Actually I have no idea what was going on here on the corner of Gedtrudes iela and Avotu iela this morning.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
Back in Riga
When I last lived in Riga twenty months ago I had a blog which I deleted after I moved to Winnipeg, Canada. At the time I did not know if I would return so in retrospect, since I am back, it would have been nice to just fire the old girl up again. Nevertheless it is probably easier to just maintain the one site while making superficial changes to allow for location. Because who knows what the future holds?
It is a long way from Winnipeg to Riga in both space and time. A horrible and demeaning series of plane rides and security checkpoints that leaves you at your destination a broken person with serious jet lag. I've never liked travel by air, the class conscious and fascist nature of the experience leaves me in a cold rage that takes time to dissipate. But a serious regimen of booze, sleep, food & booze followed by more sleep and a morning walk on the Jurmala beach has helped to gently ease me back into the everyday world.
My first impression upon leaving RIX was how little things had changed. It was grey and raining just as when I left and the annual spring clean up hasn't yet occurred so the landscape along the highway was dirty and worn. But the region I live in was undergoing some serious water pipe upgrades that had the streets all torn up and caught me off guard since the train station public toilet and tool shed were still covered in the same graffiti that has been there since before 2008, made up primarily of improbably huge penis' and ugly, inarticulate "tags". The station itself was freshly painted however and the perpetually drunk maintenance worker who appeared to stand outside the normal flow of time having been there so long as to have become a permanent fixture much like the rusty lamp pole he is always standing under informed us that the graffiti would be painted over this summer. I'll believe it when I see it.
And so it begins! I look forward to my second attempt at understanding this city. Countries are too big for me to chew on. Cities I can deal with.
It is a long way from Winnipeg to Riga in both space and time. A horrible and demeaning series of plane rides and security checkpoints that leaves you at your destination a broken person with serious jet lag. I've never liked travel by air, the class conscious and fascist nature of the experience leaves me in a cold rage that takes time to dissipate. But a serious regimen of booze, sleep, food & booze followed by more sleep and a morning walk on the Jurmala beach has helped to gently ease me back into the everyday world.
My first impression upon leaving RIX was how little things had changed. It was grey and raining just as when I left and the annual spring clean up hasn't yet occurred so the landscape along the highway was dirty and worn. But the region I live in was undergoing some serious water pipe upgrades that had the streets all torn up and caught me off guard since the train station public toilet and tool shed were still covered in the same graffiti that has been there since before 2008, made up primarily of improbably huge penis' and ugly, inarticulate "tags". The station itself was freshly painted however and the perpetually drunk maintenance worker who appeared to stand outside the normal flow of time having been there so long as to have become a permanent fixture much like the rusty lamp pole he is always standing under informed us that the graffiti would be painted over this summer. I'll believe it when I see it.
And so it begins! I look forward to my second attempt at understanding this city. Countries are too big for me to chew on. Cities I can deal with.
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