When I first visited Soviet-occupied Latvia in 1978 as a tourist, I was told it was best not to go near “The Monument.” There it was, this massive, imposing object with a soaring obelisk topped by bronze female figure, standing tall in the heart of Riga, and we tourists from America were told it would be best to pretend that it didn’t exist. It was smack dab in the middle of Riga’s busiest intersection, in a place where no one could ignore it. Every one of Riga’s 800,000 inhabitants who walked, trolleyed or rode by it every day had to acknowledge its presence, like it or not. It was inescapable.

But in the Riga that was ruled by the Soviet Union in 1978, it was a no man’s land. We were told that it was intensely monitored by KGB cameras in the surrounding buildings and KGB agents in the surrounding trees, and that any local who gave the monument more than a passing glance faced an obligatory visit from Soviet security officials. Some had even been arrested and sent to Siberia for looking too longingly at the monument. Someone once burned himself to death there. As foreign tourists, we were warned it was okay for us to take a few quick pictures, but any inappropriate amount of extra attention could cause us difficulties in the remaining days of our trip.

Even in 1978, it was clear that the monument by the Riga canal, built in 1935 to honor Latvia’s independence, was the focus of intense attention. And a repository of intense energy. The mere fact that the Soviet regime did as much as it did for 40 years to deny it, disguise it, ignore it and keep people away from it, attests to its remarkable power. But what puzzled me then, and still puzzles me now, is why they never tore it down.

The Latvian Freedom monument, as its name denotes, symbolizes Latvia’s independence. The Soviets had crushed that. Why then let it stand? I’m told that the Soviets feared a popular uprising in Latvia, but fear had never stopped Stalin before. In 1940 he arrested the government, annexed Latvia to the USSR and deported tens of thousands of its citizens to Siberia. In the late 40’s and early 50’s, Stalin had every repressive weapon he needed to suppress any uprisings in a decimated post-war Latvia. The monument could have been blown up and carted away in 24 hours, and any subsequent Latvian grief would have been vigorously brought under control by Soviet security forces.

What was it about this monument, this Milda (as the woman atop the pedestal is affectionately called by Latvians), that intimidated the Soviet authorities so? Was it her stern stare? As a symbol of Latvia’s independence, Milda was like a hypnotic Medusa to Soviet officials in the 60’s and 70’s. They couldn’t look her straight in the eye. They prowled around her base, surrounded her and enshrouded her, doing all they could to minimize her, but never looked directly at her, for fear they would turn to stone. The monument inscribed to Fatherland and Freedom symbolized everything that the Soviet regime had tried to erase in Latvia, but for some reason the monument itself – Milda always prevailed.

It was as if the monument was at its heart a powerful magnet of the Latvian soul. When it was built entirely through private donations in the 1930’s, its creation and presence drew energy from throughout Latvia. Rather than tear it down, the Soviets tried to reverse its magnetic polarities and drive people away.

But as Soviet power withered in Moscow, the negative forces that had shackled the monument grew weaker. On June 14, 1987 they broke altogether, when two young Latvians named Rolands Silaraups and Eva Biteniece, led a silent column of people to the base of the monument for a forbidden flower laying ceremony. The KGB watched, and did nothing as the first unauthorized demonstration at the monument in 40 years unfolded before them. On that day, Rolands, Eva and the several thousand that had the courage to join them, liberated the monument from 4 decades imprisonment. The Soviet spell had been broken. The negative energy had been replaced by positive energy, and the magnetic monument again began to draw people toward it again, more powerfully than the KGB could pull them away.

The Soviets had always feared the monument as a symbol of Latvian independence. But by allowing it to remain standing as the only surviving symbol of Baltic independence (comparable monuments in occupied Estonia and Lithuania had long been destroyed by Soviet authorities), it became a broader symbol. And on June 14, 1987 it became broader still. The Latvians who gathered at the foot of the monument that day were openly asking for independence. In doing so, as they laid their flowers, they marked both a birth and a death: the rebirth of the Republic of Latvia, and the end of the Soviet Union. Both were to happen just 4 years later, following a series of events and developments that, symbolically at least, began on this day at the foot of Latvia’s Milda.

Two months later on August 23 (the anniversary of the Hitler-Stalin Pact that subjugated the Baltic countries) an even bigger demonstration was held at the monument, while similar rallies were now taking place in Estonia and Lithuania as well. By 1989 Popular Fronts were leading the charge for independence in all three Baltic countries and public rallies, demonstrations and manifestations became commonplace in many locations. On August 23, 1989 when one million Balts linked hands from Tallinn to Vilnius, the masses that gathered at the Freedom Monument in Riga marked the spiritual center of this 400 kilometer human chain.

By the time Latvia restored its independence in 1991, rallies at the monument had become the norm. All trolley and bus traffic around its base was rerouted to prevent
further deterioration of its foundation. By 1994 the newly released magnetic power of the monument reached all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and brought a new guest to its steps. On July 6, at the spot where dissidents had been arrested in 1978, and Rolands and Ieva placed their bouquets in 1987, the President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton and his wife Hillary, paid their respects as well. He was the first US President to ever do so. Milda looked down confidently as if she always knew it would happen.

Milda has looked down on President Karlis Ulmanis and an independent Latvia in the 1930’s, on Soviet and Nazi tanks in the 1940’s, on Soviet dreariness through the cold war and impassioned national rallies in the 1980’s. During the last ten years of independence Milda has attracted thousands of tourists, hundreds of official guests, countless ceremonies and endless photographers. When young Latvian hockey fans exploded from Old Riga’s bars to celebrate victory in the world championships in St. Petersburgh in 2000, they instinctively descended upon Milda and surrounded her with song. Official or otherwise, she still knows how to attract crowds.

The three gold stars held aloft in Milda’s outstretched hands symbolize the three historic regions of the Latvia nation and state. During the dark and dreary cold war years of occupation and Sovietization, it seemed as if she were holding them high above the fray, away from danger, as if to protect them from what was happening below. An artist’s poster in the late 1980’s depicted her just that way, sinking in water over her head, only her hands still visible, holding the stars above the flood.

Today the tanks are gone, the waters have receded, and the square below her is filled with endless well-wishers covering her base with a sea of flowers. Her surfaces have been cleaned and polished in a just completed major renovation, financed, once again, with private donations. The stars have received a shiny new coat of gold, and her arms, it seems, stretch a little bit higher, a little bit prouder. As if to better show the rest of world that her mission has been accomplished. The Latvia she symbolized and protected for 65 years, is still with us. And so is Milda.

July 26, 2001 Riga, Latvia

Back in 2008 I edited the revised and expanded translation of Uldis Germanis’ legendary history of Latvia, “The Latvian Saga”. Since Germanis had written the book in 1959 from Sweden and the story stopped with the Soviet occupation of Latvia during World War II, I wrote several additional chapters for this new edition to bring the history up to date.

I could never match Germanis’ literary flair but did my best to recount the events of the last 50 years in a style not unlike his. I especially liked the way Germanis ended his book, “Here we must end the saga of the Latvian people. Latvian history, of course, continued further. Things that are done today are history tomorrow.”

In my afterword I pointed out that history had indeed marched on and tried to capture what had happened in Latvia from 1959 until 2007. It was a challenge for two reasons. First, I was not a historian, and second, I had to write about events that I had personally participated in.

I find myself facing this dilemma once more in what will probably be my last commentary as Director of the Latvian Institute. On November 2, I was sworn in as a member of the Latvian Parliament / the 10th Saeima / and subsequently elected Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

During the 11 years that I headed the Latvian Institute, I had the privilege of working with a fantastic staff of people, all of whom were committed to the same cause: helping others get to know and understand Latvia a little bit better.

We’ve done it with words, pictures, film and events. We created a web page that people can use to learn something about our history, culture, people and politics. We’ve tried to help anyone who wanted to know more, including those who wanted to write, film or tell our story themselves.

When the economic crisis hit two years ago our staff was reduced from 14 to 4 and like everyone else in this country we were forced to rethink our priorities and realign our resources. The world media was reporting all the bad news coming out of Latvia, but we knew there was also good news. So for the last two years the LI has focused on the upside of the downside / providing timely, accurate and reliable news about what the government and parliament were doing to bring Latvia out of the crisis and back on its feet.

That work continued because after the downsizing I was fortunate to have three outstanding colleagues who did the heavy lifting to keep the news coming and the web page online.

If you are a regular reader of Latvia in Review, you can thank my able Deputy Director, Dita Erna Sile. She indefatigably researches and writes this weekly review of government activities, while still finding time to do a dozen other things to keep the LI fully engaged and informative.

The management of our web page, publications, photographs and distribution has always been handled picturesquely by Sandra Iriste. And until she left us last year to bring a daughter into this world, Una Veilande’s keen administrative skills made the bureaucracy seem much less bureaucratic.

The Foreign Ministry is now seeking candidates for a new head of the LI, and if the 2011 budget makes it possible, the LI will keep reporting next year on what the politicians are doing to strengthen Latvia’s recovery from last year’s doom and gloom.

Since I am now one of those politicians, I will no longer be writing about what others are doing, but will take an active part in some of the doing myself. As Director of the Latvian Institute I was always upbeat about Latvia’s future, regardless of the trials and tribulations our country faced. That’s one of the things that Uldis Germanis’ book reminded me of.

As Germanis wrote, the “things that are done today are history tomorrow.” The Latvian saga continues and I only hope that the history we make in the 21st century will be a much brighter story for future historians.

I have concluded that Latvia is the best place in the world to chop wood. I can’t prove it, but that doesn’t diminish my intense passion, conviction, and addiction to the art of slamming an axe into a load of logs and turning it all into firewood.

If you sit at a keyboard or tap away at your mobile phone all week, hoisting an axe above your head in the middle of a mossy, fern-filled forest can be quite exhilarating. Especially, if you are doing it in a place where the webs are still run by spiders and the endless twitters you hear are coming from feathered friends flittering about the sun-streaked tops of Kurzeme’s golden pines.

For those who rely on firewood for heat and cooking, chopping wood is a perpetual fact of life. It is something you must do on a regular basis if you want to keep the fireplace roaring and the kettle boiling. In the halls of government in Rīga they talk about heating the economy, but throughout Latvia’s countryside, heating the household this winter is the top priority. That, and making sure that there is something to cook in the pot.

Politics and forest management have a lot in common. It’s no big surprise that a forest worker might look upon the recent parliamentary elections in Latvia as political expression of what he does every day on the job. Dead wood is cleared away, overgrown patches are thinned out, and new seedlings are planted to replace the trees that have been cut down.

In the forest, it’s an endless cycle of endless recycling, just as in politics. But sound management requires just the right balance. If you clear away too much, the forest dies, and if you don’t clear enough, it chokes and stagnates. According to the last count, 59 of the 100 deputies that will serve in the 10th Saeima (parliament) of Latvia are serving for the first time.

That’s because in Latvia’s proportional parliamentary voting system, voters not only select which party they wish to support, but can pick and choose who they want in and who they want out. Last week, Latvia’s voters used the plus-and-minus system to clear a lot of old growth from Latvia’s stately parliamentary forest.

During one of the pre-election debates, one opinionated pundit claimed Latvia had too many trees per capita and asserted that an excess of forest served no useful human purpose. Most Latvians who spend their holiest holidays around bonfires in the middle of fecund forests would probably disagree. About trees, that is. Politicians are a different matter. They can go.

And in a healthy democracy, politicians, like trees, constantly come and go. Some get hit by lightning, others get chewed up by busy beavers, and some get sacrificed to the flames to stoke the economic fires. It’s a circular cycle that’s good for the environment and also makes life better for the people who live in it.

So why, you may ask, is Latvia the best place in the world to chop wood? I could talk about the smell of the fresh-cut Rīga pine, praise the brisk Baltic breezes that stir the leaves of our lofty birches, or direct your attention to the plaintive calls of the cranes as they dance their mating dances through our lush green fields.

Then again, I happen to be a person who thinks Latvia is the best place in the world, period, so for me doing anything here is a lot more interesting than anywhere else. Especially chopping wood.

The one thing you can’t say about voters in Latvia is that they lack for information. As we approach election day on October 2nd, Latvia’s 1,514,936 eligible voters have been talked at, written to, snail-mailed and e-mailed, pamphleted on the street, and proselytized on the airwaves. They’ve been told how to vote and who to vote for in every way imaginable, including many which didn’t exist just a few years ago.

You can still get news in newspapers, but these days those who like to log on can learn anything they want to know about the candidates and their parties in dozens of webzines, ezines, hyperzines, and cyberzines. The battleground of the blogs is spread across a landscape of websites of every description, covering the gamut of news agencies, non-governmental organizations, special interests groups and political parties that use the cyberspace of the 21st century to give their spin on the already dizzying issues of the day.

It used to be that you had to work the streets to get the vote out, but today every candidate with a PC is obligated to make the social nets work as well. The political technologists of the cyber age will tell you that he who doesn’t Twitter is a quitter. If you want to get elected, you’ve got to blog as if your political life depended on it. It just may.

The U.S. State Department’s former cyber-diplomat Jared Cohen was in Latvia recently and was told that 80% of Latvia’s September tweets were about the October 2nd election. Since Latvia’s journalists, politicians, social activists, campaign workers, government employees and advertising gurus all tend to follow each other across the tweet-o-sphere that may be an understatement.

In Latvia, the prime minister tweets and prime ministerial candidates and their parties tweet back at him. Journalists retweet what other journalists have written, and everyone with access to the right apps is using the endless online social stream to edify the electrified electorate.

Of course, not all the Latvian electorate gets their information online, so public and private television is flooding their airwaves with a daily diet of debates, discussions and analyses of various depths and every description. When LNT-TV is holding “Leader Debates”, LTV is debating “What’s Happening in Latvia”, and unless you’ve got a rapid-fire remote, you’ll never keep up with the controversies on the competing channels. TV3 and TV5 are also broadcasting political news, and the all-news stations LZK and TV24 are rebroadcasting even more. And if you can’t keep up with any of that, you can go back to the tweeters who will tell you what they think you should think about what’s being said on TV.

PROVIDUS, a Latvian centre for public policy has a website called “SmartHeads”, enabling candidates to directly and publicly communicate with voters. Transparency International’s local organization, DELNA, has created a “Candidates in your Palm” website where past and future politicians are analyzed and rated according to DELNA’s standards of honesty, integrity and legal liability. The public policy website POLITIKA.LV urges voters to “Try on a Party” – by answering questions based on party positions.

By law, each of the political parties and alliances must submit a 4000-character pre-election program. Some go to great pains to develop even longer, more detailed programs, while others let their ad men condense the 4000 characters into a forkful of tasty sound bites. If that isn’t enough, you can find loads of others promises, predictions, and pithy observations in every party or alliance website that’s been specially created for the elections.

According to recent surveys, 64% of Latvia’s populace uses the Internet to get information, chat with friends, send emails, do their banking, buy and sell products, or play online games. Latvia’s most popular social network, DRAUGIEM.LV, has 2’588’745 registered users, which far exceeds the population of Latvia. Latvia’s Facebook has 160’000 users and of the 145 million Twitter users in the world, 33’300 are in Latvia.

Of the 1’132’000 Internet users in Latvia, many use the vast array of websites to express their own views of the politicians, parties and promises that appear there. But unless they have to register and give their real names, there’s no way of knowing who is behind the endless anonymous nicks that litter the commentary sections of every on-line news story. In Latvia’s pre-election period, teams of party loyalists (paid or otherwise) flood the commentary sections with a fervour exceeded only by Latvian beavers descending on the Rīga Canal. While local authorities still don’t know how to stop the beavers, most voters have learned how to deal with the nonsense of nameless nicks. They ignore them.

According to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Latvian media environment was assessed “as providing the public with diverse information and a plurality of viewpoints”. But the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has expressed concerns “with the lack of transparency in media ownership and with reported affiliations of some leading commercial broadcasters and newspapers with influential businessmen and politicians”. In other words, Latvia is like every other Western democracy where speech is so free, you can buy and sell it as you please. Or as A. J. Liebling wrote: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one”.

Disturbing as that may be, Mashable, a website devoted to social media, says that may no longer matter. They claim that 75% of the news we get online today comes from sources other than traditional media outlets: “We have gone from consuming news through traditional media and news websites to having the news broadcast to us by our social network of friends”.

So despite all the money being poured into overt and covert political advertising, and regardless of who owns which media outlet and why, Latvians today have no shortage of sources for information about the upcoming parliamentary elections. Some will study every party platform, read every blog, and monitor every TV, and radio debate. While others will do what they’ve always done – ask their neighbours. Only these days, that “neighbour” could be anywhere, as long as he’s just a tweet away.

Back in 1992, Bill Clinton won the U.S. presidential election because his top campaign advisor James Carville made everyone in the Clinton campaign repeat one sentence every morning when they woke up: “It’s the economy, stupid”.

This was an internal campaign theme intended to remind everyone that the number one priority of the election and the country was the economy, and how to make it better.

One way a country like Latvia makes its economy better is by attracting foreign investment. But to attract foreign investment you have to be attractive, and since 2008 Latvia has been Europe’s ugly economic duckling.

These days, however, Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis is describing Latvia as another kind of bird, more like a phoenix rising from the ashes. He is convinced that he has all the macroeconomic indicators he needs to back that up.

GDP is growing, production is increasing, exporters are exporting more and the consumer price index indicates all kinds of good things. If you want all the facts and figures behind Latvia’s historic internal devaluation, you can check the web pages of the Latvian Institute or Ministry of Finance, or ask the International Monetary Fund and EU. Or just read Bloomberg and Reuters. (Eventually this will all be in college text books, but that comes later.)

Latvia and its international lenders have been in this together since 2008, trying to pull Latvia out of Europe’s deepest hole. Unlike the marketing-man-made “meteorite” of last summer, this crater was for real. But the consensus now seems to be that Latvia is coming out of it: slowly, deliberately and cautiously, but coming out without a doubt. Some still say it’s not fast enough and others are looking for new pitfalls ahead.

But the international community is watching Latvia closely, and be they economists, diplomats or journalists, they are all keenly interested in the outcome. Latvia is trying to do what has never been done before, and in a country where caution is a national obsession, this is quite a leap of faith into an unknown future.

Then again, the future is equally unknown in Europe, the U.S., China and Ecuador, so we are not alone in this. Everyone is flying blind and hoping that the steps they took last year will lead to better results next year.

The people who lent Latvia the money it needed to overcome the crisis are generally pleased with the way the Latvian government has handled things. Lenders like responsible debtors. So do investors. While not everyone in Latvia is pleased with the pace and many are still waiting to find jobs, many entrepreneurs are capitalizing on the changes and producing new business. The government is doing what it can to help.

Mark Allen, senior IMF representative for Central and Eastern Europe thinks that “what has been done here” is pretty impressive. Last week Reuters reported that Latvia and its other Baltic neighbours “had turned the corner” on the crisis. The President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus recently told Latvia’s President Valdis Zatlers that Latvia could serve as a good example to others on how to cope with a crisis.

A recent Bloomberg report on the first successful post-crisis auction of five-year Latvian government bonds says that Latvian financial markets “are showing signs of stabilization”. The last time Latvian bonds were on sale, in June 2009, no one would buy. If you’re wondering what a difference a year can make, it’s $21.7 million. That’s what buyers paid just days ago for the five-year notes.

While some in Latvia still don’t have confidence in the rebirth of their economy, there are many foreign investors who do. And that is something worth noting. It’s easier to believe in yourself when you know that others believe in you. And when those believers happen to be investors with real money that can develop new business and create new jobs, you better believe something good is happening.

So when a guy like me wakes up in the morning and wonders what cheerful things I can say about the country I love, I hear a little voice telling me, “It’s the economy…”. (You can fill in the rest.)

Most people don’t know that Latvia has mountains and even fewer know that they are blue. Actually, Latvia has several “Blue Mountains” on its landscape and even a popular play called “Blue Mountain Marta”. But only one of Latvia’s “blue mountains” can be seen from distant Estonia and is located in the Slītere National Park, although you might need a powerful telescope and a vivid imagination to catch a glimpse of it.
The Slītere National Park is located 180 kilometres northwest of Rīga and is best known for its Cape Kolka, that triangle of land that sticks out to seperate the Bay of Rīga from the Baltic Sea. Although Slītere is one of the oldest nature reserves in the Baltic States, several thousand years ago it was entirely under water. (If you want to know what Latvia will look like after global warming raises the seas again, check out a map of the prehistoric Baltic Sea region.)
According to geologists, the Baltic Sea we know and love today was once called the Littorina Sea and was much larger, thanks to a massive meltdown at the end of the last Ice Age. (Of course, there was no one around the Littorina Sea back then, but that doesn’t stop modern-day geologists from naming things after the fact.)
If you drive up north along the Dundaga-Mazirbe highway you will encounter a steep drop in elevation just after you enter Slītere National Park. At this spot you will see a large wooden observation tower to your right. The tower is located on what was once the ancient shoreline of the Littorina Sea and provides a panoramic view of the entire park.

This is also the location of the Slītere “Blue Mountains” although today we tend to be more modest and call them the “Blue Hills”. If you want to get an even better look at the entirety of the Slītere National Park, go to the nearby Slītere light house. From there you get a spectacular view of was once covered by water, as well as the present shoreline of Kurzeme’s “Livonian Coast”.

From the lighthouse you can also see the southern coast of Estonia’s Saaremaa island which is just across the Irbe Strait from Latvia. The Slītere National Park is famous for its broadleaf forests which cover the ancient coastline and have been largely untouched for untold centuries. It’s also famous for housing more animals than humans. While the ancient Livs and modern tourists tend to congregate in the small fishing villages of Mazirbe, Košrags, Pitrags, Saunags,
Vaide and Kolka that lie along the coastline, the inland forests are full of fox, elk, deer, lynx, wild boar and the occasional wolf. The skies are full of birds because the park is located along a major Baltic flyway. As many as 60 000 birds per hour have been observed flying over the forest during the spring and fall migrations.
This flyway is also popular with major international airlines that use this route to wing their way and to and from the Rīga International Airport. Fortunately for the birds (and their watchers) the tourist-packed passenger planes pass a few thousand metres higher in the sky.
If you prefer watching cruising ships to migrating birds, Slitere’s Livonian coastline is great place to gaze at a steady stream cargo container ships and cruise lines as they make their way between Saaremaa and Latvia into the Bay of Rīga.
Want to feel like a Viking? If you happen to be on one of those Baltic ferries, the view you will see of the Livonian coastline is still almost identical to that which ancient Vikings, Teutonic Crusaders and other Baltic seamen saw when they sailed past these shores a thousand years ago. The endless line of green pines, white sands and blue Baltic waters will also reveal why the Livs chose green/white/blue for their national flag.

So no matter how you look at it, or regardless of your vantage point, the Blue Hills of Slītere are a sight to behold. But hurry, because even if urban renewal never invades this remote part of Latvia, sooner or later, the Baltic Sea will. And anyone who has a summer house up there knows that you never really “own” a piece of land on this planet, you just borrow it for a while.

A few years ago the Latvian Tourism Development Agency ran a promotional campaign called “You Won’t Believe it Until You See It!”, which talked about such things as blue cows, flying people and extraordinary singers. If that campaign were still up and running today, the number one topic would no doubt be the turn-around of the Latvian economy.

But don’t take my word for it. EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said as much when the EU member states approved the latest tranche in loans to the Latvian government: “The program is on track, financial conditions have largely stabilized and the economic situation is showing signs of improvement”.

Yesterday in an analysis of the International Monetary Fund, Martin Hutchinson wrote in SIFY FINANCE: “Nor is the IMF’s track record by any means perfect. On the positive side, its loans to Latvia appear to have had the desired effect in encouraging the government’s austerity program, allowing Latvia to maintain its exchange rate parity and to generate the beginnings of economic recovery. Industrial production, for instance, rose 10.9 per cent in the year to May.”

The Bank of Latvia President Ilmārs Rimševičs agrees. He points out that Latvia’s growing current account surplus “…confirms the assumption that the lowest point in the economic decline is already in the past, which is vital both for the real economy and psychologically. We expect positive GDP growth also in the second quarter as suggested by the results in May, and the manufacturing industry will make the greatest contribution to positive growth.”

BBC is equally positive in its outlook for the Latvian economy. In a country-by-country review of “The Eurozone in Crisis”, BBC passed the following “verdict” on Latvia:

• Experienced one of EU’s deepest recessions, but confidence is returning;
• Fiscal measures having encouraging impact, but still much work ahead;
• Exports now expected to grow at healthy pace;
• Property market recovering and consumer spending growing;
• But fragile economy could still be hit by any threat to confidence.

Pēteris Strautiņš, an economic expert for DnB NORD bank, describes what happened from an insider’s point of view: “Almost everything that was fragile in

our economy has been broken, and the explosive potential that accrued during the beginning of the crisis has already exploded. Now the rubble is being cleared and things are turning forward.” Strautiņš agrees with other more optimistically inclined observers that the Latvian economic recovery „will be slow, but steady”.

Actually there’s a lot of good news coming out of Latvia these days. Latvia’s national airline airBaltic just announced that that it carried 1.472 million passengers during the first six months of 2010 at a 22% rise from the same period a year ago. Many of those passengers may be flocking to our beaches, because Latvia has been experiencing a record high heat wave in July, and more unbelievably hot Nordic weather is expected through August.

Economic recovery is a product of many complex factors, including perceptions, regardless of whether they are all true or not. Latvia’s sudden popularity is evident in a very hot new ad campaign by Old Spice, where the “Old Spice Guy” boasts that his products are so popular in Eastern Latvia “that they made me king”. He adds ”that’s great, because I love grapes”. And if you don’t believe me, you can see it at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/oldspice#p/p/484F058C3EAF7FA6/0/0Cs95FmimP0

Like the improving economy, the blue cows and flying people are really real, although I hope those airBaltic passengers don’t start coming here for the grapes.

Each year, toward the end of June, the sun stands still in Latvia. Actually, it stands still everywhere in the world because that’s what solstice means in Latin – the moment when the sun stops moving in one direction and starts moving in another. What the rest of the world doesn’t know is that the only reason the sun does start moving again is because the Latvians will it so.

Some scientists may disagree, but they’ve probably never stayed up all night with Latvians on the night of June 23 If you haven’t tried it, don’t knock it.

Granted, some astrophysicists may question the efficacy of this time-honored Latvian practice, since in the Northern Hemisphere where Latvia is located the Summer Solstice falls on the night of June 20-21.

But Latvians, like a lot of fellow Europeans have always celebrated this primeval pagan Midsummer’s Day festival a few days after the solstice itself. Shakespeare was so impressed he even wrote a play about it.

In Latvia, the Midsummer celebration is a 2-day affair that starts on Ligo Day, June 23rd, and continues on Jani, June 24. It is one of the oldest and popular celebrations of Latvian culture, and the one thing Latvians do not do during these sacred days of ritual and revelry, is stand still.

To celebrate Līgo and Jāņi, Latvians leave their cities to congregate around roaring bonfires in the forests and fields of Latvia’s countryside. They make special foods and beverages, sing midsummer songs, dance magical dances and partake in a wide array of traditional activities with deep roots in Latvian folklore. With meadow grasses thick and tall, and flowers in full bloom, they are without a doubt the happiest and most mystical days of the year in Latvia.

For example, most pteridologists (people who study ferns) will tell you that ferns don’t have blossoms. But Latvians know better. Centuries of trial and error have proven that if young people (especially a boy and a girl) go out into the forest on Līgo night, and are extremely patient, alert and receptive, they will see a fern reveal its blossom at precisely midnight. They may discover a few other things in the process, but that’s another story. (If you want to hear an eyewitness account of this phenomenon from a veteran fern blossom finder, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ikPVAl1MOs

The list of things you can (or should) do on Līgo night and Jāņi morning is as long and mysterious as the Lielvārdes josta (a Latvian wool and linen belt woven with mystic symbols and often used to solve the riddles of the universe). Since the sun’s energy is at its peak, meadow grasses are greener, water has accentuated healing properties, and beer and cheese taste better than at any other time of the year. (Be sure to wash your face in the morning dew!)

According to one tradition, if a maiden stares into a lake on Līgo night, she will see her future husband. Another tradition has it that young men should strip naked on Jāņi morning and bathe in a local lake while young women cheer them on. (When you think about it, this second tradition makes the first one a lot less mysterious.)

Bonfire jumping is another Līgo tradition, but you have to do it in pairs while holding hands. Women gather meadow flowers and weave floral wreathes to wear on their heads. Men named Jānis wear wreathes made of oak leaves, although some exceptions are allowed. For example, Monty Python’s Michael Palin visited Latvia for his travel documentary “New Europe” and since he happened to be here on Līgo night, he too donned an oak leaf chapeau. (You can see him in his oaken splendour at http://palinstravels.co.uk/static-206.)

Not only Palin, but a lot of other sociologists, philosophers and journalists are coming around to the conclusion that the Latvian celebration of Midsummer plays a very special role in the whole cosmic scheme of things. As I said in the beginning, Latvians stay up all night, and when the sun sets, they sing special songs to make it rise again. To date, Latvians have been wildly successful at this, because in recorded history the sun has never failed to rise again after hearing the appropriate Latvian folk songs. So the next time you see the sun rise on

June 24th, thank the Latvians.

And don’t forget to Līgo!

Here’s a word of advice to any tourist toying with the thought of visiting Latvia. All the really great experiences you can have in this country are best enjoyed slowly.

That’s the general opinion of most people who live in Latvia, and that seems to be the consensus among international travellers, which explains why Latvia’s Tourism Development Agency recently unveiled a new tourism promotion concept based around the tagline – „Latvia. Best Enjoyed Slowly”.

Those in the tourism industry who follow these kinds of things will know that for the last 8 years Latvia was „The Land that Sings”. It really still is. We just won’t be talking about it so much anymore. Singing has a way of speaking for itself, and by now anyone who knows anything about Latvia knows that a lot of people sing here and many of them do it very, very well. So as long as the crystal clear waters and crisp Baltic air keep producing such expressive vocal chords, Latvia will always be the land that sings. Just ask the fans at the New York Met.

But we have learned some things over the last few years. Among them is the fact that most of the best and truly Latvian things you can do in Latvia, are always best enjoyed slowly. (Even the singing.) You may enjoy dashing to London and crashing around Manhattan, and you may even want to take a run around Rīga (we have a marathon every year), but once you step out into the Gauja valley or a Kurzeme forest, life slows down to the speed of nature.

Like with any new marketing campaign, not all agree with it and some fear it may suggest that Latvians are slow. Far from it. Anyone who has driven on Latvia’s country roads knows otherwise. That’s the odd thing about all the guys speeding to their country houses on the nation’s highways; they are in a hurry to get to a place where they can finally slow down.

It’s no secret that one of the goals of the new tourism strategy is to extend the length of time that a tourist stays in Latvia. It’s pure economics. But it’s also a win-win proposition. The longer a tourist stays in Latvia, the more he likes it. And the more a tourist likes and stays in Latvia, the more we like it. It’s not only good economics, it’s also good public relations.

In addition to all the official research, I’ve done some of my own and concluded that it takes non-Latvians a few minutes longer to understand and appreciate what Latvians already know about this country. That’s why we’re telling people not to hurry after they get here. Whether it’s a night in the sauna or a walk along the endless Liv Coast, the real magic of the experience only begins to reveal itself once you’ve stopped worrying about your next appointment.

Mobile phone coverage and Internet access is pretty widespread in Latvia, but there are places where you just want to shut everything down, turn everything off and listen to the woodpeckers. One of our biggest summer attractions is storks – we have one of the largest populations in Europe. And one of their most noble and admirable features is that they never rush anywhere. If anyone knows how to take life gracefully and slowly, it’s Latvia’s storks. But if you really want to relish the dignity of a stork, you have stop your car, get out and stay a while. They won’t mind.

You won’t see many storks in Rīga however, because they prefer freshly mown fields to four star restaurants, and their recently hatched storklettes are far too young for Rīga’s clubs and discos. The high energy LIVE RIGA! campaign is not for them, and that’s just the way it should be. Latvia has one of the great capitals of Europe, but for many, the forests, fields and water that surround it are even more intriguing. But you have to get out and walk around for a while to realize that everything you are experiencing is best enjoyed slowly.

You can’t help but stop and stare at the bizarre renderings of Rīga’s Art Nouveau architects, and as the experts will tell you, the longer you look the more you see. The foxes, deer and elk won’t begin to appear until you have sat for a while in the middle of a Latgale mushroom forest. The finest herbal teas of Northern Europe only begin to reveal their Latvian fineness after you’ve sipped them slowly while watching a sunset sink into the Bay of Riga.

So if you take a plane to Rīga, be prepared to take some time in Latvia. Sooner or later you will begin to understand why.

During Latvia’s boom years, our exports never exceeded imports. Last year, during the peak of the economic crisis, they did. What gives? A look at some of our top exporting companies offers some surprising clues.

At the end of 2009, 29 highly successful and respected Latvian companies competed for top prizes in the annual Latvian Export and Innovation Award competition. Somehow the words “highly successful” and “economic crisis” do not seem to belong in the same year, no less the same country, but in 2009 Latvia experienced both.

Thanks to the Ministry of Economics and the Latvian Investment and Development Agency, I participated in the jury that had the rare privilege of seeing firsthand how some of Latvia’s most innovative exporters are defying expectations on a  routine basis.

Some may rely on numbers and macroeconomic factors to explain success, but when you visit a company like Dores fabrika Ltd. near Cēsis you realize that tradition, innovation and integrity remain an unbeatable formula. Dores fabrika applies ingenious new technologies to the beloved tradition of log houses to produce stunning, eco-friendly, energy-efficient homes that dazzle the eye and warm the cockles of any heart. Even the Norwegians, global leaders in log house construction, have been impressed.

Norwegians, Swedes and Danes are also impressed by the books that are being produced by Livonia Print Ltd. So much so, that almost 90% of what this state-of art printing plant and bindery produces in Riga ends up on Scandinavian shelves. It would be undiplomatic to mention which royal families regularly turn to Livonia Print to print their life stories, but clearly the price and quality are up to regal standards.

When the Scandinavian kings and queens visit some of their leading manufacturers, chances are that the red carpet was laid down over Prime Composite concrete floors produced by Primekss Ltd. Primekss has literally re-invented the concrete floor, making it thinner, tougher, more durable and totally seamless. The fact that producing Primekss concrete floors generates 30-50% less Co2 emissions makes them even more popular in the eco-conscious Baltic Sea Region. Latvians, Estonians and Poles are the first continental Europeans to start building with Primekss concrete, but sooner or later, the rest of “Old Europe” should get the hint.

However, it’s not only Scandinavians that are upping the numbers of Latvian exports. It appears that the Italians are the prime consumers of Monterigo cheese, produced by Limbažu piens Ltd. This hard cheese is aged for 18 months and is remarkably similar to something that looks, smells and tastes like – but can’t be called – parmesan cheese. So much so, that the Italians are re-packaging it and exporting it to the UK. (Don’t tell the Brits.)

While most of Latvia’s exporters are doing well in the EU and many continue to expand their traditional markets in Russia and other parts of the former USSR, one Latvian company is beginning to clean-up, so to speak, in China. Stenders Ltd. has 190 franchise stores around the world selling their distinctive soaps, bath balls and body cosmetics, and 20 of them are in China. Not only is the market huge, the Chinese prefer to purchase their bars of Stender’s soap in “Great Wall’’ sizes.

Notwithstanding the global success of many Latvian exporters, one Riga-based company is generating out-of-this-world sales results. Literally. Bruker Baltic Ltd. specializes in the development of, (get ready,) “high-pure germanium and cadmiumzinc-tellurium detectors”. Don’t know what that means? I don’t either, but Bruker has designed their devices for NASA and the European Space Agency, and is presently working on a technical innovation for the next probe to the planet Mercury.

Speaking of long distances, when the film hero E.T. had to “phone home” he had problems making connections. While the Latvian makers of “B-Phone” may not be able to keep you in touch with other planets, they can help you listen in on your baby from anywhere your mobile phone service can reach. Their innovative baby monitoring device calls your mobile phone any time your child moves or makes a sound. You can talk to the toddler as well. The wives and husbands in our jury immediately thought of some other applications for this mobile monitoring device, but I’ll leave that to your imagination.

January 12, 2010

The Times Online ran an editorial on their comment page on March 4 where they encouraged fellow Brits to welcome the new wave of Latvian economic migrants with open arms. Said The Times, “We should welcome Latvians warmly for all that they have contributed to the world, and for what they might, therefore, contribute to Britain.”

To make its point, The Times listed a number of internationally recognized names associated with Latvia, but as several commentators pointed out, none of them were actually ethnic Latvians. Eisenstein, Berlin, Rothko and Baryshnikov were either born or simply lived here, and no doubt knew Latvians to some degree, but none were Latvians themselves.

But I don’t think that changes the spirit of what The Times was saying in its editorial. People from Latvia have always done well in other countries and tend to add rather than subtract from whatever environment they land in.

The key words here are “people from Latvia”, because the air, water and Baltic Sea vibes that are unique to this place and this place alone, have a lingering affect on anyone who’s stood under a Rīga pine in a Kurzeme forest. (Or a grove of birches on a Vidzeme hillside.) Regardless of which ethnic group you started your life in, once you’ve been through several seasonal cycles on a piece of land that the Europeans once called Livonia, the sunsets have a cumulative effect and something mystical rubs off.

The composer Richard Wagner came to Rīga to escape his debtors and France’s King Louis XVIII sought refuge in Jelgava from Napoleon. Doubt if either one learned the local language, given their preoccupation with greater concerns. But Mikhail Baryshnikov does speak Latvian fluently and once claimed that when he and fellow Russian dancer Boris Godunov visited Moscow, they would speak in Latvian to each other so that no one else could understand them. Latvian as the secret language of codes? Wouldn’t be the first time.

Code-breaking was no doubt one of the concerns of legendary U.S. diplomat George Kennan when he was stationed in Rīga in the 1930’s. It wasn’t until 1946 that Kennan wrote his famous “long telegram” warning the U.S StateDepartment to be wary of the USSR; clearly Kennan’s earlier days in Rīga left an impression.

Some social scientists debate whether ethnic identity is something inherent in humans, or an acquired taste. If you’re a “primordialist” you believe that your ethnic identity is etched in your genes, now and forever. But the “instrumentalists” argue that people actively adopt and utilize their ethnic identity in order to foster wealth, power or status.

In Chicago, everyone became Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, and stayed Irish if they wanted a good position in the city government. During the 1980’s and the rise of the Solidarnosc movement in Poland, the same people who once made fun of Poles dug out their family trees to prove that they too had noble Polish heritage.

Back in 1995, when I was serving as Latvia’s Ambassador to the U.S., I was introduced to Franklin A. Sonn, the first post-apartheid black man to be appointed South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States. When we met, he smiled and said that his grandfather was from Rīga. After the surprised look on my face subsided, Ambassador Sonn proceeded to describe his rich ethnic heritage, which included both Rīga Jews and African tribal chieftains. Michael Strautmanis, a friend and close advisor of President Obama, is an African-American with a very Latvian last name and an equally keen understanding of Latvian culture because he was raised by a Latvian stepfather in Chicago.

So the Brits need not worry about people coming from Rīga to London in search of fame, fortune or just a job. But they should keep in mind that it could work both ways. One of Rīga’s most celebrated and accomplished mayors at the turn of the last century was a Brit by the name of George Armistead. There’s even a statue of him and his wife and dog by the canal near the Latvian National Opera house.

If one of the future mayors of London happens to be from Latvia, you don’t have to include the dog.

March 9, 2010

The returning

(I used a metaphor from my Glaciers article to develop this copy for the program that was used at the Gala Concert, attended by NATO heads of state at the 2006 NATO Summit in Riga)

Long before there were Latvians, there was a land covered by ice. When the ice melted and the glaciers retreated, life returned to the land. As streams and rivers flowed into the sea, people flowed into the land. Just as the landscape transformed itself through the movement of ice and water, so too the ancient peoples that settled here adapted to these changes. Tribes, languages and cultures evolved, sometimes clashing, but also coalescing.

It all came together in 1918 when the Latvian state was proclaimed, although ‘being Latvian’ had already been a state of mind for many centuries. Independence was short-lived – only two decades. Following a hot war that blazed around the world, a cold war descended upon the land. Hopes, dreams and aspirations were frozen in time. This political glacier did not begin retreating until 1991.

For Latvians today, the last 15 years have meant the end of another Ice Age. The ancient symbols of the warming sun and enriching water continue to serve as powerful metaphors for Latvia’s resurgent cultural, economic and political life.

The Baltic Sea, once a forbidding barrier to a free world outside, has now become an inland lake, surrounded by a unifying democratic spirit. Latvians are now part of a growing community of common values called the European Union. This evolution from a small state on the frontiers of Europe has continued with Latvia’s membership in an even broader transatlantic alliance known as NATO.

The Latvian poet Rainis has written that ‘He who evolves himself, endures.’ This is something every Latvian understands, for nature teaches that life is constant change, movement, transformation and evolution. Evolution can be a painful process and not all can survive its diverse challenges. Those who join with others can rise to meet the challenge and ensure a better life for coming generations.

Each human life may seem like a drop in a vast ocean. But it is an ocean that teems with life because of these individual drops and their ability to unite, flow together and become a force of nature itself. Whether it is a force for good or bad, is up to us.

Tonight’s concert is divided into seven parts which trace the path of one drop of water through this endless cycle of regeneration and renewal.

Ojārs Kalniņš

The Returning

Part I

When rain embraces the earth, a spring is born

Part II

When the spring finds its way, it becomes a stream

Part III

The place where the moon shines down on the lake

Part IV

The place where dreams of stars are safeguarded

Part V

Where the river gets the strength to break out

Part VI

So that city lights can shine

Part VII

For the rain will return to its harbor once again

In the beginning, there were solitary droplets of rain and dew, crystal clear and pure. They joined together to form a spring, which became a stream, which flowed into a river that rushed to the sea. The people of Europe have found the path to a spring of hope, which allows them to flow together once again, into a sea that unites them, yet allows them to retain their individual ethnos and independence. The Returning is a hymn to the cycle of endless movement and change, for only flowing water can nourish life.

Don’t expect Riga to be completed if it becomes a European Capital of Culture in 2014. According to legend, Riga can never be ‘finished’, or it will sink to the bottom of the Daugava River.

But you can expect the unexpected in 2014. That’s because Riga’s successful candidacy for this prestigious honour was based on an ambitious cultural programme that carries the provocative title of ‘Force Majeure’. If you’ve only seen this term in legal contracts, get ready to expand your cultural consciousness. The French term refers to an ‘overwhelming force’ or an extraordinary event that occurs beyond all normal expectations. As the name alone implies, the creative minds behind Riga’s application are definitely aiming for the extraordinary.

In its application, Riga said it would focus on culture as “the spiritual and intellectual dimension of mankind, manifesting itself through any form of human activity, and expanding the understanding of culture through liaisons with other spheres of life. It is a liaison between generations, traditions and the digital world, it means overcoming historically established barriers.”

You can find out more about the project on their web page, www.xxxxxx Riga has four years to prepare and you will no doubt be hearing a lot more about it in the future.

Riga was chosen by a jury representing various EU institutions, including the European Parliament and European Commission. Clearly the Riga application, which offers 6 intriguing thematic lines, was impressive and original. But what else could have made the Europeans decide in favor of Latvia’s bustling Baltic Sea capital?

I assume some of them have already been to Riga at least once. It’s an experience you don’t forget, especially if you didn’t know what to expect before you arrived.  If the jury members were fans of the game Monopoly, they may have been swayed by Riga’ s selection in 2008 to become one of the world’ s 22 most popular cities to be included in World Edition of the game, called ‘ Monopoly – Here and Now’ . Riga garnered the second highest number of votes after Montreal, and thus won the honor of becoming the “Park Place” of the new global game.

Then again, they may remember the Riga NATO Summit in 2006, when 26 national leaders met here to decide the future of Transatlantic security. George Bush liked the city so much, he came here twice.

But that’s all history, and the only thing more interesting than Riga’s storied past is its promising future. Back in 2001, Riga had the biggest birthday party of its life when millions of Latvians celebrated its 800^th anniversary. In 2014 and Riga will be 813 years old, and it looks like all of Europe (and beyond) will be celebrating with us. (Just in time for Latvia to take over the Presidency of the European Union in 2015.)

As for the legend mentioned earlier, as far as legends go, it really is true. According to a 15^th century chronicler of Latvia, a fisherman once got lost in the Baltic Sea and encountered a huge sea monster. The monster asked where the fisherman was from, and he answered, ‘ Riga’ . So the monster asked, ‘Is Riga finished yet?” The fisherman said, “No, not yet. We’re still building it.”  “ Alright then,” the sea monster responded, “ but when Riga is completed, tell me, and I’ m going swim into the Daugava, slap it with my tail and sink the city to the bottom of the river.”

So we can assure the EU and all our international friends, that in 2014, when Riga becomes the European Capital of Culture, it will be ready for you. But if  any sea monsters ask, tell them it’s still a work in progress.

I recently met a Swiss artist who wants to become a Latvian.
Being an artist, however, he wants to do more than just become a Latvian. He wants to study the process, find out what it means (and whether it can be done), and then present his findings to the world.

As Ruedi Schorno explained it to me, he plans to spend 12 weeks in Latvia this summer learning what it means to become a Latvian. He’s already learned the language pretty well (it always helps to have a Latvian girlfriend) and arrived in Riga in June to start interviewing people, making videos, and gathering ideas and impressions. Sometime in the fall, he will produce a multi-media art project that will demonstrate to the world the fruits of his Latvian labors. Schorno recognizes that a project like this raises a lot of interesting questions. Some, like „Why on earth do you want to do this?” can be explained by whatever it is that makes artists want to do artistic things. Given that Latvia has become a symbol for global economic grief, an economist might ask, “But, why now?”

Ruedi’s readiness to invest time, money, and a lot of hard work into becoming a Latvian also raises some metaphysical questions. What is a Latvian? What does it mean to „be” Latvian? Can you become one, even though you started your life as something else? Will your mother still recognize you after it’s done? We’re not talking about Latvian citizenship here. That’s regulated by law, and if he were to live here long enough, his language skills would make naturalization a snap. But that’s not art.

Art investigates the deeper meaning of things, and one that truly fascinates me is whether picking mushrooms while singing folksongs, and drinking beer in the Gauja National Park can magically transform a Swiss national into a Latvian good old boy.

Schorno follows a long tradition of artists who not only produce art, but become objects of their art. Not all survive. But Ruedi seems to be well on his way into the mysteries of Latvianess, and as far as I can tell, he is no worse for the wear.

Over the next few weeks he will get a lot of advice on how to become a Latvian, (and how not to be one.) In his conversations he will no doubt hear a lot about ice hockey, Riga Black Balsam, rye bread, herbal teas, oak trees, and the magic powers of amber. He may even be asked to join – or start – several political parties. Since he likes to sing he will be sung with, sung at, (and if he meets with the Suitu sievas) sung about. He will never be more than an arm’s length away from flowers, and should be prepared to give or receive them at any time of the day for no apparent reason. While I won’t try to define what it means to be Latvian, I know that flowers and singing figure in there somewhere.

I can’t imagine what the Swiss will say about him ceasing to be one of theirs and becoming one of ours. Or maybe he will be both? If he were to become a Latvian citizen, he would also acquire EU citizenship, something that other Swiss citizens don’t have. But I doubt if Ruedi is becoming a Latvian because he is eager to cast his vote in the next European Parliament elections.

As far as I can see, he is doing this for his art, and for the good of mankind. If by the end of the year Ruedi Schorno can successfully explain why someone would want to become a Latvian, what it means to be one, and how it can be done, he will have made a major contribution to this country. Turning people into Latvians won’t solve our economic crisis, but it would sure give a boost to our demographic numbers.

There is one way, however, I will know that Ruedi has truly „gone Latvian”. If he comes back from Kandava and tells me how much it looks like a „little Switzerland”, I’ll know he’s become one of us.

(I was asked to write something to welcome participants to the Golden Hammer Awards ceremonies in Riga. This appeared in the welcoming newspaper. )

The Livs created a settlement here. Rumour has it the Celts did too. The Vikings stopped here on their way down to Constantinople. The German Crusaders liked it so much they gave it a name. The Holy Roman Empire claimed it, the Hanseatic League recruited it, and the Russians and Poles attacked it. When the Swedes ruled it, it was bigger than Stockholm. British and French ships once helped liberate it and both Stalin and Hitler invaded and occupied it.

It has survived Czarism, Nazism, Communism and Eurovision. John F. Kennedy came here as a Congressman and Bill Clinton came as a President. Mikhail Baryshnikov learned how to dance here, and Catherine Deneuve, Elton John, B.B. King and Sting have all partied here. The EBRD held its annual meeting here in 2001 and the World Hockey Championships are coming in 2006. Music clubs and discos close around 5am, but the flower market never does. Although it celebrated its 800^th anniversary in 2001, if you talk to the local Livs (yes, they’re still around) they’ll tell you it’s much, much older.

There’s something about Riga that’s hard to explain. Don’t try. Just enjoy.

(I wrote this for the in-flight magazine Baltic Outlook rather quickly, because I wasn’t sure how long it would be true. )

I really didn’t want to write about this. We superstitious Latvians sometimes believe that calling attention to a good thing puts a curse on it.  But sooner or later someone else will notice and the cat will scurry out of the bag anyway. So here goes. Don’t tell anyone, but Riga, Latvia may be one of the most graffiti-less towns in Europe. Maybe even the world.

Our tourism people boast that Riga has one of the largest collections of Art Nouveau buildings in Europe, which is probably true and notably worthy. But I think Riga is even more notable for being the European city with the largest number of  buildings – public and private –  totally untouched by the disfiguring spray of unwanted paint.

We don’t know how this has happened and many here would be content to leave sleeping dogs and unscathed buildings lie. But it clearly indicates something extraordinary about the culture of this city and those who inhabit it. We just don’t know what it is.

After all, street artists are the curse of architects and the blight of city planners the world over. Apart from a  few tightly monitored dictatorships, hardly a city in the world has escaped the creative wrath of urchin urban Picassos armed with paint blasters. While some graffiti does sprout up (briefly) in police states, it seems to thrive best in democratic ones. The fall of the Berlin Wall not only brought free markets and real political parties back to Central and Eastern Europe, it also unleashed a mob of graffiti artists across the newly liberated urban landscape.

Everywhere it seems, except in Riga.  Not that we don’t have any at all. It’s just that here, the alley artists are very picky.

In most cities, graffiti artists descend upon a building façade like a swarm of wasps. They cover it with a sea of signs and symbols, filling any spare space with everything imaginable. They seem to care less about making an impression than simply making their mark. When they run out of bare spaces, they start a new layer over the old one.

In Riga, graffiti artists pretty much stay away from buildings altogether. Especially if they are inhabited. And particularly in Riga’s UNESCO-honoured Old Town, and in the remarkable Art Nouveau boulevard neighbourhoods that surround it. In fact, almost all Riga buildings are treated with equal vandalistic disinterest .Government buildings, apartment buildings, stores, offices, newsstands or flower kiosks. Even the dismally grey and monotonous Soviet-era apartment blocks are largely untouched. Apart from a few sporadic exceptions, Riga spray painters don’t do buildings.

If they do want to express themselves, they stick to bridges, railroad viaducts, abandoned warehouses, utility boxes or a trash bin.

In Riga, graffiti has its place and everyone, including the spray painters themselves, seems to respect this. For example, richly Hanseatic Riga just celebrated it’s 800^th birthday and yet has one of the newest looking Old Towns in Europe because almost all of its buildings have been freshly renovated and painted within the last ten years. Independence from the dreary Soviets came in 1991, and Rigans have been sprucing up their city with an enthusiastic vengeance ever since. Rapid privatisation and a fast and furious arrival of direct foreign investment also helped the city’s historic buildings quickly restore their former charm and glamour.  Nearly none have been touched by ‘the spray’ because almost all Old Town graffiti (as if following an unwritten law) seems to gravitate to one very narrow, two-block long alleyway that connects the Dom and City Hall Squares. If you blink, you’ll miss it.

Riga street artists seem to know their place. Or maybe they just like to see their work last a little longer. Latvians love art and architecture together, but only when it’s planned, not added on as an anarchistic afterthought. They are also obsessive about neatness, order and appearance. Deface a beloved building and your piece of art will be instantly despised. And washed off shortly thereafter. Even a good piece of graffiti doesn’t have much of a shelf life in Riga.

So when Riga graffiti artists want to see their masterpieces last a while they stick to back alleys, abandoned buildings and electrical boxes that no one cares about.  Their work does stand out better, and in some cases (I know of one stunning series of portraits under a railroad viaduct) it can last for years. You’ll never get that kind of long term exposure in Riga’s most popular galleries.

One very creative (and so far tolerated) example of Riga street art is the work of Riga’s  ‘serial stenciler’. He spray paints images, usually faces,  through a pre-cut stencil in selective places around town. His most famous ‘exhibit’ is a figure of the legendary 12^th century Latvian warrior folk hero ‘Lacplesis’ (Bearslayer). Using only buildings on Riga’s Lāācplēsis street as his urban canvas, he strategically spaced a series of ‘walking Lāāplēsis’ figures along the entire length of the street. Residents call his work. ‘Lāāplēsis walks Lāāplēsis’.

Of course, not all Riga graffiti is clever or even an attempt at art. Most of the graffiti you do find in the dark corners consists of one-word curses, profanities and expletives, and almost always in Russian.. Although the city is home to nearly equal numbers of Latvian and Russians, you rarely see vulgarities in Latvian. However, independence, the internet, EU and MTV are bringing changes here as well. English is rapidly becoming the new lingua franca of  phone booth poets.

Perhaps the EU will try to adopt some directives to halt the plague of graffiti in the New Europe. NATO could brand it as a form of cultural urban terrorism and develop a strategic ‘Spray Wars’ defence programme.. But most cities appear to have given up battling the scourge of graffiti. Or are simply losing it. Some, like New York, have embraced it (if you can’t stop it, sponsor it) and even tried to turn it into a tourist attraction .

But in Riga, the residents and graffiti artists have struck a happy balance. As Latvia joins the EU, it enters with the distinction of being the country with the least amount of graffiti per square metre of any country in Europe.  I just hope the street kids in the rest of Europe don’t read this article.

Last summer during Latvia’s 90^th anniversary, the Latvian Institute asked young people in Latvia to tell us what kind of Latvia they wanted to see in 10 years.  We received over 500 responses from some very bright girls and boys. While talking about the project with a journalist, he asked me what my vision of Latvia in 10 years would be like.

I was taken by surprise. All year I had been asking the kids of Latvia how they would like to see this country, but what about me? Once I started to think of things, I realized my wish-list could go on forever. As a citizen, I wanted to see a country where people felt secure, happy and prosperous. As a parent, I wanted to see a country where my children and grandchildren would be glad to live.  As a diplomat, I wanted to see a state that was respected internationally and had good relations with the global community. As a person concerned about Latvia’s image in the world, I wanted to see a country that left a good impression on anyone who visited, and had a good reputation among those who hadn’t.

I want to see a Latvia that is admired by tourists, but not so popular that our streets are flooded by endless tour groups. I would like foreign investors to take a serious interest in Latvia, but not so much that they take control our economy. I want Latvia to be in the news, not for problems, crises or scandals, but because of successes, victories and achievements.

I’m sure that my wishes aren’t that different from those of most of the 2.3 million people who live in Latvia. The problem, as always, is how do you get there?

At the moment the government is focusing its efforts on strengthening the economy, streamlining the bureaucracy and cutting costs. As President Zatlers said in a recent speech, we have to learn from our mistakes and act decisively in implementing corrective measures, while simultaneously thinking about our long-term development.

Our politicians, business leaders and economic experts have acknowledged that short-term measures must be linked to long-term strategies, if we hope to make our economic recovery sustainable.

A while back the Latvian Institute conducted research on a potential brand strategy for Latvia. It concluded that Latvia’s reputation in the world could grow considerably, if we developed three specific areas of our national identity: 1) Our respect for knowledge, science and education, 2) Our love for nature, 3) Our rich and multi-faceted culture.

While our focus was on Latvia’s image, it appears now that these same factors play a key role in our long-term economic development as well. Interestingly enough, most of the 500 kids we surveyed last year agreed. They believe that brains, birch trees and song will be an essential part of the Latvia they want to live in when it celebrates its 100^th anniversary in 2018.

It makes sense. If we can make our people even smarter, make our environment even greener and rely on our culture to make it all come together, Latvia will not only be better known around the world, it will also be a better place to live.

Latvia awaits the longest day of the year in what seems to many like the longest year in their lives. Especially if you are trying to balance a budget. Your own, or a government’s.

But the summer solstice on June 21 is a turning point. Spring ends, summer begins, the days get shorter, the nights get longer, and plants, animals and other living things all feel a shift in the world around them.

In ancient times when people watched the sun rise and fall every day with great care, the solstice was a singular event and signaled a significant change in cosmic direction. If you were used to one climactic pattern from January until June, you got ready for the reverse in the second half of the year. You hoped the same applied to your fortunes.

Those who live in steel and concrete cities with fluorescent sunsets, or in tropical climes where the sun is always around, may not relate much to the wonders of the summer solstice. But up here on the 57th parallel  by the Baltic Sea where the sun goes away to hide for months on end, and sometimes barely comes up for a few hours, the month of June is a month to be treasured.

For reasons I can’t begin to explain, Latvians celebrate Midsummer’s Day on June 23^rd. We call it Līgo Day, and the day after that we call Jāņi. For Latvians, this is both their favorite holiday and also their oldest. We’re fairly certain that our ancestors have been singing and dancing around bonfires at this time of the year for several thousand years.

Latvians celebrate the solstice by gathering flowers, decorating everything, building bonfires, drinking beer, singing songs, eating cheese, dancing in circles and staying up all night.

It’s very important to stay up all night in Latvia on June 23, because if you don’t, the sun won’t rise the next day. We have special songs you have to sing when the sun goes down, or else it won’t come up again in the morning. We light the bonfires before sunset so that the wandering sun can find a light once it approaches Latvia again. We do all this with ritual tenacity, and our ancestors have been doing the same thing, year after year, for countless centuries. So far, it has worked. The sun has always risen on June 24^th.

In the last week, the Latvian government, parliament, business community and their social partners have also been working around the clock to avoid an economic catastrophe. The entire world has been watching as Latvia has struggled with massive budget cuts, painful GDP drops, struggling businesses, and growing unemployment lines. The finest economic minds in the world have taken up their rhetorical swords and have been bashing each other daily in a global debate over whether Latvia should devaluate its currency or not.

But as I write, the lat is still pegged to the euro. The government has agreed on a 500 million lat budget reduction, and the parliament has approved it.  Now we await the IMF and EC to give their nod of approval.

And we go out to the countryside, to build bonfires, pick flowers and fill pitchers of freshly brewed beer. We also stroll out into the forest in search of fern blossoms. You can find fern blossoms only at this time of the year, and if you don’t believe they exist, you will never find one.

If it sounds like Latvians look for a little magic around this time of the year, you are right. It can’t hurt. After all, we are facing another turning point in our lives. But one thing we know for sure. The sun will come up tomorrow.

This was written as a forward to a book about Latvian bread.

Latvians won’t serve a meal without it, the Clintons ate it in the White House, and now there’s a book that extols all its tasty, textural and aromatic virtues. Bread may be the staff of life for people around of world, but for Latvians it is also the stuff of folklore, tradition and culture. Not to mention international diplomacy.

Indra āŒekstere explores all the traditions that go into the preparation, baking, serving and celebrating of Latvian bread in a beautiful new book called ‘Our Daily Bread – The Tradition of Latvian Baking.” This large format, full colour coffee table book features hundreds of stunning photographs and illustrations, and a charmingly informative text about the people, places and customs connected with the uniquely Latvian passion of bread baking.

While bread is the main story of the book, āŒekstere tells it through the stories of the men and women who bake it. Her narrative (in English and Latvian) moves through the various regions of Latvia, including Kurzeme, Zemgale, Vidzeme, Latgale and Selija, describing how the farmers, bakers and grandmothers from each region prepare their special loaves.

Each regional type of bread is described through recipes, as well as the local rituals, customs, folk songs and fairytales that accompany it. Both historical and contemporary photographs of Latvian fields, farmhouses, hearths and holiday celebrations show the settings in which each regional bread is prepared, served and eaten. Informative illustrations reveal the wide array of wooden farm tools and kitchen implements that are used in the traditional sowing, harvesting and baking process.

āŒeksteres warm, first person narrative is filled with delightful stories and customs, including this one that describes how a Kurzeme grandmother uses her hand to etch a special symbol on top of  each loaf:

“”See, you cross a loaf with the outer edge of your right palm. Pressing the first line you say: do not let it burn! Pressing the second you say: do not let it stay raw! Then with your index finger you draw four lines crossing the ends of the bigger ones saying: enough for the beggars, enough for the travellers, enough for the little children, enough for ourselves!”

There are even detailed blueprints of a bread oven in a house in Piebalga and a map showing the different signs and symbols used on loaves in the various regions of Latvia.

The book is sure to be a big hit with the growing number of tourists, business travellers and diplomats that are coming to Riga and looking for something new and interesting as a gift.  If up until now, you’ve only eaten bread but never thought much about it, āŒekstere’s lively collection of anecdotes, wives tales, superstitions and sayings will have you leafing from page to page in search of more totally fascinating tidbits of Latvian bread trivia. The accompanying illustrations and historical photographs on each page make the journey a visual delight as well.

Indra āŒekstere’s book is a labour of love, made possible through a  private-public partnership project between Latvia’s largest commercial bakery, ‘Hanzas Maiznice’, and the Latvian Ethnographic Open Air Museum. It is a welcome addition to the growing number of high quality books in English about Latvia, its history and traditions.

One story you won’t find in the book concerns the special role of Latvian bread in international relations. Back in 1994, Hillary Clinton raved about the taste of Latvian rye while visiting Riga with President Bill Clinton. After she returned to Washington, a huge loaf of Latvian rye was delivered to the White House. According to her chief of staff, it fed the First Lady, President and several staff members for several days during White House meetings. Hillary received another gift loaf in 2002 after she was elected U.S. Senator. A copy of ‘Our Daily Bread’, personally signed by the author, is already on its way to the New York Senator.

The following piece was translated and adapted from an article published in DIENA, Feb 11, 2003.

And if there is a war?

Just like everyone else, I’m worried about a war in Iraq. Wars anywhere always shake up the rest of world in some way, and I’m sure that a war in Iraq, would have an affect on Latvia.  So I’ve been following the news, reading the statements, listening to the opinions and trying to figure out who really knows what’s going on. And what should be done to fix it. Some kind of resolution is needed, because the global situation is tense and growing more dangerous.

Do I want to see a war in Iraq? Of course not. I’d prefer never to see another war ever again. Wars are lousy ways to resolve human differences.

But what if there is a war? What then? What should be my attitude be toward that war and the people waging it?

The Government of the United States of America has concluded that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the world. He’s a bloody tyrant who controls monstrous chemical, biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction. He’s already used some of them in a war against Iran and on Kurds in Iraq, so it’s no stretch to imagine he could use them again on someone else. Most of the world’s governments seem to agree that something needs to be done about it. Utilizing the broadest international authority they have – the United Nations – they have tried to compel Hussein to disarm for the last 12 years. He’s refused.

The Americans say the situation is bad and getting worse. All international diplomatic, political and economic instruments have been used to bring Hussein around, but nothing has worked. So the US has turned to the world, through the UN, and asked for a resolution that would call for an allied military invasion of Iraq. There would be three goals: 1) remove Hussein as leader of Iraq, 2) seize and destroy all the weapons of mass destruction, 3) cut off Hussein’s assistance to international terrorist networks.

It strikes me that all three goals are worthy. But how do we achieve them?

Obviously war means death. Soldiers die and civilians die. Given Hussein’s nightmarish arsenal of high tech death machines, the potential casualty count in a war where these are unleashed could be enormous. But even if there isn’t a war, the threat remains as long as the weapons remain. Washington believes that with good planning, hi tech weapons and co-ordinated international co-operation, a successful military action could be launched against Iraq. Proponents of an invasion believe the Hussein government could be toppled and the weapons seized with minimal allied and civilian casualties.

Not everyone agrees with the US on this. Nevertheless, the US has asked for UN support and international co-operation to form a coalition that would combine its military and political resources to bring an end to Hussein’s rule in Iraq. Unity is not only important militarily, it could even be more critical politically. As long as the world’s countries argue among themselves, Hussein can sit and wait till the cows come home. But if a majority of the world’s countries agreed that Hussein had to go and announced their readiness to invade tomorrow, Hussein may finally get the hint and leave the country tonight.

Some find this highly unlikely, but it’s not out of the question. And it is the one sure fire way of preventing a war.

If, however, Hussein follows Hitler’s lead into a bunker somewhere in the hills of Iraq, the invading forces would have to contend with the Iraqi army and people. How long would they resist? Especially if they understood that 1) the world was united against them and 2) the only way they could stop the war and hope to resume normal political and economic ties with the rest of the world would be to abandon Saddam Hussein to the dust heap of history?  Do they love their leader or simply fear him? And if it is fear, then the best way to battle it is to eliminate its source.

Once again, there are no guarantees that this will happen, but it is a plausible possibility. I’d like to see the UN join forces and convince the Iraqis that this is the best way out. But what if it can’t and the US decides it’s now or never?  How should I, and how would I want my country of Latvia react to this war? If the US-led alliance attacks it won’t matter much whether the UN has sanctioned it or not. That can be debated by the political scientists and historians later. We will be faced with the fact that several hundred thousand American and allied forces will be putting their lives on the line. A war will be underway, lives will be in danger, and those who are fighting will look to those who support them for help to bring the conflict to a speedy resolution.

Latvia looks upon the United States as an ally. We have applied to join NATO so that we could be allied with the US and 18 other countries. By joining NATO we ask other nations to help us in times when our security is threatened, and thus we promise to help them when theirs is threatened as well. The US Government has concluded that their security is threatened, and that world security is threatened. They have asked the world, allies or otherwise, to help them eliminate this threat.

The issue of whether a war is necessary or not becomes a moot point once it has started. Given Latvia’s foreign policy goals and desire to join NATO, it seems that we have a moral obligation to help our allies in times of war.  Sooner or later Latvia’s parliament may have to vote on a request from the United States for military assistance in Iraq. Latvia’s parliamentarians should keep in mind that later this year American parliamentarians – the US Senate – will vote on whether to let Latvia into the NATO alliance or not. We have asked for their help. We should be prepared when they ask for ours.

Latvia’s president, foreign minister and other officials have told the US that we will help them in whatever way we can if a war breaks out. I doubt if the US will ask for much because we don’t have much to give. But I’m glad that we announced our readiness to assist. That’s what good allies are supposed to do.

Nobody wants a war, but if a war breaks out and your friends are involved, it’s important to help your friends. It’s been said that in international relations there are no friends, but simply national interests. Well, I believe that for some democratic nations like the US, having friends is part of their national interest.

Over the last 15 years, in restoring Latvia’s independence and securing it, Latvia has not had a more important friend than the US. We are lucky to have many friends in the international community, but the US is clearly the largest and most powerful. The US supported our independence legally, politically and materially, and facilitated the removal of Russian troops from our territory once we achieved that independence. It continues to help us today. (The US spearheaded support for our NATO candidacy.)

Now the US has turned to us for help. It still has differences with other allies about the war, but if it does proceed, all indications are that it will lead a fairly broad coalition of democratic countries. The US is investing the most in material and human resources and faces the greatest losses in a possible war. But it feels it is doing it for the greater good.

I don’t know how to achieve the greater good. I don’t like achieving it through war. But if there is a war, I hope it is short, effective and causes minimal casualties in achieving its goals. And if Latvia can help even a little in achieving these goals, I will feel proud of my country. As we enter our 12^th year of restored independence, we will demonstrate that we not only accept help, but can also give it.

Flower people

(Article published in the AirBaltic in-flight magazine, ‘Baltic Outlook’.

Latvians are obsessed with flowers. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that anyone with at least one ounce of Latvian blood in his family tree is genetically programmed to give and receive flowers all his life.

It doesn’t matter why, where or to whom. If you are Latvian and you haven’t had a bunch of real flowers in your hands for one reason or another in the last 72 hours, you begin to feel tribal withdrawal pains deep down in the roots of your genetic code. Latvians need a constant flower fix and will use any excuse to satisfy it.

A Latvian gives flowers on birthdays, names days, holidays and anniversaries; openings, and closings, weddings and funerals, concerts and sporting events. Put yourself in the centre of any Latvian occasion and prepare to be beflowered. Ice hockey player get them, them, opera singers get them, poets get them and politicians get them. Latvians give flowers to men, women, children, cows, even rocks – they don’t discriminate. An event cannot be an event if it is not bedecked in flowers.

After a careful unscientific analysis I have concluded  that in Latvia, someone is giving some kind of flower to someone else, for some very Latvian reason, every 15 minutes. I can’t prove that, but it’s obviously true. Cut that estimate in half on weekends.

In Latvia, flowers seem to grow out of a sense of obligation, only so that Latvians can give them to one another. With thousands of big and small bouquets changing hands every day, the land seems to be working overtime to keep up with the feverish demand.  What can’t be grown in Latvia is imported from elsewhere, just so long as the city flower markets are always in full fragrant supply. In Latvia, a shortage of dark bread – the staple of national consumption – would cause substantial civil rumblings, but a flower shortage would no doubt bring riots in the streets.

Latvians have such a constant, unquenchable, incessant need for flowers that the 24-hour flower market across from the Latvian Foreign Ministry on Terbates street in Riga buzzes  with buyers, day or night. Some guys buy bouquets for girls before an evening date on their way to the discos; others buy them at 5am after the discos have closed for the girls they were lucky enough to pick up. The Terbates street flower market catches them coming and going from the theatres, bars and clubs of Riga’s Old Town. Some need flowers to go out. Others (tardy husbands) need them to come home. On a festive night, the river of flowers that flows through Riga could rival the mighty Daugava river nearby.

Everyone gets into the act. Secretaries buy arrangements for their bosses to give at a colleague’s book presentation, wives buy them for dinner parties, shopkeepers buy them to decorate their store windows, and pensioners buy them for the cemetery. (In Latvia, you get even more flowers after you are dead.)

And everyone buys flowers for their teachers. What the State can’t provide in terms of a living wage, present and former students make up for with generous floral gifts. On the first day of school each September, Latvia’s schools are awash with flower-toting kids, students, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, all participating in a ritualistic frenzy of flower exchange that leaves the teachers and schools buried in a buzzing mound of petals, pistils and pollen.

On the summer solstice, a very pagan Latvian holiday called ‘Jāņi’, you not only give flowers, you wear them in your hair. You also wear leaves, vines, grasses or anything else that can be cut and formed into a primeval fashion accessory. In rural areas people decorate their cows and horses. In Riga, they decorate their BMWs and Land Rovers.

I think it’s the law. It is most definitely a tradition. But increasingly I’m beginning to believe it’s a deeply imbedded national mission.

In regard to flowers, Latvians seem to have reached a very simple understanding with Mother Nature: as long as she keeps growing them, Latvians will keep giving them. Latvians present flowers, place flowers,  paint flowers, decorate with flowers, celebrate with flowers, mourn with flowers, sing with flowers, dance with flowers, are born with flowers and die with flowers. They wouldn’t know how to begin or end anything without them.

If the goddess of flowers wanted to hire an ad agency to promote her latest product line to mankind, she would probably ask the Latvians to manage the campaign. They’d do it pro bono, I’m sure.

September 6, 2001

Telling Latvia’s Story

Although I was born in a refugee camp in Munich in 1949, and never actually lived in Latvia until recently, I have been hearing and telling Latvia’s story all my life.

Growing up in Chicago, I heard about it constantly from my parents, who fled Latvia when the Soviets occupied for the second and last time in 1944. In the United States from the 50’s until the 70’s, the only people talking about Latvia were other Latvians. Few Americans were interested in a small country behind the Iron Curtain, and apart from the Pentagon and State Department, no one paid much attention to it.

From my parents I heard about the good old days of a free Latvia, when Karlis Ulmanis was president, Riga was a jewel and Latvian butter was the rage of European gourmands. I also heard about the war of independence against the Bolsheviks and Bermontians following WW I, the battles with Nazi and Red Army invasions during WW II, the Soviet occupation, and the endless executions, deportations, Russification and dehumanization that followed.

In my boy’s mind there were two Latvias. The colorful Camelot of my parent’s nostalgia and the dreary concentration-camp-by-the-sea that the Soviets had created. It wasn’t until 1978 when I actually first set foot in Latvia, that I realized there was much more to the story.

I also realized that since the end of WW II, Soviet-ruled Moscow was telling that story, as it saw ideologically fit, to the world. Between 1944 and the late 1980’s, the world only knew of a Soviet Republic called Latvia, and most of what it knew was carefully orchestrated by the KGB in Moscow. Soviet Communists liked to cut people out of official photos when they are no longer useful. Moscow’s propagandists cut huge chunks out of Latvia’s history, culture and society.

The only other source of information about Latvia, anywhere in the world, was the 200,000 strong exile community which the Soviet occupation had dispersed to Western Europe, Canada, the United States and beyond. They worked at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, created cultural and political organizations and constantly tried to remind anyone who would listen, that Latvia was an occupied country. And that as a result of that occupation, the very survival of the Latvian language, culture and people, was at stake.

Since I was writing ads for a living in Chicago when I first visited occupied Latvia in 1978, I decided to add my efforts to those of other exiles, in telling the story right. In the early 80’s, the American Latvian Association and the World Federation of Free Latvians were two of the most active and influential Latvian exile organizations. They represented hundreds of smaller Latvian organizations in dozens of cities around the world, and did what they could to lobby Western governments and tell Latvia’s story to the Western press. Exiled Latvians had spent the 50’s and 60’s looking inward, consolidating their communities and nurturing their culture; by the early 80’s political action and outward communication took on greater importance. A new generation of  Latvians born in exile (and speaking good English) joined their parents in telling the world about what was going on in occupied Latvia. We were naïve, idealistic and we wanted to restore Latvia’s independence. To do so, we knew we had to explain why in an honest, accurate, and persuasive manner.

In Chicago in 1981, we developed the monthly Chicago Latvian Newsletter into a regular and reliable source of current English-language information about Latvia. We produced the first major English-language book about Latvia in 30 years. In cities across the U.S. we participated in Captive Nations Day rallies and organized Baltic Freedom Day demonstrations. In 1985, I joined the Washington D.C.-based American Latvian Association as a full time publicist and lobbyist. By the time Gorbachev and glasnost rolled around and Latvians in Latvia could start speaking for themselves, the Western Latvian community had already established a base of information and a network of receptive contacts throughout the Free World.

When the dissident group ‘Helsinki 86’ emerged from Liepaja and organized the first overtly pro-independence march to the Latvian Freedom Monument in Riga on June 14, 1987, Latvia became a legitimate news story. In Washington, we made sure that every Congressman, Senator and foreign policy advisor read the story and understood its implications. When the Latvian National Independence Movement and the Popular Front came into existence in 1989, we brought their leaders to Washington and introduced them to the same politicians and foreign policymakers. To Americans, Latvia, like its Baltic neighbors Estonia and Lithuania, was suddenly a real place, with real people. The Balts were dramatically altering their own lives, and as a result, the world.

Washington sat up and took notice. Latvians in cities across the U.S. held larger and larger rallies and formed Popular Front support groups to channel direct assistance into the pro-independence movement. In early 1989 we were calling Western reporters and telling them about what was happening in Latvia. After 2 millions Balts formed a human chain from Tallinn to Riga to Vilnius on August 23, 1989, the reporters were calling us.

Reporters were also starting to call the Latvian Legation in a sleepy residential  neighborhood on 17^th Street in northwest Washington. Despite 50 years of foreign rule in Latvia, the diplomatic mission of the former independent Republic of Latvia was still legally functioning in Washington, staffed by accredited diplomats who had served Latvia prior to the 1940, and continued to do so during the ensuing decades of occupation.

The Legation itself became a news story, and combined with the restlessness in Latvia and the tirelessness of the exile community, by 1990 the story of Latvia and the Baltic States began to appear regularly on the front pages of U.S. newspapers. In Washington, working with the Legation, we focused on Congress, the State Department, think tanks and editorial writers. The idea of Latvian independence, which had been dismissed in the 60’s, was a real possibility in the 90’s. No longer was it just old Latvian exiles talking about it. The major newspapers were openly advocating it.

I joined the Latvian Legation as a press liaison in January of 1991 and on May 4,  the newly elected, Popular Front-dominated Supreme Council of the Soviet Republic of Latvia, declared its intention to restore Latvia’s independence. Moscow scoffed, even when Latvia’s pro-independence Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis and Foreign Minister Janis Jurkans came to Washington and met with President Bush in the Oval Office of the White House. Moscow was too busy with its own problems to scoff when Latvia realized that independence in August, and on September 2, 1991, I stood in the office of Latvia’s elderly chief of mission Anatol Dinbergs and watched a TV press conference as President George Bush announced the full restoration of ties between the United States and the sovereign Republic of Latvia. The Legation became an embassy, Anatol Dinbergs became ambassador and I became his Minister Counselor and Deputy Chief of Mission.

I had been a naturalized U.S. citizenship since 1968, but gave that up in December of 1991 so that I could assume full diplomatic duties at the Latvian Embassy. I had to fly to a U.S. Consulate in Canada to do so because it’s impossible to give up your citizenship in the U.S. In 1992, 86-year old Ambassador Dinbergs retired and I was appointed Ambassador in 1993.

I had been telling Latvia’s story all my life, first as an obscure refugee, then as a political activist and finally as an ethnic lobbyist. Along with thousands of others living in the U.S., I had written letters, given interviews, delivered speeches and held rallies, making the case for Latvia’s independence. I had been told it would take a miracle. Apparently miracles do happen. .

During most of the last ten years that I have served as a diplomat, I was no longer promoting Latvia’s independence, but simply trying to preserve it. During that period the exile community in the West also underwent changes. Many established close ties to Latvia or moved here, and became actively involved in rebuilding the country. Others remained in the West to revitalize their exile organizations and help tell the story of a new, emerging Latvia.

While history  – especially the Soviet and Nazi occupations – was an important part of that story, even more important was what was happening in Latvia every day. With the beginning of independence in 1991, Latvians on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean  were talking about new things – party politics, the economy, and the challenges facing Latvian society.

Latvian embassies in the West became the first and main source of information about the new Latvia. Diplomats talked not only about Russian troop withdrawal, NATO and the EU, but also about investment opportunities, tax breaks and the emerging IT (Information Technology) industry. In Latvia, English-language newspapers and magazines began to sprout up, tourists and official delegations began coming out and foreign entrepreneurs and journalists began to pour in.

When I ended my 7-year tour as ambassador to the United States in 1999 and moved to Riga to become the Director of the Latvian Institute, I realized I had come full circle. My parents’ generation had fled Latvia following WW II to tell a story and seek help in the West. I was returning to Latvia in their place. In 1978 I knew there was more to be told. In 2000, we finally have a chance to tell it.

As I sit in my Old Town Riga office and gaze at the 800-year old steeple of the Dom Cathedral, I am reminded of another number that was etched deeply in my consciousness from childhood. 22. Latvia was independent for 22 years. We are now approaching the halfway mark of the record that was set by Latvia’s founders from 1918 until 1940.

Today we are using the Internet, e-mail and multi-media magic to tell everything there is to tell about Latvia and how its is doing as we enter the 21^st century. About our goals of becoming a inseparable part of the European Union and NATO. About our desire to create a stable, prosperous democratic country. About our ports and our infrastructure, our folk songs and festivals, our people and possibilities. We have a capital that is both old and new, big and small, spectacular and stately. We have a vast expanse of untouched forest and uninhabited rural areas, mostly poor, sometimes prosperous, but everywhere beautiful.

Those of us who were talking about Latvia during the 50-year occupation were telling a story of war, suffering and injustice. But today, Latvia is a writing a new story, of opportunity, engagement, growth and development. Those of us who are trying to get this story out, are simply trying to get people in, so they can see for themselves. As we enter the 21^st century, the story of the new Latvia has only begun.

Soon we will celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the restoration of Latvia’s independence. I’m looking forward to the 23^rd.

Riga, Latvia 2000

‘God’s Horses’                                               

Wild about the Latvian coast

(This appeared in BALTIC OUTLOOK, in-flight magazine of AirBaltic, 2006)

Each summer, a small group of young Latvians go back in time. These folklore and history enthusiasts go out to an uninhabited part of the Latvian countryside and try to recreate what life was like for Latvian tribes in the 9^th century. Using replicas of ancient tools, young men and women build primitive log structures and strive to dress, eat, think and survive like their distant ancestors did generations ago. After a month of intense ’living in the past’, these missionaries of ancient tradition return to their day jobs in Riga and share what they learned.

The 35 stocky cloud-gray horses that graze in the wilderness meadowlands of the Lake Pape region in the Southwestern corner of Latvia have no idea that they are on a similar mission.  But unlike their young human counterparts at the summer history campsites,  these horses have no other day jobs. This is it. Eighteen specially bred Konik horses were brought to Latvia from the Netherlands in 1999 and put on a 250-hectare piece of private land as part of the , World Wildlife Fund’s ‘Large Herbivore Initiative’  and they have been living off the land – without human help – ever since.

The Konik is believed to be the closest living relative of the prehistoric Tarpan, a sturdy, short-legged breed of horse that once roamed freely in the tens of thousands across the vast Eurasian continent. Although the last known Tarpan died in a Moscow zoo in 1887, Polish scientists tried to preserve the Tarpan genotype through a carefully selective breeding program with free range Polish farm horses that had routinely, through the centuries, cross-bred with the wild Tarpans.

The result was the Konik. It’s actually a new breed, but close enough to the extinct Tarpan to give scientists and wildlife observers a rare glimpse into the world’s zoological past. The once ubiquitous Tarpan had been forced out of the wilderness and into extinction by centuries of European cultivation and urbanization. Wild horses that once lived entirely off the land no longer had any land in Europe to live on. In fact, over the last millenium almost all of Europe’s original free roaming herbivores  – wild bison, cattle, sheep – have been forced out of their natural habitats by land-consuming humans.

The WWF is trying to reintroduce a number of wild species back to selected areas in Europe, in hopes that they will not only survive and thrive, but also restore and preserve some of Europe’s last remaining wilderness regions.

The first successful self-sustaining wild Konik herd was established by the WWF in the Netherlands. In looking for additional ‘ancient’ homes for the Konik, the Lake Pape region on Latvia’s southern Baltic Sea coast seemed like a perfect candidate.  When it comes to unspoiled coastal grasslands you won’t find anything more authentic anywhere in Europe.

Until recently, the marshes and woodlands around Lake Pape were largely known for their quaint fishing villages and excellent water reeds (a traditional rural Latvian roofing material that has recently come into fashion among ‘back to the roots’ Latvian  architects and home owners.)  A 60 kilometer square territory around Lake Pape has been designated as a protected nature area, and less than 200 people live within its shifting dunes, coastal wetlands and musky peat bogs.  This number continues to decline because the region is one of the rare places in Europe where endless urban creep and sprawl seems to have successfully reversed itself.  Two wars and an occupation took its toll on the already sparse population, and the few surviving farms and homesteads are being turned into museum exhibits, or gradually abandoned.

But where man has left, nature has rushed in with a flourish. Thanks to human disinterest, the Lake Pape region has become one of Northern Europe’s last natural havens for wolf, lynx, otter, beaver, moose, red deer, roe deer and wild boar. And birds are just crazy about it. Hundreds of thousands of them pass through here each year as they migrate up and down the East African-European-Arctic Flyway. In effect, Lake Pape has become a major rest stop for birds along this high-traffic migratory superhighway.

Judging from the way the Koniks are thriving in Lake Pape, they seem to feel right at home.  Some think that they, in fact, are. Latvian folklore and folk songs are filled with references to ‘god’s horses’ (wild horses without human owners who roamed the Latvian forests and meadows), strongly suggesting that the ancestors of the Koniks were well known neighbors of early forest and coast-dwelling Latvian tribes.

The stolid, seemingly implacable Koniks appear to be a perfect genetic fit for this sometimes harsh, windswept, sea coast wilderness area. They have a capacity to digest and live on almost any type of wild grass, and annually acquire a special layer of fat that helps them survive the harshest Baltic Sea winters. They huddle in groups for warmth and protection, and move only when they have to, expending little wasted energy. While in English the designation ‘wild horses’ is technically accurate, their Latvian designation as ‘savvallas zirgi’ (‘self-sustaining horses’ ) is a more apt description of their quietly determined disposition.

Since arriving in Lake Pape, the number of Koniks has nearly doubled, providing WWF observers (and tourists) with a rare opportunity to observe their unique social structure.  Koniks instinctively divide themselves into family groups, or ‘harems’, where several mares follow a dominant leader stallion. Young colts are eventually pushed out of their mother’s families and forced to compete for the right to create their own ‘harems’. The mothers, however, are also responsible for upgrading the instinctive memory bank and genetic stock of the entire herd. Thus, they eventually move to other harems, passing on genes and experience from generation to generation. Experts believe that the Konik breed will get stronger with each generation, as it revives and restores its ancient genetic memory.

In the last year the steadily growing herd of Lake Pape Koniks have already split into three thriving harems and is showing all signs of adapting enthusiastically to its unfettered home in the meadows, forests and wilderness along the Baltic Sea coast.

The Koniks live on a 250-hectar parcel of wilderness land that has been leased by the WWF from several local owners. They are watched over by Velta Kupele, an energetic Latvian woman and avid horse lover, who was hired by the WWF to serve as the Koniks’ den mother, guardian, groundskeeper and tourist guide.

If you call ahead (for details contact the WWF Latvija office at +371 7505640 in Riga), Velta will greet you at the gate of the fence that surrounds the Koniks’ preserve and  personally walk you through the woods and meadows so that you can get a close up glimpse at these beautiful specimens. With no natural predators, (wolves have left them alone for the time being) the horses are remarkably docile and will let visitors come within several meters of them as they huddle together in their cozy harems. Velta claims they love the attention they get from humans, but reminds wide-eyed visitors that touching and feeding is totally forbidden.

Left to their own devices, the Koniks of Lake Pape seem set for a long and prosperous stay. But WWF Latvija is still seeking additional funds to make the area more secure for the horses, as well as more easily accessible to tourists. A bird observation tower has already been completed, and there are plans to build a special hiking trail and nature information center. There is also talk of introducing some other endangered species to the area, in hopes that they can follow the Koniks’ example.

The Lake Pape Koniks also seem to be a fitting symbol for a country like Latvia that soon hopes to join the European Union. After all, their ancestors were true Europeans, who once grazed freely across a continent that had no national borders. The have found this little corner of Latvia to their liking because it is one of the few places left in Europe where Europe still looks, feels and  smells the way it used to several millennia ago.

Spend some time with the Koniks of Lake Pape and you may feel yourself transported back in time as well. But be sure to shut off your mobile phone.

Latvia’s Glaciers

(This was written online in 2000 in response to a blog by journalist Juris Kaza.)

I was not in Latvia 10,000 years ago when the glaciers retreated, but I can imagine what this place must have looked like. No doubt quite a mess. Glaciers have a way of destroying, transforming and scarring the landscape that leaves a mark for a long time. And yet, the remarkable thing about a post-glacierized piece of land is how so much comes back to life after the ice retreats. Sure, some plants and animals are lost forever, but new ones also come into existence. And sooner or later, once the death-grip of the continental ice blanket has receded, everything begins to bristle and teem with life again.

As a Latvian born in Germany and raised in the United States I have always tried to comprehend the impact of the Soviet occupation here. While working in Washington for 15 years representing Latvia in various capacities, it started to dawn on me. And now that I have completed my first 12 months as a permanent resident, it has become eminently clear. This country has just come out from under a glacier again.

For 50 years, from 1940 until 1990, Latvia was frozen in place and time by the Cold War and crushed by the massive weight of a Soviet ideological and political glacier. Ten years ago that glacier finally receded, the ice has retreated and Latvia is coming back to life again. But it is not the same Latvia that existed before the glacier came. The war, the occupation and Sovietization all took a heavy price, destroying lives, property and the social fabric. The Karlis Ulmanis era in Latvia, like the earlier Czarist, Swedish, Livonian and Couronian eras, is now a part of history.

And yet, it is this very history –a succession of military and political glaciers sweeping over this land in regular intervals over the last millenium – that makes Latvia such a fascinating place for me today. As a Latvian who was fated to spend most of his early life outside of Latvia, I am stunned by the incredible resiliency of my people. Despite everything that has happened over the last 1,000 years, we are still singing the same folks songs, still drawn to that same midsummer’s bonfire and still talking to each other in our own language.

Of course, we use that language to argue and accuse more often then to sing, but then, what else is new?  Bickering seems as much a national Latvian trait as choral singing. So does building and rebuilding, changing and rearranging. The Latvian experience, as Uldis Germanis’ book of that title describes it, has been one of constant conflict between local and foreign, traditional and transitional, rural and urban, old and new. And somehow both polarities have always found a way to coexist in Latvia. Perhaps that is the secret of our survival.

The French claim that the more things change, the more they stay the same. In Latvia, the old patterns of development, growth (and sometimes destruction)  through conflict and competing interests continues. It’s the “same as it ever was”, as The Talking Heads once sang. Just the names and players have changed.

The Latvian countryside is still the repository of ancient Latvian traditions, Riga is still a multinational magnet for foreign investment, commerce and culture, and Ventspils remains an industrial power in the great tradition of the Duchy of Courland. It’s just that each of these pillars of Latvia’s identity over the last millennium is now undergoing another transitional phase. Latvia is not only coming out of the communist deep freeze, it is returning to a suddenly superheated world. And I don’t mean global warming.

Latvia is entering a white hot Information Age, where technology is developing faster than society’s ability to fully understand and harness it. The problems many critics like to point out in Latvia – corruption, organised crime, runaway bureaucracy, economic disparity – are global problems. We have not reinvented the wheel here, and like every post-glacial, post-communist, for-50-years-Soviet mismanaged country, we’ve got a lot of physical, political, mental and spiritual rubble to clear. Anytime you take something from the deep freeze and put it into an oven, you risk cracking it. Latvia has its share of cracks.

In a recent article, journalist Juris Kaza expressed deep disappointment over the fact that Latvia today – ten years since independence – is not the Latvia he hoped it would be. He suggested that many of us former exile Latvians were sold a bill of goods in Latvian Saturday schools in the West. I never doubted that. The idyllic exile Latvian vision of pre-WWII Latvia is as far removed from the reality of Latvia today as was the ideologically cynical Soviet version of it. Latvia never was what the Soviets claimed and never can be what our parents knew.

But the Latvia that seems to have so sadly fatigued Juris Kaza is, in his words, a singularly “sordid and sorry sight.”  It is a country of “ignorance, drunken helplessness, sullen passivity and psychological squalor”, not to mention “sleaze, incompetence and ineptitude.” Just repeating Kaza’s litany of criticisms gets me depressed, so I’ll just summarise with Kaza’s conclusion that “there is a critical mass of degeneracy at which the society self-destructs”. Kaza is not sure whether Latvia has reached this critical mass, “but I have a feeling that it is dangerously close to it.”.

I disagree. As the old story goes, a pessimist sees the glass half empty, while the optimist sees it half full. Kaza sees all that is dying in this country. I tend to notice that which is coming to life. Life beats death every time. And the kind of life that awaits the successors of the survivors of one more Latvian ice age, will be very different from that which Kaza sees on the streets of Riga and Daugavpils today.

When I think about the future of Latvia’s 2.3 million inhabitants, I don’t identify them by nationality. I categorise them by attitude. I see three groups. Those who are lost and frozen in the past, those who have been freeze-dried and left to fend with the present, and those who can’t wait to get to the future. Kaza’s survey of attitudes in Latvia was taken on the streets, where the lost and frozen tend to proliferate. He should listen to what the kids are saying in the schools. The kids  that I have spoken to this year in Jelgava, Valmiera, Dundaga and Limbazi are all thinking about the future. Their future. Latvia’s future.

They are bright, curious, enthusiastic and patriotic. They like Renars Kaupers and Vaira Vike-Freiberga. They run active student governments, play a major role in shaping the personality and programs of their local schools, and know the Internet like the backs of their hands. Not only will they inherit the Latvia that awaits us 20 years from now, they are already starting to shape it. Some may question the folkloric authenticity of a pretty Latvian girl in traditional folk dress performing at a song festival with a mobile phone clipped to her waist. But the fact that she even wants to wear that folk dress (and still use her phone) says something about the Latvia of the future. There is a place in cyberspace for a healthy national identity, and the high school kids I meet throughout Latvia, are developing their own understanding of both.

Those in Latvia’s society that recognise that they have a stake in Latvia’s future, are already doing something about it. In early November over two hundred women entrepreneurs representing Latvia’s most successful companies, held a conference in Riga’s Congress Hall. If Juris Kaza was looking for evidence of initiative, competence, intelligence, creativity and brilliant management in Latvia, he should have come there. He would have met the best and brightest minds in the country, doing real things that are making a positive difference in the lives of people who live here.

The drunks and street thugs that Kaza uses to symbolise Latvia today are all male. Yet women have always played the central role in Latvian culture. Women have been the caretakers of the Latvian language, culture, traditions  – and surviving male population –  after each invasion, war and occupation for the last 800 years. But for the first time in Latvian history, women now have a chance to run more than the family homestead. They are running businesses, ministries, newspapers, parties, ad agencies, auto dealerships and non-governmental organisations. And doing it very well.

I recently met two young women from Riga who have developed a magazine, media center and worldview that is on the cutting edge of the cyberspace information explosion. It turns out their Re Lab new media centre is better known in the vast global cyber network of ‘intercultural jammers’ than they are right here in Riga. Their publication and home page, called Acoustic.Space, has put Riga in the heart of a worldwide bee hive of electronic activity. We often talk about making Riga a regional center again. These women have already made it a global cybercenter. They are not just thinking about the future. They are the future.

A problem approaches solution the moment you stop dwelling on what is wrong and start doing something to make it right. Those frozen in the past or present can only see what is wrong. Latvia’s young women, like the kids in the schools and the girls at Re Lab, have a stake in the future and believe they know how to make things right. Latvia is entering a 21^st century where all the traditional ground rules and boundaries have long changed. Anytime you apply old standards to new problems, you get a mismeasurement. Anytime you fail to plan ahead, you get left behind. Rather than curse the glacier and what it has wrought, we should be looking at the new world that the sun has brought to life. What do we need to do in this new world, given the new rules, the amazing technology and wealth of information that has been put before us? What types of economic and social policies should we be pursuing in order to make maximum use of these new opportunities?

During the last ten years we have watched the glacier recede and have gone about picking up the rubble in the best way we knew how. This is an important task and must be continued. But we should simultaneously be thinking into the future. Where do we want Latvia to be 20 years from now? 30?  Is there anything we can plan, start and implement today that will have a long-term impact and bring about the results we desire? What can a medium-sized country (not unlike Ireland) with given set of resources and options, do to find a prosperous and secure place in the global community?

These issues are not being discussed in the streets of Riga, but they are increasingly becoming a major topic of  conversation in Latvian schools, institutions and organisations.

It’s always fun to ridicule inept and corrupt politicians as Kaza does, and Latvia has surely demonstrated its equality with European Union countries in this regard. I’ll match Latvia’s political scandals with any in Great Britain, Belgium, Italy or France. The Latvian Parliament is indeed one of the least trusted institutions in Latvia, but as I recall from my days in Washington, the members of the U.S. Congress weren’t exactly America’s most beloved public servants either. Name one country in the world where at least some parliamentarians aren’t viewed as crooks.

And yet I have also seen Latvian politicians cross party lines, put aside economic interests and talk about what really needs to be done to secure Latvia’s future. After arriving in Riga in January to head the Latvian Institute, I was invited to join an ad hoc brainstorming group that was trying to develop a long term vision for Latvia’s political, economic and social future. The group included politicians from three different parties, scientists, sociologists, economists and businessmen. What amazed and impressed me, was the fact that they were indeed thinking about the future. Not the next election. Not the next budget. Not whether the hours we were talking together would increase their profits or not.

The resultant report, called ‘From Vision to Action’, will not immediately solve all the problems that depress Juris Kaza, but it does address those active people in Latvia who have a clear stake in the future. It gets them thinking about where Latvia is going, where it can fit in a globalized world, and what life could be like in this country 10, 20 and 30 years from now.

I hope that Juris Kaza gets over his bout with transition society fatigue and sticks around Latvia a little while longer. He may be in for a pleasant surprise. Glaciers retreat slowly and those of us caught in the aftermath have to walk through a lot of muck and rubble. But following right behind us is another generation that is already picking up the pieces, planting the seeds and building the Latvia of the future. These are the people I came to Latvia to work with. They are the reason I’m staying.

December 19, 2000

A Viking looks at Latvia today

(Based on a speech delivered to a regional Scandinavian Rotary Club meeting in Riga, Latvia)

Serious historians will tell you that the word ‘viking’ is not a  noun and does not describe a person or people. It was instead an activity that was undertaken by certain people – Danes, Swedes and others – who lived in this region over a thousand years ago.

You could say that ‘going viking’ was an early form of tourism in the Baltic Sea region. A large group of people got into boats and visited their neighbors. After some negotiation, they brought home a lot of souvenirs.

However, modern marketing has turned the word ‘viking’ into a noun, and thus we refer to these early Scandinavian tourists as ‘vikings’. If Hollywood can make a large bearded Scotsman like William Wallace look like a short Australian actor named Mel Gibson, than I can call the ancestors of today’s Scandinavians ‘vikings’.

We all know that the Vikings of the 9^th century used to visit here a lot. Some came to visit the Liv settlement that was located along the banks of the river Daugava. But most sailed on further south thru Russia, all the way down to the great  ancient city of Byzantium. Thus, even before Easy Jet and Ryanair, Riga was a popular transit point for travelers.

What would happen if one of those Vikings from the 9^th century sailed into Riga in the 21^st century?  Well, if he were to start from the island of Gotland and sail along the northern Kurzeme coastline, he would probably think he was still in the 9^th century. Looking at it from the sea, that coast has not changed a bit. He would  see an endless wall of green Latvian pine trees backing up an equally endless stretch of white sandy beach. His first shock might come when he encountered a wind surfer sailing out from the fishing village of Mazirbe. To a Viking, one man on a small board with a sail, without a shield or sword, would probably seem rather odd.

Odd as he might be, a wind surfer was no threat. The threat would come when he rounded the Kolka horn and found himself confronted by a dozen crazed summer vacationers buzzing around him on high-powered Jet Skis. As a seasoned pirate, I’m sure he’d admire their speed and mobility, but he’d probably wonder  where their stored all their loot. Jet Skis are loud and powerful but they have no storage space whatsoever.

He’d get his answer as he traveled deeper into the Bay of Riga and confronted a fleet of huge metal ships carrying enormous heaps of cargo. If these were modern day Vikings, they had obviously collected an awful lot of souvenirs from the locals –  forests of tree trunks, mountains of grain, stacks of  Honda Civics and boatloads of Finnish tourists. He’d probably assume these Finns were slaves that had been collected by other Vikings from the mainland, although he would wonder why they all looked and sounded so happy.

By the time he entered the mouth of the River Daugava, he would realize that the old Liv settlement had turned into a teeming metropolis of nearly a million inhabitants. After sailing past huge docks, large cranes and hundreds of cargo ships, he would finally approach the gates of the city itself.

The Riga Castle on the right bank would look familiar. It’s been there since the 14^th century and looks no different than the old castles that guarded other cities on the Dauagava River on the way south to Byzantium. The 29-story steel and glass castle on right, however, would be intimidating. Vikings were never good at siege warfare and this one would be a tall order, to say the least.

And yet, the building would tempt him.  Once he learned that the wealth of modern cities was stored in banks, this impressively large building had to be much more valuable than the old castle across the river. After all it was called the Hansa Bank, and our Viking knew that Riga was once one of the most important cities in the Hanseatic League. If it had 29 floors, it had to be storing an awful lot of gold and silver.

But as he went from floor to floor, he’d find nothing but desks and chairs and computers. After asking around he’d realize that in the 21^st century, gold and silver had been replaced by paper money. Well, if paper money was valuable today, he might as well fill his pockets with that. When he asked one of the guards where he could find a vault where all this valuable paper money was stored, he’d be directed to an ATM machine.

Soon enough he would discover that his trusty two-handed sword was no match for an ATM machine – especially a sword without a microchip and a pin code.

So he’d head across the river into the heart of the city where the tradesmen sold their goods. There had to be lots of money there. Once he got over the first shock of all the new buildings in Riga, his next shock would come when he learned that even paper money had become old fashioned in this town.

So what does a Viking do? What else but go over to the Nordic Council offices in the Berg Bazaar and ask for help. He was familiar with Viking councils in his Nordic homeland, so this one had to have information.

Being discrete, he’d tell them that he wanted to do some ‘business’ in Riga. They’d say no problem. If he wants to acquire things in this city, he needs a laptop, wireless access to the Internet and an e-account at one of Latvia’s 23 banks. And while he might feel more comfortable at an old-fashioned market located near the train station near Old Town, if he really wanted to stock his ship with treasures from around the world, he’d have to visit some cyber markets called Amazon.com and E-bay.

Clearly, this kind of information would drive a Viking to drink. And what better place to find a drink than in the pubs and bars of Riga’s Old Town? But here he would encounter another surprise. Back in the 9^th century the Danish Vikings spent a lot of time trying to chase the Brits out of England. Where did all those Brits go? Apparently they all came to Riga, because the city pubs are full of them. So many, that their Queen, Elizabeth the II, came here recently to shoo them all back home to their wives and mothers.

Had the Viking come to Riga in the middle of the summer on June 23, he would notice something else rather strange about this Latvian capital. He would see very few Latvians. Where did they all go? He could go into an Internet Café and log onto the Latvian News Agency LETA to find out what’s going on. He’d  read about something called the free movement of labor and might conclude that most of the Latvians had gone over to England and Ireland, to replace all the Brits that had come to Riga. But that isn’t the full story.

The fact is, most Riga Latvians would be out in the countryside, celebrating the summer solstice, which we call Jāņi. A Viking always loves a good celebration, so our friend would probably rent himself a Volvo and go look for a roaring bonfire. He’d find thousands of them all over the countryside. Now here, he might start feeling at home again. There would be plenty of song, buckets of beer, wild dancing and people leaping about madly with oak leaves on their heads.  To our Viking, this would be the first real sign of civilization as he knew it.

Strengthened by beer and cheese and emboldened by all this nostalgia, he might start thinking about what any self-respecting warrior does best. He’d want to make war on these Latvians. After all, with all the flowers in their hair, they all looked like a bunch of peace-loving hippies.

But a good Viking usually checks out his adversary before he launches an attack. These dancing and singing Latvians did seem like a lively bunch, but did they have a real army hidden away somewhere in the woods?

So our Viking would go under cover and do a little spying. Over the next few months he would find out that Latvia did have an army, but no more than about 5,000 active duty soldiers. No problem. If he went back and got a few boatloads of his Viking friends, he could easily overwhelm the locals.

From the Nordic Council he had learned that there were many Scandinavians in Latvia and they were represented by embassies. Perhaps he could recruit some Viking warriors from these embassies. It would save him a trip back home. So he paid a visit to the Norwegian embassy in Riga.

But here he was confronted with another shocking revelation. It turns out that these Latvians had joined some kind of organization called NATO, and that his fellow Norwegians were also a part of this military alliance. Not only wouldn’t the Norwegians help him, they were all too busy opening hypermarkets and hotels in Riga.

No luck there. So he tried the Danish embassy. The Danes were always good Vikings and never passed up an opportunity for a little fun. There the news was even worse. The Danish ambassador told him that not only were the Danes a part of this NATO, but so were over 20 other tribes from Europe and the New World. These Latvians now had friends and allies in Germany, Poland, England, Italy, Spain and a dozen other places that he had never heard of. Byzantium, the city he used to visit by way of the Daugava River, was now in a country called Turkey and they too were a part of this NATO. Even Vinland, that large land across the ocean discovered  by his countryman Leif Ericsson,  had joined this  NATO. Worse yet, all of these NATO armies were gathering in Riga at the end of November for something called a Summit.

This was outrageous. His last ray of hope was Sweden. He was delighted to learn that at least the Swedes hadn’t joined this enormous alliance. When he asked the Swedish ambassador where he could find some friends who could help him with a special project, he was told to go to the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Riga. ‘Commerce’? Well, that made sense. Going Viking was a form of commerce, so he tried it.

Not wanting to reveal his invasion plans right away, he told the Chamber of Commerce that he was looking to start a ‘joint venture’ with other Swedes in Latvia, one which would help all of them get rich.  The Swedish Chamber was very helpful.

They told him that he should to get a room at the Reval Hotel, open a bank account at UNIBANKA, and get a job with TeliaSonera. Then they lent him an Ericsson mobile phone and gave him a list of numbers to call.

Clearly, this was not what he had in mind. So he went back to the Swedish embassy and looked up the Swedish military attaché. If anyone could help him raise an army, he would be the person to do it. Soon enough he discovered that even if the Swedes were not a part of this NATO, they might as well be.  You see, much of the military equipment used by the Latvian army that he had hoped to defeat with his fellow Vikings, had been donated to the Latvians by, of all people,  the Swedes.

The world had really changed. Danish and Norwegian Vikings were now allies with these Latvians, and Swedish Vikings were supplying them with weapons. And that’s when he realized, he had already missed the boat. The ancestors of this fellow Vikings were already here. He could fly here on Air Baltic, buy Carlsberg beer and Danish tobacco at Narvesson, get into his Saab or Volvo and fill up with gas at Statoil before doing his shopping at Rimi. And if he wanted to learn how his fellow countrymen did it all, he could sign up for some courses at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. If you can’t beat ‘em, might as well join ‘em.

Riga

October 21, 2006

In 2005 a European magazine called ‘Parliament’ contacted the Latvian Institute and requested an article on Latvian culture for a special issue they were creating. I wrote them this:

An ancient culture that thrives on change

by Ojars Kalnins

The contemporary Latvian poet Imants Ziedonis has described culture as simply something ‘which is, lives, wants to live and flourish.’ In Latvia, this spiritual and emotional aspect of social life has developed a distinctive national identity over a period of 3,000 years. The fact that it has survived, adapted and flourished despite remarkable adversity, is a testimony to its vitality as it enters its 4^th millennium.

Latvian traditions, customs, decorative art and world view have always been closely tied to the Northern European land and nature that they have depended on for survival. The forests, rivers and meadows on the southern shores of the Baltic Sea, like the sea itself, have shaped Latvia’s history, politics and economy, and as a result, have formed the lifeblood of its living culture.

Ironically, the period when the modern Latvian language and culture began to coalesce, was also the period when it faced its greatest threat, for the 13^th century marked the beginning of a series of foreign incursions, invasions and occupations. German, Swedish and Polish warriors and traders brought European culture to Latvia, at times threatening the existence of the Latvian culture, at times strengthening it through adversity, and eventually co-existing along side it.

Centuries of foreign rule reduced Latvians to serfdom and prevented them from  recording their history and traditions in written form. Latvian culture was instead preserved and manifested in folklore that displayed the collective wisdom and beliefs of the Latvians’ ancient tribal ancestors. A uniquely Latvian cultural phenomenon, folk songs, or dainas, date back well over a thousand years. Rich with tradition, literature and symbolism, the dainas serve as an oral record of Latvian culture. Their subjects encompass the entire course of human life, from childbirth, youth, marriage and work, to old age and death. By the 19th century, more than 1.2 million texts and 30,000 melodies were identified. In the 21^st century, these songs continue live as an essential part of Latvian contemporary holiday celebrations and social life.

This powerful tradition of song played a central role in Latvia’s National Awakening in the second half of the 19^th century and led to the first Latvian Song Festival in 1873. The Song Festival, involving massed choirs of tens of thousands of participants was a central focus of national identity during Latvia’s first period of independence from 1918 until 1940. It survived as a distinctly national event and a bastion of Latvian culture despite 50 years of forced Sovietization during the Soviet occupation, and spearheaded Latvia’s ‘singing revolution’ in the late 1980’s. The political and economic forces that lead to the restoration of Latvia’s independence in 1991 were driven by powerful, centuries-old cultural forces.

Latvian traditions still play a central role in the Latvian identity today. This uniquely ‘Latvian’ culture is woven through its literature, music, theatre and the visual arts. Yet, the legacy of foreign rule has also given Latvia a second, European culture. As a distinctive Latvian identity emerged during the National Awakening in the 19^th century, so did an appreciation for the achievements of other cultures. Latvians enthusiastically embraced all the classical arts – literature, painting, theatre, symphonic music, architecture, opera, ballet and film. At the turn of the century the Latvian poet Rainis, and painter Janis Rozentals and Vilhelms Purvitis had established international reputations. In the 1920’s and 1930’s Latvia’s ‘Riga group’ of  painters become known internationally.

During Soviet rule, Latvia’s passion for the arts routinely broke through the rigid ideological constrictions that Moscow tried to impose on its Communist empire. Latvia’s filmmakers established Riga as the ‘Hollywood’ of the Soviet Union, while it’s provocative fashion designers made it the avante garde design centre of the otherwise staid and conservative Soviet Union. The late Juris Podnieks gained world recognition in the 1980’s for his incisive and uncompromising documentary films that exposed the dark and deteriorating underbelly of the collapsing Soviet empire.

With independence, came a revival of Latvia’s traditional and cosmopolitan cultures. Latvia’s National Opera – the ‘White House’ of Riga  – was one of the first buildings to be renovated after the restoration of independence in 1991 and is the centrepiece of a flourishing cultural life. While economists will list wood and wood products as Latvia’s top export, many believe it’s actually opera singers. Latvia’s home-grown, world class opera singers such as Inese Galante, Sonora Vaice, Egils Silins and Elina Garance, today perform in opera houses throughout Europe.

Peteris Vasks is considered one of the finest contemporary composers in the world, while Riga-born violinist Gidons Kremers and his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra won a Grammy in 2002. Violinist Baiba Skride took First Prize in the Queen Elizabeth International Music Competition in Brussels in 2001 and has been hailed as one of the most outstanding young violinists in all of Europe. The creative energy of Latvia’s  innovative post-modern folklore band, Ilgi, has established them as stars in the growing genre of world music. Not to be left behind by classical and traditional artists, Latvia’s youthful pop-rock band Brainstorm has gained legions of fans across Europe through its successes at Eurovision and on MTV.

The rapid renovation of Riga’s historic centre has revealed hundreds of examples of distinctive Jugendstil architecture, leading some to assert that Riga may be the Jugendstil capital of Europe. Interestingly enough, over 60% of the buildings displaying this very European Art Nouveau style of the turn-of-the-century, were designed by Latvian architects.

A hundred years ago Riga was known as the ‘Paris of the North’. As it enters the 21^st century, Riga has blossomed as a creative centre for the arts once again. Local and visiting art exhibits and the opera, theatre and ballet, compete with night clubs and discos that rock with jazz, blues and the latest electronic fusions of hip hop and dance music.  After ten years of independence, Riga is now called ‘The Second City that Never Sleeps’, and ‘The Hottest City in the North’.

The vibrancy of cultural life in Latvia is a product of talented artists, performers and writers that honed and developed their skills in cities and regions throughout Latvia. Many continue to live and work in their home towns or rural settings, blending the influences of traditional roots with the modern, cosmopolitan influences of the nation’s capital. This spiritual desire to live and flourish as Latvians, as Europeans, and as the shapers of the 21^st century, is a phenomenon that continues to shape Latvia’s multi-faceted, dynamic culture.

If you’ve read the New York Times, Washington Post, TIME magazine, Rolling Stone or Atlantic magazine during the last 20 years, you’ve already seen one of Māris Bišofs’ drawings. Probably more than one. Since the early 1980’s, the editors of America’s most prestigious East Coast newspapers and magazines used Bišofs regularly to illustrate their cover stories and feature articles on the hottest topics of the day.

Chances are you never noticed his name, but you probably smiled when you saw the drawings. Bišofs’ art has always had that effect on people. His deceptively simple images have a way of lingering in your consciousness long after you’ve seen them. As an unexpected counterpoint to serious, in-depth articles on the complexities of international relations, the economy or controversial social issues, Bišofs wry and laconic drawings have a knack for revealing both the ridiculous and sublime in any human undertaking.

After spending the last 40 years of his life in New York, Paris, Tel Aviv and Moscow, Bišofs recently returned to his native Latvia to resume a life that had been interrupted by a half century of war, occupation and post Cold War restoration. His recently published book of drawings, called ‘My Latvia’, marks a turning point in his career and in the way Latvians look at themselves.

Bišofs was born in the northern Latvian town of Rujiena in 1939. By the 1960’s he was drawing cartoons for a Latvian satire magazine while studying interior design at the Latvian Art Academy. In 1967 his restless artistic and intellectual curiosity about the world at large compelled him to leave Riga for what was then the only Soviet city that offered some international exposure, Moscow.

Moscow not only broadened his horizons, it also introduced him to his wife. When she, as a Russian Jew, received permission to emigrate to Tel Aviv in 1972, Bišofs joined her. In Tel Aviv, Bišofs’ artistic career flourished. He drew editorial cartoons for various Israeli newspapers, had numerous art exhibits, published three books and began to emerge as an artist of some international note. In 1980 he received an Israeli government grant to pursue his work in Paris, where he continued to develop his aesthetic eye and refine his unique style.

Two years later he moved to New York where he was quickly adopted by Manhattan’s art and literary elite as a special favourite. For the next 25 years, Bišofs was regularly kept busy by New York’s prolific publishing community, providing a steady stream of whimsical pictures for their elegant prose. He also produced four more mischievously clever books of drawings about the New York social and literary scene.

When Latvia restored its independence in 1991, Bišofs, like so many émigrés, returned to his homeland for regular visits. It didn’t take long for him to realize that his life would be changing once again. He had initially left Latvia in 1967 to see if there weren’t more interesting things going on in the outside world. But by 2003, the outside world had become all too familiar, and to Bišofs, Latvia was suddenly the most interesting place to be.

Although he had decided to give up his heavy workload at the New York news and literary magazines, he wasn’t quite ready to retire. So for Bišofs, returning to Latvia in 2003 was simply a change of venue. He got an apartment in Riga and began settle into a new life. Most of all he walked around, talked to people, read newspapers, watched TV and tried to understand the issues of the moment. And as he had done in New York, Tel Aviv and Paris, he began to draw what he saw.

It occurred to Bišofs that in his long and successful career as an artist, he had touched upon a wide variety of topics, from the New York art scene and Virginia Wolf, to interplanetary tourists in Manhattan. but he had never applied his satirist’s eye to his own homeland.

Newly inducted in the EU and NATO, Latvia was a treasure trove of fresh ideas and when the sketches began to flow, he looked for an outlet. He found it in the Latvian Institute, a state agency that promotes and produces information about Latvia.  Bišofs offered to create a new book of drawings about Latvia, and the Latvian Institute eagerly agreed to publish it.

Maris Bišofs book, ‘My Latvia’, is not what you’d expect from a state agency, but everything you would expect from an unbridled creative spirit like Bišofs. His humorous take on daily life, politics and culture in today’s Latvia combines the patriotic sentiments of an insider with the bemused eye of an outsider. His drawings poke and prod with equal amounts of praise and ridicule. They celebrate contradictions, elevate traditions, smirk at the silly and embrace the elegant. They are both whimsical and poignant, and always just slightly odd.

Latvians are not known for being keen on laughing at themselves, but Bišofs’ “My Latvia” appears to have brought a smile to the face of every Latvian who has seen it.  Latvia’s President and Foreign Minister were the first government officials to request copies that they could distribute as gifts, and other government agencies are following suit.  Having finally achieved the enormous, and rigorously serious tasks of joining NATO and the EU, Latvians are learning to relax a little and smile at all the trials and tribulations that got them there. Bišofs’ book ‘My Latvia’ delightfully captures it all.

Bišofs restless energy hasn’t abated in Latvia, even though he is no longer doing assignments for US publications like Rolling Stone and Harpers. In addition to the 100 drawings he did in 8 months for ‘My Latvia’, he has become a regular contributor to the editorial page of the Latvian daily newspaper, DIENA.  From February 9 until March 13, the Latvian State Art Museum will feature a retrospective of his work. The exhibit, entitled ‘Bišofs view’, will include over 100 drawings from all periods in his prolific career.

Given that he began his artistic career as a cartoonist for the Latvian satire magazine Dadzis 40 some years ago, it appears that he has come full circle. Not unlike some of the wistfully puzzled characters in his own drawings.

Bišofs ends his book with an unfinished drawing, commenting that no book about Latvia could ever be complete. He is already talking to the Latvian Institute about a new book. That’s good news for Bišofs fans and for Latvia.

(Published in the AirBaltic in-flight magazine, BALTIC OUTLOOK)

This rather lengthy piece on Riga was written in 2001 for a magazine called Hanseatic Business. It coincided with Riga’s 800th anniversary.

RIGA      –       An unfinished symphony on the Baltic Sea

To understand what is happening in Riga today, you simply need to remember the city legend. Since its founding 800 years ago, the people of Riga are routinely visited by a demon that asks whether the city has been completed yet. If the Rigans say that the city is ready, the demon will sink it to the bottom of the Daugava River. Rigans quickly got the hint. The Germans who founded Riga, and the Poles, Swedes, Russians and Latvians that later ruled it, always made sure that the building of Riga never came to a halt.

Since its founding in 1201, Riga has been a living symphony of diverse cultures, orchestrated by changing economic and political forces, written by people who know that they can never let the music stop.

The Riga of  2001 retains that same exuberant, unrelenting character. It is Latvia’s largest city and national capital, but it is also a great deal more. It is a city that was founded with a purpose, and despite changing identities through history, it continues to serve that same purpose in a new Europe and a globalized world.  It is the strategic heart and centre of the Baltic Sea region – Europe’s northern gateway into the Eurasian continent. More than a thousand years ago the Vikings passed through it on their way down the River Daugava to reach Ancient Russia, Byzantium and the Black Sea. Today multinational shippers, traders and financiers are using Riga once again as their preferred location in the Baltic Sea region for growing east-west, north-south business.

Riga’s role as a magnet for international business, politics and culture has never been more important than it is today as Latvia edges ever closer to the European Union and NATO, and as Riga reasserts itself once again as the cultural Pearl of the Baltic Sea. Ten years of Latvian independence has allowed Riga to take full advantage of a democratic system and an open free market economy to attract investment from around the world. This influx of foreign investment is not only renewing the old, (800-year old Riga is on UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage List) but also creating a great deal new, steadily erasing the scars and neglect of 50 years of austere Soviet rule.

The renewal process has accelerated in each year since 1991, bringing with it new business development, major infrastructure improvements and a growing sense of excitement – you can feel it in the streets that Riga is being reborn once again. U.S. President Bill Clinton made an historic visit here in 1994, and an endless stream of world leaders, international investors and artists have been visiting ever since. In May 2000 the historic Old Riga district completed a well deserved facelift, just in time for the EBRD Annual Meeting and its 2,500 European delegates, most of whom had never seen Riga before. Riga has been the talk of Europe ever since.

While some say that Latvia has been returning to Europe ever since it regained its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, those who come to Riga quickly realise that Latvia never really left. Although Stalin’s Red Army occupied the city in 1940, and the ensuing Cold War may have left it on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, Riga never lost its European essence or charm. Fifty years of Soviet brand  communism barely made a dent on Latvia’s 800 year old Western European culture. In Riga today, Europe is discovering one of its long lost jewels.

Riga is a European city from its inception. You could say that Riga first joined Europe 800 years ago, when German missionaries and armed crusaders swept into the territory of modern-day Latvia. Although ancient Latvian and Liv tribes had settled this region for centuries, Europe arrived in the person of German Bishop Albert, who, in the name of the Pope, founded Riga in1201 and began building its first churches, fortresses and walls. Native Latvians lived in and around Riga, but from its creation it was the most international of Baltic Sea cities.

It has been a city constantly in motion ever since. As a Medieval Hanseatic city from the 13^th until the 16^th centuries, it bustled with trade and commerce, and attracted wealth and cultural riches from throughout the region. Even Greek, Arab and other traders from the far Mediterranean were well known in Riga’s Hanseatic ports and markets. Under Swedish rule in the 17^th century it was the largest city in the Swedish Kingdom, eclipsing Stockholm across the Baltic Sea. Russia’s Peter the Great coveted Riga as his ‘Window to the West’ and seized it from the Swedes in 1710, setting the stage for a new development boom that would make it one of the richest and most powerful cities of the ‘westernising’ Czarist Russian Empire.

This year Riga celebrates its 800th anniversary, but exactly one century ago the ‘never ready’ Riga experienced a cultural and commercial explosion, that converted it from a walled garrison town and with a bustling river port into an elegant, modern European city. The population reached 400,000, money poured in, and the city blossomed with development, as hundreds of ornate Art nouveau (Jugendstil) apartment and office buildings sprouted up around the carefully planned parks and increasingly elegant boulevards of the city. Anchored by its grand Opera House, theatres, concert halls and museums, Riga became a playground for turn-of-the-century artists and aristocrats, who mingled freely with the politicians and businessmen that spurred the growth of the city. It was city with a lord mayor that was properly British, an administration that was firmly Czarist Russian and a business and cultural community that was prosperously German. Riga’s wealth, high fashion style and provocative elegance prompted many visitors to call it the Paris of the North.

As Riga blossomed, so did the national consciousness of the Latvian people. During this Golden Age of Riga in the second half of the 19^th century, the native Latvian population –  subjugated so long by foreign powers –  began to experience a national awakening. In the countryside and cities, Latvians began to develop an awareness of a national identity, rooted in the language, traditions, values and beliefs of their ancestral Baltic tribes. While Latvians were not fated to run their country for seven centuries, it was the local Latvian population that actually made it run. Even as Riga created endless wealth for neighbouring powers, it was Latvians who designed and built the magnificent buildings, administered the local government and private projects, and worked in the offices, shops and factories. The emergence of a Latvian national identity, fed by pride and patriotism, and led by literature and the arts, eventually created the political power necessary to establish Latvia’s full independence on November 18, 1918. Riga became a very Latvian (yet still international) city from 1918 until 1940 and became Sovietised from1940 until 1991. Today, ever-changing Riga has a fresh personna – it is Latvia’s proud contribution to the glittering capitals of a New Europe.

If Riga is a constantly shifting unfinished symphony, then in 2001, Riga celebrates what appears to be the overture to another economic, political and cultural Rennaissance, as it hosts a spectacular series of events to commemorate its 800th anniversary. From June 7 – 10 Riga will serve as the hub of the 21^st International Hanseatic Days, hosting thousands of fellow ‘Hansans’  from over a hundred cities in Europe.  From July 25 – 29, Riga displays its deeply Latvian character at the 23rd Latvian Song and Dance Festival. For four days 30,000 Latvians representing choirs and folk dance ensembles throughout the country will pour into the city to fill its historic cobblestoned streets with traditional and contemporary song and dance.

Throughout the year hundreds of concerts, exhibits, conferences and other special events will be held to celebrate Riga’s 800^th anniversary, but the festivities are expected to reach a spectacular climax at Riga’s big birthday bash  August 17 – 19. Thousands of visitors from around the world are expected in town to help Riga and the people of Latvia celebrate the 800^th birthday of this elegantly rambunctious city.

Riga’s nearly 800,000 inhabitants speak Latvian, Russian and English freely, although German and the Scandinavians languages are becoming increasingly familiar in offices, factories and shops. Riga’s educated labour force serves the ports, the financial industry, state and local government and private enterprise. Latvia’s vigorous 10-year privatisation policy for homes and buildings, has put the majority of Riga’s most lucrative properties into private hands, spurring growth and development, especially in Riga’s bustling downtown area.

Riga is Latvia’s state capital, but it is also rediscovering its role as a cultural centre for the entire Baltic Sea region. Riga has 4 television stations and 12 radio stations, broadcasting in Latvian, English and Russian, and serves as the base of operations for hundreds of independent newspapers and periodicals (including 7 women’s magazines). Latvia is a country of avid readers and the large number of book publishers and book stores in Riga attests to this fact. (The Norwegian Narvessen chain is everywhere in the city, and doing a brisk business. )

While the stately ‘White House’ on Riga Canal – the Riga Opera – has reclaimed its place as the jewel in Riga’s cultural crown, the city’s seven professional theatres, excellent concert halls, countless music clubs and all-night discos add depth and colour to Riga’s always lively night life. In the summer, the colourful squares of Old Riga are teeming with crowds in cafes and beer gardens, yet even in the cold winter months, Riga’s younger generation keeps the clubs and discos jumping all night long. This is one city on the Baltic Sea that never sleeps.

Businessmen, diplomats and tourists from the world over are discovering that Riga not only has some of the finest restaurants in Northern Europe, but a surprisingly large and fascinating variety as well. Riga’s restaurants run from elegant to exuberant, and offer French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Indian, and of course, Latvian, cuisine. And Riga has no shortage of Irish pubs and Internet cafes.

Riga also has its share of stars in the sports and entertainment world. In Latvia, hockey is the national passion, and Latvia’s men on ice are the toast of the town each time they play at home or away. Latvia’s National Hockey Team has qualified for the Olympics and is already building hopes for a medal in Salt Lake City in 2002. Yet Rigans follow the results in the professional National Hockey League as well, since NHL all-stars such as Sandis Ozolins and Arturs Irbe are leading a pack of promising young stars in the league. Basketball and soccer are equally popular, and golf is becoming the hottest new activity in the city. One 9-hole course is already operating, an 18-hole course will soon be completed and a world class golf course and country club is in the planning stages. All are just minutes from the city centre and expect to be very busy.

Richard Wagner once lived and worked in Riga (a street, concert hall and cafe are named after him) but today internationally renowned Latvian composer Peteris Vasks is writing Riga’s most powerful and expressive symphonies. The Latvian Academy of Music and the Riga Opera have produced world class soloists such as Inese Galante, Sonora Vaice, Eline Garance, Inga Kalna, Egils Silins and Ingus Petersons, all of whom are now lighting up the stages of European cities. Violinist Gidon Kramer and the Kramerata Baltica are international hits and former Rigan Mariss Jansons has established himself as one of the world’s premier orchestra conductors as the leader of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.  The New York Times recently reported that Jansons is a leading candidate to take over the helm of the New York Metropolitan Opera.

But music in Riga takes many shapes and forms, and is being heard with increasing frequency around the world. The energetic post-traditional folklore group ILGI are widely known and respected stars of the “world music” scene and Latvia’s hottest rock group, ‘Brainstorm’ (they grew up in nearby Jelgava but now live in Riga)  became a smash across Europe in 2000 when their hit single ‘My Star’ took 3^rd place at the Eurovision Song Contest. In a recent Internet poll, ‘Brainstorm’s charismatic lead singer Renars Kaupers edged out Latvia’s President Vaira Vike Freiberga as the person who has done the most to promote Latvia’s reintegration into Europe. Both deserved the honour and both continue to be two of Riga’s most beloved and popular residents.

Post-Cold War Riga has emerged as one of the fastest growing financial, industrial and transit centres in the Baltic Sea region. Passenger turnover at the Riga International Airport (which will complete a major new expansion phase in 2001) has doubled since 1993, and cargo turnover in Riga’s commercial harbour has tripled. Riga has over 22 banks banks, including branches of the German Vereinsbank, French Societe General and  Swedish Hansabank, and a representative office of the German Dresdner bank. International electronic bank transfers are routine and easy, and the ubiquitous ATM machine has become an integral part of Riga’s street scene.

Although Latvia experienced a banking crisis in 1995, thanks to the firm hand of  the Bank of Latvia, and assistance from the World Bank and other international financial structures, Latvia’s banking system today is stable and has once again earned the trust of Latvia’s residents and the international banking community. In 1999 Standard and Poor assigned Riga a “BBB Stable A3” longer term issuer credit rating, with a positive outlook to the municipality of Riga. The credit rating is largely supported by Riga’ strong financial performance, comparatively low debt burden and healthy growth prospects.

The municipality of Riga operates in a newly created economic system that is still characterised by the ongoing redistribution of service responsibilities, equalisation  payments and tax income between the Central and local authorities. Although local fiscal power is largely restricted in Latvia, giving Riga limited expenditure and revenue flexibility, the city has shown a strong commitment to retaining viable finances. Operating surpluses (revenues minus expenses) averaging 6 percent of the operating revenues have been reported each year since the city was vested with autonomous budget responsibilities in 1993.

The city has invested heavily in its engineering infrastructure (the Riga Water Project, Riga Public Transportation Project and Riga Waste Disposal and Processing Project), yet as can be expected in a city that vows never to be completed, a great deal still needs to be done.

About 80 per cent of all Latvia’s enterprises with foreign capital and approximately 50 per cent of the country’s foreign investment stock are located in Riga. Riga has been one of the leading cities in the Baltic region for attracting foreign investment, largely because of its overall economic stabilisation, successful privatisation process and good infrastructure.

The three largest segments of foreign direct investment in Riga during the 90’s have been transport, storage and communication (35%), financial intermediation (25%), and wholesale and retail trade (15%). According to a recent EU PHARE report, the ten sectors of Riga’s economy most attractive to foreign investors are:

–        manufacture of food products and beverage/food processing

–        information technologies

–        manufacture of electrical machinery

–        manufacture of fabricated metal products and machinery

–        wood processing and paper production

–        manufacture of chemicals and chemical prpoducts;pharmaceuticals

–        manufacture of textiles

–        tourism and hotels

–        transport and transit

–        finances

In 2001 Latvia has embraced the Information Age and Riga has become the centre of an ambitious plan to make Latvia the recognised regional leader in the information technology and telecommunications sector (IT & T). 150,00 Rigans study in over 200 city schools and 21 higher educational establishments in the city. Riga’s universities and technical schools are preparing over 5,000 IT&T students presently and the number of graduating IT students is expected to triple over the next 3 years. The Riga International College of Business Administrationis is now offering professional training for future E-commerce managers. The Stockholm School of Economics in Riga offers business administration courses in English, taught by Western-educated professors.

Software companies such as Lotus, Oracle, Novell and Microsoft also offer IT training programs and IBM is contributing to computer courses at the University of Latvia. In the beginning of 2001 the Latvian government announced its intention to convert to a totally e-government system, streamlining its bureaucracy and facilitating greater information and transparency in all public affairs.

This is possible in part because of the vigorous free competition in the data-communications sector. Several companies operate in this area and provide both fixed-line and wireless communications solutions. Service is provided by the large privatised local phone company, Lattelekom, and by international providers such as Telia and Equant. Approximately 35 Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) operate in Latvia, and the vast majority operate from Riga. The are undergoing rapid consolidation. The most popular types of communication are 56K and ISDN dial-up connections, although radio links are becoming popular in the business community.

Latvia has one of the highest mobile telephone penetrations rates (20%) in Eastern Europe; in Riga the rate is 35% and growing. The competition between the two existing GSM connection providers has resulted in increasingly lower prices and a license for a third lucrative GSM network operator was recently granted.

In a city like Riga, where constant growth, change and development is an 800-year tradition, the incentives for foreign investment are substantial. While 50 years of Soviet rule did add a few odd (some would say ugly) buildings to the city, communism’s greatest impact on Riga came from sheer municipal neglect of all that was already there. Grand turn-of-the-century buildings, elegant residential neighbourhoods and a highly attractive commercial district were either clumsily converted to utilitarian (often military) purposes, or simply left to gather dust. Today, with an infusion of local and foreign capital, they are all coming back to life again.

The state and municipal governments offer competitive incentive packages and projects proposals, with no restrictions on foreign investment. There is a free land market to develop and foreign companies are encouraged to participate in the privatisation process. Many major development projects have been successfully completed and the state and municipal bodies are learning how to better support the goals and interests of the private sector.

The city that can’t stop building itself has a number of ambitious projects for the early part of the 21^st century that are sure to keep the legendary demon away.  The Latvian government is still formulating a funding package for the spectacular National Library project intended for the left bank of the River Daugava, which many believe will be join the Sydney Opera House as a world famous city landmark. The city hopes to build a major international convention and trade centre nearby, which would anchor Riga’s role as a gateway between east-west/north-south trade. A new transport corridor (bridge or tunnel) is planned across the Daugava and a modern  ‘Aquapark’ complex is on the drawing boards for Riga’s extremely popular Mezaparks culture and recreational park. Mezaparks already features a massive outdoor theatre that serves as the main site for the Song and Dance Festival’s 30,000 performers and spectators, and has hosted such international stars as Joe Cocker, the Pet Shop Boys, BB King and Brian Adams.

The city of Riga is indeed on the move again. During 2001, the organisers of Riga’s 800^th anniversary are calling it  ‘the city of inspiration’.  As Latvia joins the rest of Europe in building the new Europe of the 21^st Century, it is very likely that the inexhaustible energy of this city on the Baltic Sea will no doubt serve as an inspiration to many. Its unfinished symphony plays on.

The Latvian Institute in its second year

The Latvian Institute (LI) was created in 1998 in order provide Latvia with a public information agency that would help promote Latvia’s image abroad. Like the Swedish Institute, the U.S. Information Agency and other government-supported ‘state PR agencies’, the LI provides information on all aspects of Latvian life: history, culture, politics, business, tourism, sports, nature etc.

With no office space, a miniscule staff and a small budget, the LI was put on its feet during its first year by its first Director, Dr. Vaira Vīke-Freiberga. Dr. Vīke-Freiberga was elected State President in June of 1999, and I was appointed new director in August. Since I was Latvia’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time, finishing out my 7^th year in Washington, I didn’t assume my duties at the helm of the LI until January 2000.

During the first 7 months I have focused on 3 goals for the LI: 1) Develop a long term strategy for marketing Latvia to the world, 2) Build awareness for the LI within Latvia (to ensure financial support and enlist the involvement of Latvian society, 3) Create a data base of information (first in English, then it other languages) on all aspects of Latvian life.

When Latvia has been the center of controversy in the world press, most Latvian have complained that ‘the world doesn’t understand us’. One reason for that is that we haven’t tried to explain ourselves in a language the world can understand. One of the LI’s goals is to develop a body of information in a multitude of languages on the Internet, in print, on CD-ROM’s, films, video and every other media, that can help fill the information gap.

As a former ad man I know that the most brilliant promotional campaign will flop if it doesn’t reflect the real product behind it. The product has to be the star, and Latvia has a lot to shine about. A country’s image is created by it society, culture, geographical setting, politics and economics. Latvia has its own take on each of these features, and its is the combined effect of these elements that creates its image. Those of us who live here can feel it. Those who live elsewhere are only beginning to discover it.

While the LI itself writes and produces brochures and other publications about Latvia, most of the information about Latvia in the world today comes from other sources. One of our goals is to work closely with those sources and help them tell the full story. To a businessman or commercial artist, what others say about your business is much more important than what your promotional agent writes.

One of the LI’s chief responsibilities is organizing foreign press visits to Latvia. Our staff sets up schedules, interviews and accompanies journalists to sites around the country. Since January we have organized over 15 such visits for journalists from the U.S, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Sweden, Finland, France and Germany. We have worked with French and Finnish television, German and US (NPR) radio and the CNN World Report.

As a communications consultant, the LI works with the State president’s and the State chancelleries, the Cabinet of Ministers and various government agencies such as the Latvian Development Agency and the Tourism Development Agency. We work with museums, academic institutions, associations and the private sector. We are even on the advisory board of the Postmark Committee. If there’s a group or agency in Latvia producing information that goes abroad, the LI is working with them in some capacity.

We are particularly interested in working with the Latvian arts community, because it is their work that best reflects Latvia’s rich and varied culture. We not only promote the works of artists, writers and filmmakers, but hope to work with them to create new works about Latvia itself. Somewhere in Latvia’s 3,000 year old treasury of folk songs and dances there is a Riverdance ready to explode.

The pop group Brainstorm has become Latvia’s currently best known musical export, although classical composers such as Peters Vasks and Imants Kalnins have an established international audience. Our opera singers, ballet dancers and classical musicians are already world class. The post-traditional folk fusion group ILGI are respected veterans in the ‘world music’ market and there are others waiting in the wings.

While we don’t take any credit for Latvia’s hockey success in the World Championships, we are working with the Latvian Olympic Committee and other organizations to bring attention to Latvia’s outstanding athletes. Latvia has a growing number of  players in the NHL (including all-stars Sandis Ozolins and Arturs Irbe), although we can’t compete with Lithuania’s numbers in the NBA. But watch for young Latvian stars in the women’s basketball leagues.

The LI has many projects on the horizon, which will be realized as financing is resolved. Videos, CD-ROMS and other multi-media projects are anticipated. One of our longterm goals is to find funding to translate classic Latvian literature – particularly historical novels – into English. While it is difficult to do justice in translations to Latvia’s rich heritage of poetry, novels, fairy tales and children’s stories could find an global audience if the marketing is handled right. Visma Belsevics’s autobiographical series on the young girl ‘Bille’, reads like a Latvian version of Frank McCourt’s ‘Angela’s Ashes’. For every Scottish William Wallace, Latvia has a Namejs, and Ireland’s Cuchulain is a North Sea cousin of Latvia’s Lacplesis. And if you want to know who the Danish Vikings feared a thousand years ago, you need to read the novel ‘Kurish Vikings’.

My hope is that the Latvian Institute will find the means to bring this art, literature and history to a broader audience, along with information about that is happening in politics, economics and society at large. Thanks to SVEIKS.COM and other interactive Latvian home pages around the world, the job of getting the word out has become a lot easier.