Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: Riga

  • Riga – Wok n Kurry

    A restaurant offering both Indian and Chinese cuisine sometimes runs the risk of doing neither very well, but Wok n Kurry was well reviewed and so I decided to give it a try.

     

    It’s quite a small restaurant and there are only about seven tables inside, although it was relatively quiet during my visit. There are also several tables outside though for the warmer period of the year. It’s all clean, functional and well presented with the sole staff member being warm and welcoming. And she also spoke perfect English, as I can’t even pretend to speak any Latvian.

    I wasn’t overly excited by the food’s presentation when it arrived, as the green of the green Thai curry looked a bit too, er, green. Indeed, there was probably too much sauce, but the chicken was tender and it had a pleasant flavour. The carrots added some texture and the quality in terms of the taste met my expectations.

    The portion size was generous and it was all served at the appropriate hot temperature. The service time was also impressive, taking around five minutes from being ordered until it was served. I say impressive, as that sort of service speed with a menu of the size that the restaurant has can certainly lead to short cuts.

    The cost of the curry, rice and orange juice came to around £8, which seemed competitive given the restaurant’s local in the centre of the country’s capital.

  • Riga – Freedom Monument (Brīvības Piemineklis)

    The city’s freedom monument, which was built to commemorate those Latvians who died in the country’s war of independence between 1918 and 1920. The monument was unveiled on 18 November 1935 and it stands 42 metres high, being made of granite, travertine and copper.

    From 1935 until 1940 there was a guard of honour which took place in front of the monument, in tribute to those who had died. When Latvia was occupied the practice stopped, but it was reintroduced in 1992. The guards change hourly and walk slowly in pairs, although they don’t have to do this in adverse weather conditions.

    Running at the moment in front of the monument is a display of individuals who have helped to form the history of Latvia over the last 100 years. The actually centenary of the country’s independence will be held on 18 November 2018, so there are a number of events which are taking place in the lead up to that date.

    One of the images, this one is of Skaidrīte Vēgnere-Plismane, a volleyball player in the 1930s who came from Riga.

    The display was popular with visitors.

  • Riga – Statue of Prince Michael Barclay de Tolly

    Prince Michael Barclay de Tolly was a Russian General during the Napoleonic Wars who fought a tactically clever military campaign against the French troops. He also used the policy of scorched earth to deprive the French troops of food and supplies. Although he was brought up in St. Petersburg, his grandfather was the Mayor of Riga, hence the connection with the city.

    The plinth is made from red granite from Finland, and is the original 1913 plinth, which is appropriate as de Tolly was the Governor-General of Finland. The statue itself is though new as the 1913 bronze version was taken away after just two years because of the First World War and has since been lost. The replacement was added in 2001 using photographs of the original statue as well as an old miniature plaster model that still existed.

  • Riga – Caffeine Roasters (Riga Plaza)

    My initial intention for food on my first day in Riga was to go to the country’s national library, have a look round their exhibition and then go to their restaurant. Anyway, that didn’t work out, because the library was shut. They said in signage that it was a diplomatic day, although I’d be horrified if I were a politician and had managed to make a visit which shut off access to the country’s main library for two days.

    But I only realised that the library was shut when I got to the front door. And I noticed that there were a lot of security staff, all dressed very professionally, and there were some cars that looked like protection officers might have. And a car with little flags at the front. So, I realised at this stage that I was in the middle of a security detail.

    This isn’t an ideal situation to be in, but then I realised I had my hand in my pocket with a wire sticking out of it. That was my very bulky power charger linked by a long wire to my mobile phone, it was just charging. But I was slightly nervous that the security staff might wonder what I was doing. So I did what I thought best, looked calm, looked at my phone and meandered off. No-one seemed concerned and so all was well. Although I was still hungry.

    To get a suitable snack, and to get out of the rain, I just went into a shopping centre near to my hotel. The coffee outlet there is Caffeine Roasters, who are a chain in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, and they also have one random shop in the United States, in Tampa.

    The staff member was on her own and was trying to serve a number of customers whilst also making the coffees. She did well, batching up some payments and then making that batch of coffee, before starting on the next set of customers. All very efficient, and my latte and caramel brownie were both delicious. They cost around £3.50 for the two and although the surroundings weren’t as nice as I hoped from my planned library visit, it was all clean and comfortable. And dry.

  • Riga – Old Church of St. Gertrude

    The current church was constructed between 1866 and 1869, but is the seventh church of the same name to be built on or around this site. Riga has been attacked numerous times over the centuries, and this church has traditionally been outside of the relative safety of the city walls. This made it easy to attack, which forces from France, Sweden and Russia have all done, each time destroying it.

    The first church here was built at around the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the first six churches were all made of wood. The being made of wood certainly didn’t help its longevity, but the city authorities refused the church permission to build it from stone in 1778. The French set fire to the area in 1812, and the church didn’t survive the blaze. Nor did any building of the suburb it was in, due to the slightly bizarre rule that only structures inside the city walls could be made from stone.

    The organ dates from 1906 and is still in use today, although there’s a restoration fund currently running to finance that project.

    The interior is bright and well-lit. The church has strong connections with the German community and it is called the ‘old church’ as a second was built between 1903 and 1906 to meet the needs of the Latvian speaking population. This church now continues to cater for the needs of the German speaking Lutheran church goers.

    Stained-glass window.

    One of the church aisles. The church congregation shrank to just a couple of hundred of people by the 1980s, but there has been an increase since the end of communism in the country.

  • Riga – Riga Ghetto and Holocaust Museum

    The country’s Holocaust museum opened in 2010 and it has a large outdoors display and also several exhibition rooms in buildings along the side.

    A railway transportation carriage which is in memory of the tens of thousands of Jews who were transported from Germany and then into Riga. The exhibit is known as “the one-way ticket” as very few of those transported survived.

    The inside of the railway carriage.

    The entrance to one of the outdoor exhibits and the memorial wall.

    A blanket used by Joseph Perlman when he was living in the Riga ghetto.

    The inside of the “3,000 fates” exhibit which is dedicated to the Jews who were sent from Theresienstadt Ghetto from 1941 until 1942. At the rear is a painting of Bremen railway station from where the transportation started, a station I visited just a few months ago. Along the side are 230 memorial plaques marking individuals who were transported from Bremen.

    Just as one example from along the long wall, this screen lists those who were transported from Cologne to Riga on 7 December 1941. The list of survivors is at the base, it’s just a handful of those who were deported, thought to total over 25,000.

    On the other side of the screens are a list of Latvians who died during the Nazi period. The screens go on all the way down to the end, there are tens of thousands of names (around 70,000). The stones on the ground are cobbles which have been brought from a street which was part of the Riga ghetto.

    A close-up of just one screen.

    The room of names.

    It’s very difficult to get a sense of the numbers involved here and I remember when I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau there was a mention that you have to try and personalise it and just think of one individual. That way, the individual can be remembered and understood, as knowing that millions died is beyond comprehension. In this case, the individuals mentioned were Karel Mendl and Jiri Mendl.

    In one of the rooms there is a recreation of what an apartment in the Riga ghetto might have looked like. I suspect very many wouldn’t have looked as comfortable as this. Interestingly, unlike in cities such as Warsaw, the ghetto buildings have mostly survived in Riga, around 250 still stand today.

    The display is located in a two-storey wooden house which was brought to this site in 2011 from where it stood in the Riga Ghetto. The house, which would have been built originally for a small family, would have housed around thirty people living in the ghetto.

    Many buildings in Latvia were destroyed by the Nazis, including nearly all those of significance to the Jewish community. Some models have been commissioned to show what the buildings used to look like, with the above being Liepāja Synagogue (a town in the west of the country).

    In one of the displays there’s a special exhibit which focuses on just a handful of families. On the information board one of the family members has written:

    “Share them as they are yours too. Their souls will reappear, those who otherwise would be permanently dead. The Talmud says that ‘you are really dead only when nobody tells your story’”.

  • Riga – Corner House (KGB Museum)

    I booked a tour of the Corner House on-line a few days ago as I had read that it is closing in two days. It transpired that the building that the Corner House is in is being renovated into offices and apartments, so the ground floor museum has to close at the same time. They are hoping that the museum can re-open in the future, but they’re not sure yet.

    The transformation into apartments might be lovely as the building has some considerable historic interest. But, there is a little problem, which is that the building was the home of the KGB and around 1,000 of its staff. The building has tens of interrogation rooms where violence was used against those supposed to have been critical of the regime. What a lovely place to live that would be….

    The Corner House building is large and sprawling, but the public would only have been allowed into one small room. This was a reception room on the corner of the building and it was primarily where people could drop off messages about enemies of the people in a wooden box. The state encouraged people to report on others and the reports were taken very seriously.

    For those who had friends or relatives imprisoned, it was also possible to drop food off or to leave a written message asking what was happening. It isn’t known how often the food would be received by the prisoner and whether or not the KGB wrote back to interested friends and relatives.

    An interior corridor, which was once used by KGB staff and is now the way into the main hall where there is an exhibition about the building. There has been very little modernisation of the building since the KGB left it in 1991, so it felt like an authentic experience.

    The building was constructed in 1912 and it was intended to house both shops and apartments. The original reception area, which would have been visible to passer-bys, was left unchanged by the KGB and was used as an entrance for their senior staff. The rest of the building was heavily modified and the original decoration has been lost.

    A plan of the building’s ground floor.

    One of the cells on the ground floor and this could take up to five people at its peak. Access to these cells today is only by a guided tour, but we were allowed to walk freely around these different cells. There are an identical set of cells which are in the building’s basement, but these have flooded and their use was stopped in the 1960s.

    One of the interrogation rooms, with a rubber baton which was of the type which might have been used on prisoners. The chairs were also screwed to the floor to stop prisoners attacking the interrogators.

    Another cell, with prisoners staying here from anything from a few weeks to as long as two years. The guide said that the prisoners would then be deported or executed, although I do rather wonder whether they really did that to every prisoner.

    On that note, the guide was excellent and she was really enthusiastic about the whole tour and its content. She mentioned how her family had been impacted by the KGB and the secret services, but she added that a Russian family this week had called her a liar and said everything was a lie. There wasn’t much that I doubted about her ninety minutes of tour as it seemed to fit with what I’ve seen elsewhere.

    The inside of a cell door and the cells were kept brightly lit to try and make the prisoners feel uncomfortable and oppressed. The cells were deliberately kept overcrowded and the toilet facilities were limited to a bucket in the corner of the room which was only emptied once per day.

    The exercise yard, where prisoners were allowed once every ten days for a short walk. The prisoners weren’t allowed to make any noise as there were neighbouring apartments and a music school where residents might be able to hear them. A wooden roof was added to one part of the exercise yard in a bid to stop neighbours from seeing in, but they were reports that children could hear the torturing taking place.

    The prisoners would sleep on the metal beds at night, but would then put them up against the wall during the daytime. The cells were also kept at a hot temperature to make the conditions even more intolerable.

    The prisoners would receive meals three times a day, but they were of a poor quality and the food was deliberately left unwashed or was spoiled. The meals didn’t have enough calories to support the prisoners, which made them feel more tired and worn out.

    The row of cells and there was once a thick red carpet along here, which had the dual purpose of muffling the sound of guards walking along and it also hid the blood.

    The above two photos show the eye hole where guards could look into a cell, and what it looked like from the inside of the cell.

    The inside of a cell door.

    The execution chamber, which wasn’t used from the 1950s onwards, and was covered up by the authorities. The covering up was literal, they put wallpaper up over the bullet holes and then turned the area into a shop where staff could buy provisions. This was an important benefit, given that food and drink was often in short supply during the communist period.

    The tour cost around £5 and lasted for around ninety minutes. I’m glad that I got to go on this tour before the building was closed for renovation, although I’m confident that the museum will re-open in the future. It would look appalling if the state, which owns the building, tried to cover up this period of the country’s history, and I can’t imagine they’d want to do so.