Latvian blast from the past (part2 April 2010)

April 2010, I decide to visit Latvia once again a year and a half after my first and previous one that I covered in my previous post, in order to spend Easter there. This year it happens that both Catholic and Orthodox Easter coincide.

Taking off from Athens offers me superb view and thanks to my cutting edge phone (by 2010 standards) this time I don't need to upscale the pictures like I did for my previous Latvian trip - congrats Sony C905!

Of course flying North means that after North Greece the sunny fun ends and clouds take over:

And not just clouds, when I arrive at Riga there's snow on the ground and as soon as I get out of the airport it's freezing cold. Early April...

I meet with my friend Patricija who has kindly found a place for me to stay and we share a drink at night at the highest bar in the city (I think it was called sky bar back then). My phone has the highest resolution any phone could offer but don't expect miracles at night cause it takes more than a good amount of pixels for a decent image:

When we're done she takes me to my apartment which is a bit of a culture shock. Not the apartment itself, that's fine. It;s that group of old Soviet buildings it's in. These ugly boxes are such a pain in the eye even at night when you can't see much around anyway. I am also impressed that the apartment has too doors at the entrance. I ask Patricjia whether that's for safety or to keep it warm and as far as I remember she replied both.

It's kinda warm inside due to the lukewarm radiators running all day and from the window I can see all the rest of the apartments of the other box building opposite side. There's 5 or so of them and are completely identical so you'd better know which one is yours otherwise you're lost in a myriad of apartments.

I prefer to stare at the piano of the apartment instead, especially considering how old it might be and how many fingers it might have felt:

As you see it's an Arnold Fibiger and that Polish piano maker died in 1915. Since that brand was nationalised in 1947 in Poland and was rebranded to Calisia you can tell how old this might be.

I am not a piano player but I play guitar instead. And yes, the apartment also has one! In this gloomy night I pick it up and come up with the following idea for a song:

Several fun facts about this:

1) Video is upscaled from 320p to 640p. I didn't upscaled it farther cause it already started looking artificial.

2) This is 4 years before I did a laser operation to my eyes so at that era I am still wearing contacts but here I wear my glasses cause I am about to go to sleep.

3) Maybe the funniest fact of all, 14 years later and I still haven't used this idea, I guess it's about time now🙂

Did I mentioned cold? Well, here's an idea about how cold Riga is on Easter of 2010:

Yes, the city's canal is still semi frozen early April. I'm wearing my good old leather jacket which has never let me down and still the cold makes its way through. At least I can admire some art on the city's walls:

Of course the colours don't really shine on such a pale day but still worth walking this nice city. Here's Dome square and Riga's Cathedral:

The sky is full white with so many thick layers of clouds that you loose the sense of time. I don't loose the chance to meet my friend Ieva who is around and she invited me at her place where she shows me her talent on Easter eggs:

We later go out to an art exhibition where I try to warm up myself with a bit of wine:

We visit a local open market, quite a daring thing on a freezing day like this for both sellers and visitors. I am drooling to the view of all these goodies:

The hands you see in action belong to one of the most famous Latvian chefs:

I can't recall his name, Ieva told me who he is and as soon as I approach him he had just finished a tiny sandwich which he hands it to me. I told you in my previous post, I say it again now, what a lucky guy I used to be...🙂

Food, drinks and more food help me forget the horrible weather:

This baker is so tall that I can;t fit in the same picture him and his huge amazing bread:

Despite the awful day there's lots of people here, mainly cause it's not that awful for them I guess. Look how locals are dressed though and get an idea about the wind chill on the 2nd of April:

At some point I can't help but ask Ieva how normal this is and if it is like this now how was their winter. She tells me that they had minus 20s for 2 months in a row and it snowed so much that many roofs around the city where damaged. Hers included. Seriously, I don't know how these people cope with such shit up there...

Who wants a dessert?

Kids in Latvia having fun before the online social media hysteria:

Still hungry? Riga's got you covered:

And some non edible stuff:

It might look all fun in Latvia like this at the moment but actually it's not. There's a noticeable difference for the (much) worse compared to my last visit even though they were only 1.5 years apart. While the Greek financial crisis has just started here things are way more intense. I see beggars on the streets while I saw none in 2008 and now they even fight for the best spot at the traffic lights. An old lady asks me cigarettes. While walking with another friend of mine later, Elina, a girl comes up and tells me something that in her broken English I understand it's money so I say no. She then curses me in Latvian and I ask Elina what was it - "you'd better not know" is her answer. I wouldn't believe such a difference in less than 2 years.

By the way, Elina back in the day was an upcoming artist. You can see her animation with my music in this video:

I later got her in touch with another friend of mine jazz singer from NY. She took her animation for her video clip.

Walking around Riga I can't believe the amount of snow that's still around:

3d of April, 2pm, 3C:

See the amount of ice around the Victory monument which was brought down a couple of days ago, 14 years after this picture (read previous post):

People face challenges, weather may challenge them even more but the beauty of the old center of this city remains:

By all means, even with sour faces:

Maybe that's what brought a guy all the way from Cyprus up here:

Just for fun here's two panoramic pictures from my Sony C905:

Not too bad stitching considering the embarrassing processing power of that thing. A later Sony of mine did worse job than that.

Some art never hurt anybody:

Riga's monument of freedom is the point of reference here:

Finally some sun! I make it to a restaurant that looked promisingly fancy to me and here's how it looks inside:

Took me a while to understand how things work here in the absence of instructions and fluent English. So you first pass through a buffet, pick the stuff you want, then you pass it to the cook so he grills/cook them and then they bring it to your table. I gotta admit they brought the bill in style:

The night I met Patricjia again for some dinner was meant to be one of the coldest in my life. I consider it an achievement that I manage to  take the following shots of the opera and the railway bridge with a steady hand:

It's not only that it's around zero C (I guess) but it's also humid and slightly raining. We try to find an open restaurant as she finished her job very late but no luck so we end at a place where they tolerated us for a while while they were closing. She then invited me at her parents's place for a while and this was another surprise: You see all these old buildings around the city in (relatively at least) nice shape but inside it's another (rather soviet) world. We took the stairs cause the elevator hasn't been serviced since...I don't know when. As it gets rather late she calls a cab to take me home. "Lady Taxi" is a great service at Riga, and I say "is" in the hope it still exists. You order a cab and a middle aged super kind lady arrives to take you to to your destination. On arrival she gives you every single penny back from the change. Not like an average cab driver at all. Pretty cool!

And now my funny drama starts. Remember I told you about those identical buildings of the complex I stay at. Well, they're not just 5 but more of them and in the absolute dark I struggle to remember mine. The cold is so penetrating that for the first time in my life I get intimidated. My coldest biking days before or later do not compare. As I start thinking what would I do if embarrassingly enough I won't manage to find it, I finally make it to the right entrance. Because each one of those fucking boxes has 3 of them. I guess they are numbered but didn't see any at mine and didn't pay full attention when I left. Fortunately I clearly remember my apartment cause trying my keys to a myriad of doors wouldn't go well😂

Easter Sunday is here and Latvians go out in the freezing cold to have some good time. I don't have pictures of that scene but you can see a pathetic video which I made by upscaling and stabilizing an even more pathetic one that I took at Livu square:

That mother dancing with her daughter made my coldest Easter ever a little warmer.

Though I haven't regret any trip of mine, this included of course, you can imagine that I didn't go to the airport to fly back with that much of a heavy heart. Except that the scene with all that dirt at the airport was so sad. I guess cut downs to cleaners took place. Crisis ...

Here's how things look over the cloudy Latvian sky:

It really feels like you can walk on them like Jesus on water. Nothing compares to the view of Greece from above though:

Here's a video with a summary of clips I shot on this trip:

Consider this as a proof of concept on what AI can do on upscaling videos at this moment rather than something of real value as the original files were 320p phone videos. Upscaling did a nice job on the final clip though making "Air Baltic" read quite clean on the plane.

Thanks for following this travel back in time of mine, see you on the next one😉