Молчание- золото
Silence is golden
To continue what has become a series on Riga’s Orthodox heritage- an aspect of Latvian and Russian culture which, in my opinion, ...
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 ...
Soviet cinema is a wonderful thing. Bygone, but familiar and very human, it is distinguished also by its range of expression, from the intensity of Tarkovsky's Stalker, to the ...
Friends, a short one from me on this sunny Saturday,
A quick google search, “best bar in Purvciems” yields no results. This post intends to remedy that by sharing a few ...
Yesterday, Joolee, a student from Alaska, and I walked through Riga's Moscow District to reach the Grebenshchikov Old Believers' House of Prayer. Old Believers represent a ...
It was raining and windy in Riga today. After class, having studied new verbs (to ‘resemble’, among others), myself and a few other students went to lunch at ...
A few weeks ago I was in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and I used the metro. The Soviet metro. I’d seen similar things on Bald and Bankrupt’s videos but, in real life, Kosmonavtlar ...
Dostoevsky- a life in letters
There is an inexpressible but irresistibly clear divide between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, perhaps the two greatest and most renowned Russian ...
Lest you be caught unawares, the football season is underway in Latvia; Riga FC has already played 15 games this year (at the time of writing). What? Football in Latvia? In ...
Above; the manuscript Vidin Miscellany, written in 'Middle Bulgarian' circa 1360
Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ...
(view from a Khrushchevka in Purvciems)
“Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”
- Vladmir Nabokov
It’s raining in Riga. According to ...
It is spring here in Riga. The rows of flowers in the central parks have come into bloom; the buildings, once oppressed by the grey winter, are once more colourful in evening ...
