Thank you for having me, Riga.

My internship with Liden and Denz has come to an end; in fact, I am already back down under (Australia). It is hot here; yesterday it was forty degrees, and a thunderstorm descended in the afternoon. Riga- her snow, warm cafes and bars, churches, parks and Russian whispering- feels very distant. I miss it.
It is a wonderful thing to find a city in which you are not caught in the past (as home can be) or hovering as an outsider, a tourist. Riga has become a second home, a future home, potentially. I was nervous before winter, but as I sit here in the warm sun reflecting on the past two months I recall only the wonderful- the tragically wonderful. I recall every morning waking and pulling myself out from under the covers with considerable effort. I recall the coffee and porridge that followed. I recall how, every day late to class, I walked to school with the cool air in my lungs and the frown of a local on my face. How I miss those frowning Latvians. I recall Nadia, Julia, and Maria in reception. Always discussing something urgent; laughing, sighing. They are like parents in a friendly home, and if only because of this talking and good humour I never felt alone in Riga. Then came class; four hours of grammatical and verb-motioned suffering but it sweet suffering, glorious suffering. Where else can you listen for so long to a patient and kind teacher ask you a hundred times to correct the same mistake? and in the classroom too there is laughter, kindness, and the curiosity natural between strangers who have travelled from distant or near countries to study Russian. I recall fondly the 20 minute halftime break and standing around the coffee machine talking with fellow students; about trips they took on the weekend, museums they visited in Riga or bars, or relationships…
And then lunch. LIDO. LIDO, which I recently wrote about, is the first port of call, and LIDO never happens alone, unless you want it to. You see Liden & Denz is not a typical school for the reason that everyone studying there has already gone against some common grain; they have chosen Russian over Spanish at university; they have travelled through Central Europe and decided to return there with a familiar language. They have read Dostoevsky and been freed by him of the inexplicability of their suffering. “I will read him in the original,” one student told me, “that is my only goal.” The strangeness of the choice is sufficient impetus for friendship, and friendships between strange people, I am sure you will agree, are the most beautiful, the most honest.
I recall the nights spent with a film or a novel and the soft, meandering melancholy that comes with watching the sun fade (it does not ‘set’) at 15:30 in the afternoon. It is not the beach and endless sun which makes the soul loud, but this darkness. Many evenings this sentiment encouraged me to venture out, perhaps to the Orthodox Church, or to the bar across the street. We did not speak but I got to know people this way; the woman selling candles in the Church, the man serving beer in the bar. We knew each other as strangers, but we understood each other as people in the same winter, the same night. I miss Riga immensely; it has changed me, and helped me to understand myself. In Riga my Russian improved immeasurably, but so too did my soul. There I converted religions and, last week, I got engaged.
I am not in the business of giving advice (I am in need of it). Still, I want to say this; head to Riga, and stay there a while. Go there not as a visitor, but as a pilgrim in your mad or necessary quest to learn Russian, and when you finally arrive take note of your surrounds and surrender, if only a little, to them. Don’t run in shorts in the middle of winter; listen to the woman who tells you you will catch a cold, and drink tea and eat Napoleon Cake with her instead. Don’t look for the food you eat at home; go to LIDO, and cut a new hole in your belt because reader, if you recline into this fascinating and likely very foreign city and way of living you might, as I have, recline into something strangely familiar. Maybe you were always meant to be here.
Late night сырок 🙂
Take care, and until next time,
Laef.