The first Rigan bed I slept in was the bottom bunk of a triple-bunk in a slightly musty
looking riverfront hostel. I shared the room with 20-odd other backpackers and
what felt like every flying insect in the Baltics. Apparently it was an
important feast time for the regions’ tiny bloodsuckers and the main course was
me.
Honestly,
by the time my four nights were up I was pale enough to appear in a Twilight
film.
The year was 2004, and this was my first real taste of
hostel life. I met the usual kind of hostel folk: a Brazilian guy who had been
travelling the world for 18 months with no end in sight; a newly demobbed
Norwegian driving north to south across Europe, who was so freshly out of the
army the crew cut hadn’t grown out yet and he looked like he was idly working out the best way to kill people using only his hands if the need arose; a seemingly endless parade of
interchangeable Australians, all looking impossibly fresh and sexy; and a
strange skinny bloke that sniffed a lot, kept to himself and smelled of lemons
and talcum powder.
I was on a research trip, following the story of a group of
WWII freedom fighters for a university project. Yeah, I thought I was a very
lucky bastard too. That’s the kind of job I’d like someone to pay me to do.
I loved the city, as I had loved Warsaw and Berlin where I
had stopped off en-route to Riga.
The place was full of intrigue and unknown
history. I’d barely heard of Latvia before I flew out to Riga. Riga might as
well have been Narnia, I knew as much about either, which is to say nowt at
all.
I was like a kid in a slightly boring sweet shop, visiting
every museum I found, even a two-room place celebrating Latvia’s sporting
glory. Imagine Wales having a museum like that and you’ll have an idea of
what they had to put in there. Some of the sports I’d never heard of. The place
was so quiet that the lady on the desk sold me some stamps. They had to sell stamps
to stay open. Imagine the V&A doing that!
The only blot on the mental skyline was the virulent and boisterous anti-pride demonstrations that were taking place while I was there.
A group of gay people had applied for a permit to pride march through the city, celebrating their lifestyle. Unfortunately Latvia
is a deeply catholic country, despite, or perhaps because of, decades of Russian oppression. This led to an inevitable and ugly backlash consisting of loud
berating people who would have looked surprisingly normal had you taken then
placards away and stopped them yelling bigoted slogans at people.
I found it sadly ironic that after so long under brutal
oppression from outside, now people from within the country wanted to oppress
their fellow countrymen. No matter how much you may dislike – fuck it, HATE –
someone’s viewpoints or lifestyles or whatever, after living under the KGB and
all layers of hell for two plus generations wouldn’t you at least acknowledge
that everyone – really everyone – should have the freedom to express themselves
in a respectful way?
But then, I suppose free speech works more than one way. They
were simply exercising their right to free speech by opposing other’s right to
it. Very simply.
Ironically, my second bed in Riga was in an apartment on
‘Freedom Boulevard’ which might sound like a brand new musical smash on
Broadway, but is actually the citys' main thoroughfare into the old town, named
for the ‘Freedom Monument’ at the centre-end, commemorating Latvia’s independence after WWI.
When
the Russians invaded again in WWII it was an offence – punishable by death – to
lay flowers at the monument. Until almost the 1990’s this was still the case. Now the
base is rarely flower-free and is looked upon with the same reverence most people
over 40 have for the Cenotaph in London in this country.
I was sharing this nine bed apartment with a friend who
taught Economics at my university. It was ridiculously cheap and stupidly well
appointed. The year was 2005, and she’d ordered me to bring her to Riga after
enduring my enthusiastic stories of my travels for the hundredth time. She
loved Latvia, partly I think because she could buy fags at 44p a pack. We
brought back about 40,000. Checking in for the return flight was ‘fun’.
It was an emotionally charged visit. She was just getting
over a nasty long term relationship; I was just starting to become depressed
(although I wouldn’t recognise it for some time afterwards).
We still had fun though. The
charged atmosphere gave it a frisson of mildly sexualised danger. We had first
met in Manchester Airport a year before, where I was trying to find a group of people I’d
never met or seen before, but nevertheless had decided to spend a week with in
Berlin. I guess you could call me impulsive. I literally fell over them in the end (but that's another equally boring story).
One day, we got badly lost in a forest looking for some
wolves and bears (I‘m still not sure why she wanted to see them) and ended up
at a disused oil refinery, by way of a long-abandoned spa resort and a few
sulphurous geysers, before eventually fetching up in the pretty string of towns
known as Jurmala on the coast. I hate forests, and she hates coastal resorts,
so the day was both horrific or hilarious, depending on the person and place. If
you’ve ever seen a Bear Grylls programme, you can image what kind of day we
had, even down to not going to the toilet for 9 hours (because there aren’t any
in the forest). Have you ever noticed that the only time Bear has a wiz is to
cool his head down?
Anyway. It was a highly spirited trip. Because we got quite
drunk.
The third mattress to know my ass in Latvia’s capital city
was situated in another hostel, this time on the edge of town, and it was a far
nicer establishment. This one even had carpet and didn’t smell of feet. 2011
now and I’m retracing my own 2004 story. For some reason I don’t see Riga in
the same way this time. It’s not as nice as I remember.
This could be down to my getting epically lost for three sweaty hours while never being more than a mile from the place and falling into it essentially by chance.
My room was lovely though, I even had a double bed. The room was all mine and the size of a shoebox.
I did however have to share a shower with 20-or-so others on my floor (not always at once), which
was difficult. Equally difficult was the screaming baby in the room next to
mine. Who the hell takes a baby to a hostel? Did it have its own backpack? Maybe
they brought it in one?
My troubles liking Riga a third time could also have been
down to the global recession. The place looked more knocked-about and tired. The
people a little more stressed and worn down. Prices were higher; a
knock-on effect of joining Europe. This is a problem all the Baltic states have
had over the past decade or so.
Prices have climbed faster than Rupert Murdock’s
blood pressure the first time he saw Rebeccah Brookes naked, but wages have
been as sluggish as a, well, slug. A coffee or a beer now cost about the same
as in Liverpool, whereas the first time it had been about half that or less.
And so I struggled to like Riga, perhaps because I was further
out of town, or the aforementioned poorer
upkeep from what I had seen seven years before, or maybe because I’d just come
from the more beautiful and beguiling Tallinn, I’m still not wholly sure.
After four days and a lot of thinking, I decided that what I
was actually doing wasn’t visiting Riga but trying to visit the Riga of my
rose-tinted memories. I was looking at the city on my terms, not its own.
I went for a few beers and tried Riga again. This time I saw
a small, generally pretty, still-bustling city of
hard-working, honest people. I’ve lived in many places like that.
I realised that it wasn’t really Riga that had changed so
much as myself. It helped that I found a few bars and places I’d loved the first
time too, like the unique Art-Deco quarter, home to some of the most mental building built anywhere between 1910 and 1930.
In short, I think I started to look at this place as though I hadn’t been here before.
I decided it wasn’t so bad after all.
It’s always hard to go back, especially when you’re in a
different bed.
Not deep, not even meaningful, but if you want compelling
storytelling there’s a Waterstones near you, unless you live on the Shetlands.
I’m off to bed.
