,

Spring excursion and a heroic deed


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 to the hardware store to go on an excursion today.

We obviously don't get out enough these days (except for those trips to the hardware store), because the boys got SO excited before the trip .  Before we knew what was happening they had each packed backpacks with all the essentials needed for an excursion: chips, nuts, a peanut butter sandwich, a jam jar full of water, a towel, a tennis ball, toy binoculars and a mobile phone. Hmmmm.

We went to Ligatne nature park outside of Riga, where you can see Latvian native animals in big enclosures in the forest.  Morning was spent slipping and sliding over 5 kms of icy track, stopping for snack-breaks every 500 metres or so (we managed to stock up on a few more picnic essentials on the shop on the way through - to complement the sandwich and the jam jar of water).  It was glorious - one of those days where you are so grateful for the things you used to take for granted:  for the sun, and the warm(ish) air, and not wearing gloves, and handrails on slippery outdoor staircases.  As opposed to other times we have been there, today we managed to see almost all of the animals - other times there are some that are hiding so effectively that you can't spot 'em.  The best was when we saw a beautiful lynx - orange with black spots, pointy eared, short tail - in the distance, cleaning the fur of her kittens (is that what you call baby lynxes?) with her tongue.

Another dramatic moment was when Mikus lost his glove over the side of the WOLF enclosure.  Murphy's law. There we stood, looking at the forlorn glove about 2.5 metres below us over the edge of the walkway, with a serious-looking wolf pacing on sentry duty nearby.  Of course, Mikus lets up an enormous howl that rivals that of any wolf , and follows it up with piteous crying and snivelling, gaining rapidly in intensity.  Although Mikus' favourite gloves are mismatched (one blue, one green) he is pretty attached to them (or anything else that gets lost, broken, or needs to be thrown away), and both Jem and I knew that we were in for a long afternoon of hysteria if we didn't do something.  I was about to give the "we'll tell the zookeeper and when he retrieves it, we'll drive out and pick it up again, it'll be o.k. darling" speech, when Jem suddenly ripped his shirt open to reveal the "S" symbol beneath.  As I calmed the distraught children, Jem ran off into the forest and came back with a long, hooky stick, climbed half over the side of the enclosure, leaned down as far as he could and after a few anxious moments with all of us shouting "You're crazy"!  "Watch out!"  "Dad, don't!", he retrieved the glove.  One of those moments where you suddenly understand those situations you hear about in the news - you know, the ones where the guy gets mauled by bears after SCALING THE SAFETY FENCE to get into the enclosure at the zoo.  Well lucky for us, things turned out ok!

The rest of the walk was comparatively uneventful - lots of wild boar, moose, foxes, bears, all happily sitting in the melting snow, soaking up a bit of sun.  Like us, I think they were happy for a bit of spring in the air.


The peanut butter sandwich gets eaten


Gotta love them wild boar


Fishing for wolves.  Um, gloves.


The still-teary and relieved Mik with his hero

Read More 0 comments

The latest craze at our place


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 others.  There are certain films that we have tried to shield the boys from, because we know what the consequences will be:  anything with a mild testosterone level and physical action will instantly be replayed in our lounge room, with the boys in the starring roles.  Tiss is usally the good guy, while Mikus relishes in the evil laughs and sinister trickery of the bad guy role.
It was like that with the (original) Star Wars trilogy - although the boys' uncle Joel is a star wars NUT, we didn't let the boys watch it for years. I remember a touching and humorous scene, with the boys both curling up with Uncle Joel for him to tell them a story:  "Once upon a time, there was a young, poor boy who lived with his mother in a desert, on a planet called Tattooine...".  You get the picture.  My boys knew the whole plot of Star Wars before they had seen the film.  Finally on Tiss' 6th birthday, we opened Pandora's box and let them watch Star Wars. It has since (predictably) become a household obsession.  The boys have long, boring conversations about the technical specifications of different types of droids, or want me to discuss  Darth Vader and why he couldn't survive without his special helmet on.  The most coveted toys and games are Star Wars themed, and they have even gone to the lengths of making up their own Star Wars episodes to make home movies around the apartment.
So we knew that we had to be careful in what other appealing sci fi/mildly violent movies we let them watch. One show that Jeremy always knew was a danger, was Monkey Magic. Anyone out there old enough to remember Monkey Magic?  A Japanese TV series about a monkey spirit, pig spirit, water spirit and Buddhist monk travelling over China, meeting all sorts of creatures and evil ghosts on the way - and, of course, fighting them.  Jem remembers watching Monkey Magic as a youngster and promptly finding an old broomstick at home, colouring it with felt pen and organizing Monkey staff fighting tournaments with his younger brothers.  Ah, the memories.
Well, while I was in Moscow, Monkey Magic was aired at our place.  With the obvious results.  The roles have been divied up and staff fights are held in all corners of the house at the slightest opportunity.  Mikus is Monkey, Tiss has begrudgingly taken on that of Pigsy, Jem is Sandy, and I've opted for the Monk Tripitaka ("that's because Tripitaka doesn't fight, and tells everyone what to do", commented Tiss).  So far, not too many bouts have ended in tears.  Gotta say that although I'm not in on the fights, I'm enjoying snatching a glance at Monkey episodes - they are pretty hilarious - and am loving the conversations at our place, about how Monkey summons his cloud, and who Siddartha is, and whether Tripitaka is a girl or a boy...  I'm just waiting for the conversation to start comparing Monkey with Star Wars.  It's any day now.  Who would win in a fight?  Monkey with his staff vs Obi Wan with his light saber...



Read More 3 comments

The end of a love affair



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 chop and change and jump on any train racing to different parts of the city.  The best parts of the metro is the wait on the platform – staring down the black tunnel, the anticipation, beginning to feel a breeze of stale air, and then the sound of the carriages reverberating in the tunnel, and small beams of headlights racing towards you until the train arrives with a gale of wind and the whine of brakes, spilling commuters out as new ones jump in.  I love the fact that the subway in New York is a steam-punk rattling  wonder, with decorative tiles around the names of the stations, and that it differs so much from space-age Washington subway, which is more like something out of a silver-clad futurist movie.  Whenever I travel I make sure I take a ride on the local metro to get a feel for  the local lifestyle, and the city’s very own inimitable metro styling.  If I was fabulously rich I would do a tour of the world’s metros, taking millions of photos along the way.

Spending the last four days in Moscow, though, I very nearly met the end of my metro love affair.  The metro in Moscow is serious stuff – a complex network of multi-level tunnels that act as the veins and arteries of Moscow, pumping the 11 million inhabitants to their various destinations.  The Moscow metro  is not optional – its a necessity of life.  The city is huge and sprawling, and traffic in the metropolis is a nightmare.  The only conceivable way of getting anywhere is by descending to the depths on that long escalator and joining the grey masses underground.  So that is what we did when in Moscow – we spent a good deal of time navigating the metro to get to our various concerts and tourist stops.  The crowds down there are well-behaved, the trains come every 30 seconds or so.  All of the signage is in Cyrillic, which was daunting at first, and as you stand on the escalators you are subjected to recordings of community service announcements recorded by a friendly Russian lady: about house fires and how they start, about how to be considerate of your neighbor, of the time of year and the corresponding Russian tradition.  It’s all good. But at some point, after spending your second hour down there that day, you can’t help thinking of parallels with moles, or ants, or other tunnel dwelling hoards that see daylight rarely.

 Built as palaces of culture for the masses during the Soviet era, many of the metro stops are decorated with soviet realist sculpture – each station with its own unique treatment.  Similarly to St Petersburg, it is not unusual to step off the train into a large hall with brassy chandeliers above head, or stone columns carved with images of hammers and sickles, children dressed as red pioneers, or soviet advancements of technology.  Some of the stations have huge backlit stained glass windows sporting art nouveau flowers and red stars.  Others  had over sized bronze models of women and children as revolutionary fighters sporting Kalashnikovs.  I took a few photos of some of the stations but didn’t go crazy – mainly because a slight feeling of claustrophobia and unease that I had, on account of the crowds around me, security cameras and the occasional militia man with a dog parading past.  It was partly also a feeling of distaste mixed with awe, as I looked at art works so obviously created for mass brainwashing, and as much as I like to laugh and wonder at the kitsch of soviet propaganda, the sheer scale and efficiency of the metro system and its ideological dressing was frightening. 





My trip to Moscow also involved some above-ground touring as well – including singing at the Latvian embassy with the ambassador in attendance, a visit to the classic Tretyakov gallery and the obligatory red square and tour of St Basil’s cathedral.  My dilemma about seeing the embalmed Lenin was solved for me, as apparently he is freshening up, and only open to the public some time in April.  Can’t say I was too disappointed though, because with the metro visits I certainly got more than enough soviet kitsch for one visit.


All locked up and not accepting visitors.  Vladimir Ilyich's tomb.


  Fancy a matrioshka doll?  Or three?

Read More 3 comments

One of the perks


Affected by the GFC, our friends have rented out one of the rooms in their apartment to a German student on some kind of university exchange program - to make ends meet in the short-term.  They befriended the student on Facebook, and were amused by his first status update after arriving here: "Latvia is just like Africa, only colder".  ..... What the fuck?!  I am intrigued about the parallels this young German sees between Latvia and Africa.  I am the first to admit that people here don't have the earning capacity they do in the West, but besides that... I'm stumped.  I'm wondering if our relatives currently living in Africa, who have also lived in Latvia have to say - any ideas?  Mara, Joel???  I'm guessing the "poverty" in Latvia has been a challenge for Hans (not his real name), and yes, obviously there are some drawbacks to living here instead of the "West" - but there are also so many perks!

One of the perks I have been considering lately, is that in comparison to living in Australia, we get to travel internationally when living in Latvia.  I mean, a lot.  A month doesn't go by without Jem or I having to get in a plane to go somewhere for a work meeting or what have you.  Family travel happens less frequently, of course, because we are the ones who are paying - but we still do get to see different corners of the world with our kids occasionally.  Mind you, travelling for work is not all it's cracked up to be, as many of you would know.  Most of the time you work from the moment you arrive until the moment you leave, except for the free hour or two you spend frantically trying to find a toy-shop to buy some kind of Chinese import that you can take back as presents for the kids.  That and the fleeting city tour you get out of the cab window on the way back to the airport.

I remember when I was little we travelled internationally with my parents a bit - because dad was an academic and tended to get sabbaticals in other universities.  From this experience I was well and truly bitten by the travel bug, and I remember having "career" conversations with my parents, something along the lines of.... Them: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Me: "I don't care, as long as I can travel overseas lots".  Them:  "You do realize that with most jobs you don't get to travel overseas. Most people in Australia live in one place, and work in one place, you have been lucky to travel this much but you can't sustain that in adulthood".  This, of course, was in the day when there were no budget airlines, and the internet wasn't invented yet.  There was no such thing as working prolonged periods from home, or easily booking hotels (because you had to do it by phone, with no internet hotel listings to refer to...).  I was distraught at the prospect of no more jetting overseas!  Luckily for me, lots of things changed.

Latvia is positioned in such a way that you can easily fly to Western Europe, but the interesting East is right there as well.  And my singing group Saucejas has taken full advantage of this, singing in concerts all over the place.  This Sunday we are flying to Moscow to sing at a Latvian embassy do, and I'm not sure if I'm excited or trepidatious or both.  I can't say Moscow has ever been on my list of "places to see" - St Petersburg was lovely a few years ago, but the lure of Red Square hasn't quite overcome my squeamishness around the cyrillic alphabet.  Mind you, when I found out we were invited I had a moment of "got to see Lenin in his glass coffin before the put him underground"!  But now that I am actually faced with standing in line outdoors in sub-zero temps, to see the mummified corpse of a man whose ideas wreaked so much havoc on my country and family, I'm kinda losing my enthusiasm.  Dunno.  I guess I'll see how I feel when I get there.

So that's the first trip of the year, with quite a few more before midsummer. One of these will be a special trip - meeting Jem's parents SOMEWHERE to celebrate Jem's big FOUR-OH in early June.  We were thinking Marrakesh, but watching the news in the last week is making us wonder if it's such a good idea!  Wherever it will be, though, we are grateful for the proximity of so many amazing places to where we currently live.  Even if where we live IS like Africa, only colder.

PS. Pic above is from getting on the plane after a daytrip to Helsinki with a friend in August last year

Read More 1 comments
, ,

Manor houses and more minus degrees

 
It's been cold the last couple of days.   I mean REALLY cold.  So cold, that you can feel your nose hairs snap-freeze the minute you leave the house.  So cold, that the morning radio has notified us that kids in the earlier grades don't have to go to school.  That is, minus 20 degrees celsius or under.  I'm a mean mother though, and have made the kids go to school anyway. In Oz, I could totally understand the concept that you shouldn't be forced to go to school if the temperature is over 40 degrees, and you have to sit in a demountable building with a corrugated iron roof with no air conditioning.  But here, although it's cold outside, we drive our kids to school in heated cars, and there's ample heating indoors....  so why stay home?
Best thing about days with temps this low, is that the constant thick layer of grey cloud actually clears, and you are guaranteed of a gorgeous blue-sky day.  This meant I had a chance to get a reasonable shot of Mikus in front of his kindergarten yesterday.  His kindy moved house last november, and now resides on the ground floor of this old manor, which is just two blocks away from our new house.  It was designed by a prominent Latvian architect Eižēns Laube in the early 20th century, and is the most spectacular wooden house on the block (ok, ok, it also looks a bit like the Addams family live there).  Needless to say, I/we were thrilled!  The kindy is a lot more spacious and beautifully renovated, and best part is the park across the road, with well-worn sledding tracks and a pirate ship playground.  What more could a boy and his wooden-architecture loving mum ask for?

Read More 1 comments
,

Sunday afternoon, minus 10 degrees


Seeing as we've had another cold snap, and it was minus 10 degrees yesterday (Sunday) morning, we decided to go for a swim at the local indoor pool.  We don't do it very often, as it is a whole intense post-Soviet experience, and not for the feint hearted.  Mind you, if we wanted to pay 25 Ls ($50 AUD) we could take the family to the local spa pool, complete with 10 different types of saunas, complimentary smelly body soap, a overheated swimming pool and jacuzzi, mosaic tile version of Klimt's "The Kiss" and waterfalls....  but no.  Not for us!  We're tough.  (And cash-strapped).  We opted for the local school sports complex pool.  To cut a long story short - this involved a fact-finding mission of ringing the pool, only to get hung up on by the crabby attendant, pre-defined swimming times of 45 minutes with no entry permitted at between times, taking along your obligatory pool slippers, being growled at by the pool "Commandant" (yes, her job title was actually "commandant") because we offered to pay in cash not with a card, traipsing down into the soviet basement to find the changerooms, having to shower naked in a communal basement shower room with loads of other eager swimmers (mostly pensioners), being mildly scolded for not all having the obligatory swimming caps, being assigned a lane in which to swim UP and BACK.  Coaxing kids into the less-than-warm water.  Being chastised by the aforementioned pensioners because my children were not swimming UP and BACK but blocking the road by duck diving, swimming OVER the lane and stopping half way.  A quick stop in the sauna to warm up and get my kids' lips back to a normal colour other than blue, another naked shower with the ladies, and then, to one of the most fun parts of the trip.   The hair dryers.  You gotta love those retro hair dryers all along the wall in a row.
Now this may sound like a complaining kind of post, but in actual fact I would call it more descriptive.  The culture shock of pool rules and regulations has worn off for us many years ago - you just get a thick skin and go with the flow, ignore the really stupid parts, and have fun.  The boys certainly loved swimming (despite blue lips), and we decided that we definitely have to go swimming again soon.  Only I might save up the 25 Ls for the spa pool next time...



Hear no evil...

Read More 4 comments
,

King Coco and Bananery escape the clutches of evil Sticky Man


Our apartment has become a more important place since we've had kids - a space that is practically the entire world for the little people who live in it. Since we are about to move house, I've been evaluating  this art deco, not-renovated-since-the-late-soviet-period apartment, and what it will mean for the boys to leave it. I've come to appreciate the world of play that children create: their  tendency to re-label what is around them, giving special meaning to certain places around the house and making up kid legends about them.

Over the years Matiss and Mikus have woven a tale that spreads over the entire apartment.  They call their game "Toyworld" (imaginative name?  Methinks not), of which all their toys are inhabitants (obviously).  All of the rugs on the floor constitute the earth.  The spaces of brown Soviet lino between the rugs are sea, on which friendly and not-so-friendly pirates roam (as they do).  The king of Toyworld is a meerkat  called Toby which is Tiss' oldest and dearest stuffed toy.  There is a neighbouring world, called "Puffy world", which is confined to our bed with its big fluffy duna (naturally).  The king of Puffy world is King Coco, who is an anonymous Lego man.  I have no idea what features of this Lego man make him King Coco, but the boys can tell him apart from the others.  He goes missing for weeks at a time.  "Here's King Coco!" I yell, when opening a cupboard under the bookshelf and finding a Lego man with a crown and armour on.  "Mum, THAT'S not King Coco", they complain in disgust.  Previous versions of Toyworld have been destroyed by various natural disasters , including a monster tornado, and the most evil of bad guys, "Sticky man", who also goes missing for weeks at a time and then appears to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting Toy world inhabitants.

It's weird which toys get a special place in the games - not necessarily the newest and coolest ones.  For example, out of the many matchbox cars, the most legendary is "Bananery" (photo above), a battered yellow sportscar which is one of my old matchbox cars from the 1970s.  I have trouble keeping up with developments in Toyworld, and occasionally have to fill in Jem when he gets home from work, or am surprised to find a pile of yellow lego bricks (Toyworld gold) in an unexpected corner of the bathroom - obviously the scene of some deal or treasure trove or robbery.

I can't help wonder how Toyworld will transpose to our new house.  The boys have expressed concern about this, although lately they have been adding certain features of the house  to the story.  Today I was happy to see them playing with the dimmer switches in the kitchen when we visited the house - great excitement there because now Toyworld could experience sunrise, daylight, then dimming into twilight.  There was also a sigh of relief when they found out there would be carpet in their bedroom, and it would be blue-ish.  Dunno why, but obviously fits some important Toyworld criteria.

So Toyworld - and our real world - is about to undergo a big change. I'm sure the new house will be quickly assimilated into a new version of their play-scape.  We'll have to wait and see how.


Couldn't resist putting up this pic of the kid's Latvian "happy meals" today -  bees made from mashed potato and meat patties from our favourite Latvian restaraunt Lido... gotta love those decorative tomato sauce feet and feelers...  They are preserved strawberries swimming in the glasses of strawberry juice.  "Taste like rat's brains" was Tiss' comment.

Read More 4 comments

Category

  • (20)
  • (67)
  • (9)
  • (1)
  • (13)
  • (11)
  • (45)
  • (19)

Followers