They used to call Riga "Little Paris", or so I'm told. Apparently this is because in the early 20th century, Riga was following on the heels of Paris in terms of its art nouveau architecture (called Jugendstil in these parts). The Jugendstil was something that I found spellbinding when I first lived in Riga for an extended period in the 1990s. It's the fact that you can live in Riga for years, but still you can walk through the centre of town, look up at the buildings around...
...we're almost there! After so long struggling with this house project we are close to moving in (and our bank balance is close to being empty!). The size and the scale of this, our "first home" renovation, has run us off our feet. We do nothing else except for eat, breathe and sleep this house. Oh, and between breaths go to work and keep the kids fed. The scale of the project has been the most difficult - because instead of buying and renovating a small family home,...
Miraculously, the temperature has climbed to above zero in the last week. The air is moist and earth-scented, and the huge piles of dirty snow everywhere are starting to slowly, slowly melt. Roofs are dripping, and birds are singing, and you can go outside and forget your gloves, or scarf, or hat, and not be in danger of frostbite! We are all elated that there is an end in sight to the six months of winter we get every year. So much so that we took a break from endless trips...
We are pretty strict about TV with our kids. We limit the time they can watch per day, and try to feed them some kind of wholesome, educational downloaded children's tv (downloaded, because Latvian children's tv is pathetic, to be brutally honest - the worst quality cartoons overdubbed by a monotone Latvian voice over, so that you can still hear bits of the original language underneath). On weekends and Friday nights the guys get to watch kids' movies - Disney and...
I have loved metro systems as long as I can remember. Those sleek underground trains that rumble through the basements of big cities. I love the fact that every metro is different – each with its own interpretation of efficient people-moving through functional design, public service announcements and stick figure diagrams. I love the metro maps with colour-coded lines, and the fact that in most cities, once you are in the subway tunnel you are free to...
