Tripping With Toby: Riga and Environs

Oct. 3, 2018- Riga and Environs

At 7:30 AM we were on the road passing ghostlike birch forests with only coffee to sustain us. We were going to be guests of a family who was hosting our breakfast. Their 10-acre farm was in the town of Ligante, about an hour away. Their business is making fruit wine, but the fifth generation now living on the property came to that by way of an interesting history.

The family were farmers. The recent generations lost almost everything to the Soviets. They were given good advice by a neighbor that allowed them to fool the officials into thinking they were poor peasants. The woman told them to put blankets on the windows instead of curtains and place a huge bowl in the kitchen to appear as if that was their only washing facility. That ruse allowed them to keep their house but not their land. Since their family was large enough to fill the quota, no strangers were moved into their home. They buried the family silver in the garden with trees as markers. After 50 years under Soviet rule, they can’t find the burial site. They reclaimed their land with the pullout of the USSR and began a lucrative furniture making business. The most popular birch wood products were cutting boards. Eventually, they contracted to make them for Walmart and Costco. The family prospered until 2006, when there was a fire in their factory. Overnight they lost everything. They would have lost their property and home if they weren’t such hard workers and entrepreneurs. The father went to work in Norway and earned enough in six months to pay off the bank. Then he went to Finland to study wine making. After much experimentation at home, they came up with their formula. The business has grown and their fruit wines have won awards in the Baltics. They do not yet export. To complete the circle, the son is a woodworker who sells birch cutting boards and spoons on a small scale. We “helped” him carve a spoon and I noticed tiny wooden Stars of David all over the floor. He said they were leftovers from snowflakes he carved. I started picking them up and the group joined in. He was clueless.

A special treat was traveling down the road to meet the matriarch. She’s 75 years old, a widow, and lives with the boyfriend she met on the internet in the Soviet apartment where she raised her family. It has 2 bedrooms, a bath, kitchen and living area. People who have seen such apartments elsewhere say it was identical in layout to those in other countries down to “OO” marking the door to the toilet. The furnishings are basic. The apartment was given to her when the Soviets left. For 199 years, the only industry in Ligante was a paper factory. She worked there 44 years during which time she earned her degree in economics and rose through the ranks. The factory survived the Germans and USSR, but went out of business in the last few years. Rumor has it that a Lithuanian living in the US wants to buy it and restore the industry. When asked, grandma said she preferred the Soviet times when she didn’t have to worry about getting a job or paying rent & utilities. Interesting how people forget about neighbors disappearing to Siberia.

Not far from the village was our lunch stop. A couple in their 40’s decided to move from Riga and live off the grid. He consults in IT and works from home. Their three children are in their 20’s and live in Riga. Ten years ago, they bought 4 acres and moved a log house from 100 miles away. They dug a basement and reassembled the house. They’ve remodeled the interior and are growing a limited amount of produce for their own use. They tired of raising rabbits and are considering chickens. Although they were told they’d only need electric radiators for heating, they couldn’t fill the chinks between the logs well enough to prevent the North wind from sneaking in. They resorted to siding the exterior and installing a wood fired boiler type furnace in the basement and piping hot water under the floor for radiant heat. I can attest to its efficiency.

We had the usual conversations about the Soviets. The wife said that she was in school at the time and the only changes she saw were in the language taught and the textbooks. The teachers stayed the same. The couple were not optimistic about the upcoming Saturday elections. They think that the Russian party will win the most seats. But the mood was lifted when a birthday cake appeared and we celebrated with one of our group members. We sang “happy birthday” in English, Canadian (French), Hebrew, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Russian. Then Rana, our Turkish observer, sang it in Turkish. What a hoot. This is an amazingly cohesive group.

Speaking of divided heritage, Bob told us of a town in southeast Latvia where the majority is the Russian ethnic minority. Latvians were so worried about an uprising from that town they considered building a wall around it. In effect, they would make it into a ghetto. The effort failed.

We came back to our hotel at 5:30 PM and were too tired and full to eat dinner. At least we have a later departure tomorrow. We’re off to Estonia.

Toby