Baltic Trip 2012 starts in Riga

My sabbatical trip to the Baltics started in OHare, where I did not realize my first leg was with American, so I did not fly out of the International terminal. The American flags surrounding a globe seemed a weird send-off for my trip.

Birojnica

Because of a need to get to Tallinn, before the National Library closed for repairs, I started out with only a few days in Riga. I got settled with my relatives, got a local cell phone I can use for the summer, got reacclimated to the public transportation system, that now takes e-talons - a card that an automated reader reads and tells you how many rides you have left. I was wondering how they can check those, but one night a couple of patrol women got on board and my card read the right thing. The young man in front of me was not so lucky, he hadn't paid and did not have the 5 LVL for the fine, so he was escorted off the tram. I wandered around Riga and actually got to meet with some friends and various librarians in those few short days. I found that all the cafe's have wireless Internet access, so I will probably be wandering from one to the next, but I already found I like working in Birjonica - Office cafe, where it is really set up for work - tables and chairs for working, not really eating, and if you pay a fee you get free coffee and printing. You can meet with people there, talk on the phone, but otherwise it is fairly quiet, so you can get work done.

Orthodox Cathedral

Strangely enough, my first impression of Riga was the shiny domes and roosters, crosses and other decorative tower toppings. I may make a Facebook photo album just of towers. The few days I was there were mostly sunny and warm. The lilacs and chestnuts were in full bloom, tulips and lilly of the valley coming to the end of their blooming time. Since it has only been four years since I was last here, and since there has been an economic crisis during that time, I did not see much new at first glance, except for the rising new National Library of Latvia, which in time I will discuss elsewhere.

Chestnut in bloom

I am writing this towards the end of my second week into my travels, as I think I was just too tired and overwhelmed, and then for a while I could not figure out how to record these travels - create a separate blog for this trip, or divide impressions up between my existing blogs for travel, libraries and the Baltic Research Handbook. I finally choose to go with the separate blogs, but now I have a lot of catching up to do. Plus it takes time to cull photos, and edit them for the web. I believe I will put up a few illustrative photos here, and put more up into Facebook.