An (ordinary) day in the life of a student at Liden & Denz
I am writing to you from my apartment in Purvciems
I will concede that, just now, over one ‘Piebalgas alus’ (beer on RIMI discount, not Latvia’s best), and with Bob Dylan’s ‘Don’t Think Twice’ playing from my phone, rows of soviet apartment blocks caught, outside my window, in high June light, I was at a loss as to what to write today. This blog has covered a lot, already. You’ve seen Riga, much of it. You understand something of the culture, perhaps, for good reason, a little less of the politics, but I’m wondering— do you know what it feels like? That, after all, is the aim of any correspondent; to transmit not merely the brute facts, but the sentiment— the idea of the thing. Because, before I first came here last year, the thing I most wanted to know was; what is it really like to study in Riga? Will I be happy? Will my Russian improve? Will I be lonely?
What you want to know, in short, is what a day here really looks like, not on a schedule— not even how it should look— but how it really goes. Let me tell you what an ordinary day studying Russian at Liden and Denz Riga looks like. Let me tell you about today, which, from my four months here, stands out as spectacularly ordinary.
6:50 A.M. That was the time I set my alarm. It was not the time I woke up. At the height of summer the sun does not set much before 22:30 if you’re lucky, and at about 04:30, at least in Purvciems, the seagulls begin to argue (their eggs are currently hatching, I’m told). The seagulls, if you didn’t know, are enormous in the Baltic states, almost humanoid. One in particular sits with the cats outside my local Rimi supermarket, in an apparent attempt to elevate its status on the food chain.
By 7:20 I was awake, proper. I went over to fix a coffee, opened Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, and took a few pages with my ‘Rimi selection’ Italian roast (in cup— it’s the closest thing to Italian coffee in this part of the world). I then got back into bed, not sleeping, but perhaps out of a vain desire to prolong the night.
“No, this won’t do,” I sighed, pausing midway through Solzhenitsyn’s arrest. Time to prepare for class.
“At least,” I thought, “I won’t be late to class today, there’s over an hour until 9am.”
I made myself some avocado on rye bread (sprinkled with granulated garlic), brushed my teeth in the kitchen sink, changed, and went out into the yard. The weather was truly marvellous this morning, and already some children played on the outdoor gym equipment, to the dissatisfaction of the young fellow trying to get his morning pull-ups in. This yard has been a place of quiet refuge for me. On Sunday evenings I come here with a notebook and a beer and write on a bench while the ‘local men’ enjoy Russian rock from a cheap speaker and drink more than their wives know. We sit opposite each other, and, without ever having spoken, share in Dostoevsky’s quiet biography of man (“every man must have a place to go”, or something similar, was said in Crime and Punishment). I walked past Minska shopping centre, over a dozen fresh potholes— moat for the bolt drivers— nodded to the seagull playing cat, the babushka setting up her flower stall, and the two men already sharing a beer and talking heatedly, and boarded the number 23 bus, already full. When I first came to Riga I couldn’t understand why everyone, especially old people, pushed in front of each other to get onto a trolley, or ahead in a line at the shop. Neither could I reckon why people took a seat for their bag, or didn’t sit on the left seat to make the right one free.
Here’s the thing, in the Soviet Union, when supplies were low, it was no good to come home to your loved one and announce that you had failed to secure bread because you preferred to observe social ettiequte. And as for the bag? Just ask, it’s not a ‘snub’, it’s just the fact that I’ll use this seat for my convenience if you’re content standing. Unless you think me a mind reader?
9:20, I arrived to school. I went upstairs, to reception, admittedly hoping to retain my English brain for a few minutes, to find Nadia and Yulia speaking with some intensity in Russian. Hurriedly, I mutedly assented to whatever was asked of me, took a ‘1/2 espresso’ (what we call a long black in Australia) from the coffee machine, and made for the library, where I have lessons at the moment. Anna was waiting. Oh yes. She wanted to know my ‘novosti’ (news).
This is the first part of most lessons— conversation. Often we are asked to prepare a news story to read to the class, followed by a question to encourage conversation (not, what do you think?, as Anna is prone to emphasise; мы ничево не думаем! (we don’t think anything!)). On my good days this text appears well ordered in my notebook. On my normal day, it comes into existence while another student reads their novosti. Today I talked with some trepidation about new language laws in Latvia.
Come about 10:20, we had moved onto our first exercise in the textbook, to be interpreted by the 20 minute intercession at 10:40. I went outside the building to the park near the school to catch some sun. Children in bright vests were playing with their teachers on the playground equipment. Nearby were dedushkas taking money from tourists under the pretence of chess. I wonder how they get away with this, one need only look at the size of their money belts to understand that this is no hobby for them.
Cold war counterfactuals in Riga centre
11:05. Back to class, to continue with verbs about cooking and food. Oh Anna, I was just starting to use the last verbs! Never mind, there is only one way; brute force. Yes, if you’re actually going to speak this language, you must be like курица приготовленная в приятном соусе (chicken cooking in a nice sauce). Above all— and this is something I am only just beginning to appreciate— you must want to cook, not merely be present for the cooking. And that takes considerable effort. That is why, if you succeed, after lunch at LIDO you will likely, as I did today, lapse in and out of sleep on the couch at home. Though, I did step into the St. Alexander Nevsky Church, which is near my bus stop, before that happened. It’s a beautiful church, by the way, constructed, I am told, to commemorate the defeat of Napoleon.
St. Alexander Nevsky Church, constructed c 1820.
17:30. I woke up from my slumber, Russian intermixed with pages of the Archipelago, images of Australian surf, and cleaned the apartment (not much to it, there’s less than 20m2). I opened the door to my balcony and wrote something in my diary (after class you will experience an allergy to further study, and, on some days, to the thought of cooking).
18:30. Well, that would be an hour ago. That would be this very cheap tasting beer, and the faint scent of cigarettes issuing from my neighbours balcony. No, I really shouldn’t (at 4eur, an Australian is introduced to moral quandaries unknown at home). Oh, maybe one.
I send a text a fellow student to see if they’d care to join me for a drink in the city centre, and fix myself some tacos. The sun is still marvellous, the yard still noisy with children and politics.
***
Well, друзья, it’s now Friday. We weren’t out late last night, only until sunset.
I was very nervous before arriving to Riga. Though those fears have never been realised, it is safe to say that whatever I envisioned from sunny down under was nothing quite like what studying Russian in Riga is. I suppose I did picture something wonderful; I suppose I didn’t know that wonderful would look like this.
There will be the times you meet someone fascinating, the nights spent celebrating events you were previously unaware existed. There will be the gradual, and complete, transformation of your language skills. There will be trips to the Latvian countryside and neighbouring countries. However the beauty lies not merely in those moments, but in the ordinary, everyday experience of life in this city, in the feeling of anonymity, the smile you share with a babushka whose dog walks in front of you on the way to school. It lies, of course, in the expanse that is a summer night, as much as it does in the long winter, a beer near a soviet apartment block, and stammering through one’s novosti of a Thursday morning.
I have only a few articles more to write. But now, it is Friday night. It’s raining, I think I’ll carry on with Solzhenitsyn.
Пока пока!
Laef, currently studying Russian with Liden & Denz Riga.
