the family, but I’m the type of person who wants her grandparent’s permission to go get the documents. It’s too bad if they don’t support this, but I’m not going to completely go against what they want.
Two Saturdays ago I participated in a work “outing” in which we drove to Kolkasrags and walked the 23km to some camp-site named Plaucaki. We hung out at Kolkasrags for a bit, took some group pictures and then headed out. On our way to the wood trail we passed another group and, since I was at the back of our group, the first person in the other line pointed to the beach and asked me (in Latvian) “Is Kolkasrags over there?” and I went “No, it just washed away.” because I thought he was joking. His blank stare told me he probably wasn’t so I said that it was that way, yes.
After the first 4km it was kind of impossible to keep shoes on without getting them wet and after that, what’s the point of putting them back on? Dumb. But I wasn’t the only person limping by the time we got to the camp-site. It was a really great walk, got a lot of picture taking done, talked to some co-workers I hadn’t really talked to before, but mostly enjoyed some semi-solitary mind clearing. There were lots of random things along the beach, like shampoo bottles, rubber gloves, a full ketchup bottle, and bones. Everyone else was laughing and saying things like “Hahaha it’s like a dinosaur graveyard!” but I was more concerned and thinking “that looks like a human vertebrae and THAT looks like a human tibia…”
Instead of staying at the camp-site for the night with some of the others I was instead dropped at my relatives’ place by a group heading back to Riga. I was really limping and my relative was immediately concerned, even though I told her it was fine. These relatives are really into Reiki and they’re very into testing it out on people. And by people I mean me.
I’m generally the type of person to ride out physical pain in slow-moving agony because the last thing I logically figure people want is someone manhandling their injuries saying things like “Does it hurt when I do this? How about this?” However, because my relatives are into this Reiki thing and are quite adamant about doing what they want at times, I was forcefully explained that I would be administered a foot massage with some kind of magical cream they picked up on a recent trip to the Himalayas. Best thing EVER. Of course the next morning after breakfast with the relatives I was all LET’S GO WALK BY THE SEA!, ending in more foot-death, at which time I expressed to my relative my apparent inability to learn from my actions, to which she agreed, saying she hadn’t planned on a beach walk, but I had been so gung-ho about it, to which I said if I’m about to do something stupid STOP ME. This didn’t stop as I once more wanted to go walk around at night and then again the next morning.
As such, Tuesday morning was the first time I was really excited that I have a mainly stationary job. The less I moved the better I felt.
Today is… the Wednesday of the week after it all, and I have recovered completely and am always counting the hours until I can go home and keep reading the last Harry Potter book. I’ve been re-bitten by the book bug and am anxious to read everything I’ve accumulated in the last 6 months. Which is a frightening amount of books. But I’m making excellent progress!
Also, happy September!
We also walked to the beach, took many photos, and then decorated eggs the good old Latvian way. Lots and lots of onion skins. The eggs also turned out lovely, and were then bashed to near smithereens during our friendly egg-wars. The weather has been better in Riga, too. The week after Brussels (which was a weekend trip of running around seeing everything we could possibly see and eating everything we could possibly eat — including escargot — which was DELICIOUS) we still had snow in Latvia, and the weather got rainy and damp and disgusting. Then it miraculously all passed and one day the snow was gone! Today was about 45ºF, which allowed me to go for my first run of the Spring season and spend most of my time outside for the rest of the afternoon. In the evening I was to meet relatives to go to a play at The Stage Theatre, but there was a huge miscommunication and two of the main actors were in some other Latvian city putting on some other play, so… everyone was apologised to and invited to come back the next weekend or to get a refund. So next weekend it is! Instead we backtracked a bit to Gallery kim? to catch the last three Baltic Student Film Festival shorts and then have a delicious dinner at Meta Cafe. The Spikeri area of Riga used to be kind of shady, but in the past year has improved by leaps and bounds and is quickly becoming a hipster/indie hot spot for galleries, concerts and good eats. Whereas before I would have told people to think twice before heading out there, I’d recommend it now. Even with all the drunks and slightly creepy people still around. But they exist in groups and generally stay to themselves.