Loading ...Latvia
While “studying” at Leningrad State University, I went to Latvia twice. Once it was on one of those 30-hour stints via two overnight train rides with a few fellow students. All I remember from that trip was that it rained the whole time and that Riga looked almost western to us in comparison to St. Petersburg. They had these Penguin ice cream shops that looked like Ben and Jerry’s or some other western chain. The streets were clean, the people polite, the food edible.
Our next trip was with the entire (thirty-plus person) group of students and resident directors. We stayed at a nice hotel and toured some monuments, and then somehow ended up on the shore of the Gulf of Riga. Although it was December, the beach was still a tourist destination and there were a fare number of people walking in heavy coats along the beach and even an old woman going for a swim.
Being a tourist destination, there was a guy set up to take pictures of people at the beach for a small fee. He was apparently helping someone when an Asian tourist (Russian) came up to me and started asking how much it was to take a picture of her. I was a bit confused and then figured out that she thought that I was the camera guy, since I had my Nikon FE2 hanging around my neck! At this point the real photo guy realized what was happening and came over to clear things up. It was all very funny and we all had a good laugh about it and I ended up taking their picture together that I still have. Still on the beach, a few of us ducked into this little café that was on the beach for a bite to eat.
The whole memory of the place is a bit surreal. We were only there for a couple of days, so the little pieces I do remember seem odd and I might not even remember a lot of this but for the photos I still have. I will endeavor to post some eventually, but none are scanned and digital photography had not really come about (at least commercially) when I was over there. So now I am faced with the mammoth task of scanning in negatives and prints from the 30+ years of my life before digital! If anyone knows of a cheap service where bulk scanning of prints and negatives can be made, I’d love to hear about them!