Last Anatomy Lecture and First Snow

Maybe it was the upcoming sudden change of seasons that made me feel temped to start hibernating, but I get a grip on myself and leave the house in spite of hail, snow and strong winds on Friday to join my brother in his anatomy lecture in Pardaugava (meaning the other side of the river Daugava). The sun pays us a short visit when I reach the neighborhood where Latvia’s University’s institute for anatomy resides in a villa close to a lake and park part of which is called Victory Park. A huge socialist monument honors the fallen of WWII, a lot of flowers now covered in snow are piled up in front of it. Everything is very light and clean in the fresh snow bright golden leaves on the trees all around and for a short while a white and blue sky.

When I get off the bus I am not quite sure if I understood my brother’s instructions correctly and I am actually a bit late so I ask a girl for directions to the anatomical institute. She’s going there, too, so we hurry through the snow and puddles, trying not to get our boots too wet. I am glad that now after more than one week and three days before leaving my language has obviously recovered so far that she doesn’t recognize me as a foreigner right away. When I meet my brother in the corridor and change into German and then back to Latvian to ask her if she also studies medicine and explain my visit, she is surprised. And when she tells me she just started this year I see the same expression of pride and fear that may be universal to new medical students.

As there are only 35 people on my brother’s course, their lecture is held in something looking like a huge living room with rich ceiling decoration and a big fireplace in which the furniture (except for the piano) has been replaced by a lot of chairs with writing pads attached to them. The Muslim students skip class because of ‘Aid al-Adha, the teacher makes fun of her own English, unlike in Germany the students have to wear white coats even for listening to a lecture, the information on the canalis inguinalis is familiar territory. All together I think I get a good impression of what studying in this program is like.

 

On the way back home through the wind and snow I buy my tickets to Helsinki and spend a relaxed evening with my host mother at home, my host father has a gig with his band. When I go to bed I open the window for a short while. The air smells of burning wood (everyone started heating by now) and snow. The door in the yard plays the first line of “Pūt vējiņi” the unofficial Latvian national anthem as someone pressed the correct code to enter the house. Latvian winter.

Birthday and Some Quiet Days

My birthday is a Sunday. We get up fairly early because I want to go to church and my brother has set the breakfast table with flowers and a typically Latvian chocolate cake he bought for his last money. It is delicious and very nourishing… Between breakfast and church the Riga’s Heating repair guy who doesn’t speak Latvian turns up. Then Gunnar and I walk the few meters to the Old St. Gertrude’s Church and as the sermon gets long and longer I feel a little bad about making him listen to such a long service in Latvian, but he is nice enough not to complain. Although this service is Lutheran and we are Lutherans, too, there are some differences to German services. More standing and much more kneeling than in Germany and you get communion given into the mouth, not into the hand.

 

After church my parents call and I get my stuff packed because I move to my host family today. We walk there to have a late lunch. By lucky coincidence my younger host sister who lives in England is there, too and my older host sister, her boyfriend and their little son are there, too. It’s a complete family reunion and I am really happy to be back again.

My host parents’ place is my longest stay on this trip. I walk around in Riga a lot (see the current head picture of the blog) and here, too, I get the impression that Latvia is recovering from grim years of crisis that forced many people to emigrate to Western Europe. There are hardly any unoccupied shops and I even see more expensive stores than before, Finnish, German, American and British brands, new shops selling art works and decoration made in Latvia and a lot of organic food stores that haven’t been around two years ago.  I know it’s not yet back to as good as it was, but the worst, hopefully, may be over. The atmosphere in the old town, at least, is cheerful with many people in the street and a band in funny dress up playing loudly and happily.

 

The closest I get to visiting our old home in Limbaži is a short visit at my host aunt’s place in the county side. I really like the green hills covered in forests, fields and some gardens. Apart from that I read, play with the cats and meet some German friends who also spent their exchange year in Latvia, one of them returned after high school and studies here now and my best friend also came to visit her host family just now. It’s a connecting of worlds to have lunch with her and my host father and to visit my brother together. After all, we know the world IS small…

Back in Riga, Home and Another Home

The international bus station looks the same as last time, it’s Thursday afternoon and both the station and the nearby central market are very busy. The weather is nice and I decide to walk to my brother’s new home. First of all I get some typical Latvian ice-cream (it’s called marmalade, the best way to describe it is cream ice with pieces of different kinds of chewy fruit jelly in it) at my favorite ice-cream place – it’s sunny and quite warm, after all – and enjoy the walk past the Freedom Monument and all these familiar places in spite of the huge backpack.

 

I meet my brother at the corner of his street. He shares an apartment with two other students, a German from his course and a Spanish architecture student on Erasmus exchange, so the languages at home are both German and English. As they all just moved to the freshly renovated appartment some weeks ago with the 20 kilos allowed on a plane and one or two packages sent by the parents the rooms look even bigger than they are. My brother is glad to finally have bought a bed, a desk and two bookshelves. They got a used kitchen table, fridge and washing machine, so the basic needs are covered, three chairs thrown out by the hospital complete the furniture. The living room is empty except for a fireplace and a drying rack – we could play hockey there, they say. While the fifth floor gives you daily exercise and makes it tough work to acquire a washing machine it also gives a lot of light with windows to both the first and second yard and nice views across the roofs. The house also is part of a very good neighborhood and part of the medical faculty is just around the corner, so this flat is about as good as it gets.

On the other hand, of course, being thrown into a completely foreign country AND start med school at full speed at the same time can also be quite stressful. Luckily they have found a woman who helped them with finding the flat and the used furniture – and with all incidents when they meet the language barrier which happens often enough when arranging things like internet connections and other additions to thenew flat. The caretaker speaks a little German and is really surprised to one day meet someone who speaks Latvian in this place when he comes in early to fix something. “Ah, you are German? And you speak Latvian? You learned it within one year?? Well, that is good, some people live here for forty years and don’t speak it!” The usual reaction… I feel Latvian enough to be annoyed by Russians living here and at least pretending not to speak Latvian. And to ignore the fact that I really don’t speak enough Russian to understand explanations about heating systems. I also get irritated by some of my brother’s class mates’ annoyed remarks about what they think is typically Latvian. I understand, of course, that it can be a normal stage of getting used to a new place, but it still hurts my feelings.

And I see it is hard for foreign students studying in a program designed for foreigners to overcome this phase of looking at the country they live in from the outside without really understanding.
Through my host family my brother has at least some connection with Latvians apart from his teachers and the caretaker.  I also force him to sometimes say some things in Latvian – and realize some things for the first time myself, for example that “five” and “milk” are nearly the same word in Latvian.

Back on the Bus

In the morning there was fog so thick we couldn’t see to the other side of the street, but two hours later the sun is shining from a light blue October sky. Alice and Léa head south to Warsaw and at half past ten I get on the city bus one last time back to the international bus station.

While the conductor is Latvian the driver speaks Russian without opening his mouth for the announcements. The ride will take four hours, OK, I don’t need to know much more. Once more there are only a few passengers and it’s very quiet. I read and write a little and take some pictures that get a little blurry, but I like to catch the impression of the landscape and the sunny weather.

While I was asleep when we crossed the Polish-Lithuanian border, I enjoy entering Latvia without even slowing down now in broad daylight. I always flew to Latvia before it joined the EU, but I know these two borders made the 24 hours bus ride from Berlin to Riga even longer. Now only abandoned barracks and empty multiple lanes remind of that. We just pass them and some meters on a sign announces that we now are in the Republic of Latvia. A lot of road repair is underway; I take that as a good sign concerning the Latvian economy.

Sunny Southern Latvia

More Art, More Lithuanian Food

The weather doesn’t improve, so we walk up and down the old town again on the next day inspite of the grey sky. We pay the “Republic of Užupis”  another visit. The quarter Užupis  (meaning beyond the river, in this case the Vilnia, the smaller one of Vilnius’ both rivers) used to be a really run-down neighborhood . After the independence many young people, especially artists moved there due to the low rents and independence was declared on April 1^st 1997. In many respects this is obviously 15 years are sufficient for gentrification to kick in, the usual development. In summer the atmosphere is probably more tangible. Anyway, lots of unrestrained open air art, a backpacker-Jesus by the riverside and especially the constitution put up on mirrors in many languages along one street give me an idea of this strange little republic’s soul. While the display of artistic and general freedom here feels playful to me, Užupis also seems to hold strong connections with Tibet, a place where freedom is not a matter of play up till today. There is a square dedicated to Tibet’s freedom, symbolized by colorful wooden birds and prayer flags in the trees, and there is a version of the constitution in some language I’m sure is Tibetan.

Another street (on “this” side of the river) with walls decorated all over is the Literatu gatve (Literates’ street)  which carries symbols, pictures or quotes of important writers, most of them Lithuanian, but some internationals like Günter Grass and Jean Paul Sartre have made it here, too. But it seems to be a general feature of this city. There are artworks integrated into many buildings and streets, many renovated buildings deliberately display patches that function as windows onto what they used to look like earlier.

 Literatu gatve

A museum is a nice opportunity to avoid occasional rain, the exhibition of the treasures of a Russian fashion collector illustrates how there is not too much new in the fashion you see today, at least outside the most extravagant designers’ shows. Especially the 1960’s dresses would be very wearable 50 years later.

After a lunch of fried Lithuanian cheese we meet Virginija to visit some other parts of the Old Town and even the sun shines for a while. The Gate of Dawn is the last remaining gate and holds a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. With the light colors and the golden adornments I think it really fits is name.

 

 

On the following walk Virginija shows us many small places we might not have noticed otherwise.

Like a cellar pub selling beer of many different small Lithuanian breweries.

Like a center founded by a couple returned from exile who dedicated their lives to Lithuanian traditional arts, especially weaving. There are woven skirts characteristic for every district in the country. The center teaches the art of weaving to children, reproduces old material and develops modern applications of the old art that requires so much patience.
Like the quite recent frescos in a part of the University that are impressive in their color of dark red and black and in the strength of Lithuanian myths forcefully present still in the late 20^th century and up to this day.
And we visit a friend of Viginija's who is the librarian at a newly founded modern arts' center. Art is really alive in this city.

We finish the day at a restaurant specializing on traditional Lithuanian food. The rooms are decorated with old furniture and kitchen appliances and are named after different regions. We eat Cepelinai, heavy filled potato dumplings in the form of a Zeppelin. Delicious and very nourishing, the right thing after a long sightseeing day.

Amazing Trakai

Léa and Alice have a car and I join them on a day trip to see something of Lithuania beyond Vilnius. And Trakai is something worth seeing. About half an hour’s drive from the capital it is a small town beautifully situated between lakes that used to be the political, military and economic center in the 15^th and 16^th century, as the Grand Dukes spend more time there than in the official capital Vilnius. Their fully reconstructed castle is the main sight now and while it must be bustling with tourists in summer it has its own charm on this foggy autumn day.

Trakai from the terace at Uzutrakai

 

The shore is lined with cafés most of them offering Karaite cuisine. Members of this small Turkic people still live here and have an active kanessa (temple of the Old Testament based Karaite religion) both in Trakai and in Vilnius. We have to try some Kabinai, too, of course, it’s pastry filled traditionally with lamb, but you can also get chicken or cabbage. It’s really delicious and gives us strength for more walking and exploring as there is a more recent place called Uzutrakai (“beyond Trakai”) on the other side of the lake. A small winding road bumping up and down across the hills eventually takes us there to explore a mansion with a baroque style garden with a lot of statues (we discover to at least partly be only one year old) and a great view over the lake.

The house is probably used for concerts sometimes. A group of men is working in the park, cutting the grass and climbing the high trees to cut down some branches. We stay on the ground and take a walk around the park with its bridges and autumn colors and just enjoy the fresh air.

Arriving in Vilnius – One Day Like Two

After waking up and getting off the bus, I hurriedly change into my winter coat, it’s 7:30 in the morning and about 7 degrees.  I find the bus easily, buy a ticket from the driver without speaking and sit down for 40 more minutes. Listening to the continuous announcements and reading the signs in the street I start to get a feeling for this language that doesn’t really sound foreign to me although I don’t understand anything.

It still is really strange for me to speak English in the street in Eastern Europe. I usually go to Latvia where I never need it or I stayed with people who speak the local language and were fluent in English or German themselves. It feels more appropriate for me to ask simple questions in Russian although I don’t really know more than some sentences. Enough to find my host’s house, anyway. After a warm welcome and some tea I leave for a first day of sightseeing and getting to know the city. Only once it crosses my mind that my (now I have to say former) class mates start the clinical years of their studies.

I spend most of the day walking up and down the streets of the old town. The sky is grey, but it’s not cold and it doesn’t rain, so the weather is nice enough to just take in the city by walking, it’s also small enough to more or less walk the Old Town’s edges in a short time. And I feel I would fall asleep if I sat down after the night on the bus. I’ve been to Vilnius for three hours before when I changed buses on my way from Riga to Bydgoszcz two years ago. It was so hot then that I couldn’t enjoy the city. But still it’s not completely new to me and it also doesn’t feel foreign. There really seems to be something like Baltic everyday culture, it surely doesn’t feel Latvian, but not all that far from it. The main difference seems to be that houses are a bit lower than in Riga and the decorations are of another style. Sometimes it even reminds me of pictures of Southeast Europe. Also there seem to be more churches. Maybe I’m just more aware of them as they are catholic and more decorated. In spite of the grey weather I get the impression that this is a lively city with a lot of bigger and smaller things going on, strong creative energy and quite a lot of young people around.

 

Archbishop's Cathedral

 

In the afternoon I am joined by my host Virginija and two French girls who just arrived at her house, too. So I get some more walking this time with some insider information about both landmarks and small details that I would not have noticed or at least not understood on my own. She shows us the “Miracle” stone in front of the cathedral, this is where the Via Baltica of the Singing Revolution started that eventually brought freedom to the Baltic countries, a development that was hoped for in the way you hope for a miracle throughout Soviet occupation. Now there is the tradition in Vilnius that you have to stand on this stone and turn around three times and make a wish. It will be fulfilled. We’ll see.