Reflections of a Foreign Service couple posted in Riga, Latvia.

What could we possibly tell you about Barcelona? We were there all of five nights, not even a full scale on this great and effervescent fish of a city; hardly long enough to approach any just orientation. Yet already we’d love to return, should ever the chance arise anew. What a place it is.

We may have come a week late, in fact – Spanair’s abrupt implosion nearly kept us on the ground in Riga, among its myriad and more substantial consequences, and locals assured that the weather had been much better only days previous. This last emerged as more of a theme than we may have liked, actually – we’d mostly wanted to see some real live sunshine, after most of a winter in the Baltics, imagining that Barcelona would be a fine place for it. Somehow this became a furtive pursuit.

We first learned of Spanair’s demise only last Sunday, going online to print the boarding passes for Monday, but after some diligent sleuthing Ker scored us tickets on a Finnair flight through Helsinki. It became a 12-hour journey, long story short. Barcelona’s inviting airport is vast and well-lit and quiet late on a weekday, happily. The local train & metro combination was also flawless and surprisingly reasonable, after our experiences in London.

Stowing our backpacks at the recommendable Silver Aparthotel, we went out for dinner: it was midnight, but we found a place. We were staying in the Gracia neighborhood, a more low key residential area just up the hill from Las Rambla. Over the coming days we found the location worked well for us.

Ker had booked us a hiking tour of a nearby medieval village for Tuesday, a noteworthy departure from our usual and more random pattern. This was a good idea. Our guide Richard had lived locally for a decade, and he was able to provide an engaging overview of Catalan history and culture on the drive to Rupit, a 12^th century hamlet nestled into the low Pyrenees. The village, population under 300, was striking – its narrow streets gave way to an uphill hybrid of bedrock and old paving stones, which wound a narrow and intuitive course among stout stone townhouses from centuries before. The aesthetic was distinct and encompassing; it really could not have been anywhere else.

We hit the hills, the village seen, for what turned into a 3-hour hike. The sky was gray, and it was cold, but we warmed up as we went. Our party was eight – in addition to our guide, an Englishman, there were two couples from Hong Kong and a businessman from Singapore. We chatted some as we climbed, learning that our group comprised a good range of interests and trajectories.

Our destination was a hilltop ridge, across a verdant and deeply-carved river valley from the solid rock perch which anchored Rupit. We encountered no other hikers, but we did come across two shallow graves, carved into a prominent rock atop a hill, just long and shallow enough to host male and female forms – their ancient creators were content to let the birds feast on their forebears.

We came to the birds themselves, going further. A fleet of six bearded vultures circled with slow ease above the green valley which fell away beneath our final peak. It had been a good hike, and this made for a suiting end point. The huge birds were patient and graceful in flight, whatever their purposes in life, the jagged edges of their wings all but motionless as they absently executed loop after practiced loop above our craning heads, before losing interest and moving on.

Picture a clear and brilliant trumpet, heralding a much-anticipated visitor: these sounds came to mind as we descended into the valley towards the Hermitage of St. Magdalena, when at last the sun came out. The air was still plenty crisp; it felt wonderful.

Not long thereafter we all scaled one last and fairly steep hill to arrive at a local restaurant – as in the village at its feet, the stone walls and floor merged fluidly with the impassive bedrock upon which it had been built. The food was also solid; everyone seemed to enjoy what was our first and last meal together.

The next two days were riven by contradiction – there was so much to see, but the cold weather kind of blindsided us. Lesson learned! Reports the weeks before had mentioned temperatures in the 50s and low 60s, rendering our big winter coats seemingly conspicuous, but it was the 40s which greeted us. And rain, not sun! It must have been our turn, this time. We made a decent circuit regardless, taking in all we could of Barcelona’s fabulous architectural wealth.

If the steep hills around Rupit were dramatic, Barcelona’s splendidly unpredictable skyline was fully theatrical: decades earlier, architects here were already enlisting the simplest and most useful elements in raising endeavors which are still profound. The iron balconies on Casa Mila were a particular favorite, as was Casa Batllo.

The cold continued to distract on Thursday, as we made our way to Sagrada Familia, and it would be fair to say that the architecture found the weather surprising as well – Gaudi’s masterpiece, like several of the markets and malls we’d seen, was open to the winds. The famous tree-like columns were breathtaking to see, but we could also see our breath, so we were glad to head down to the crypt, which houses the heated museum. The model workshop there, still active, was a highlight.

On our intrepid guide’s advice, we sought out La Paradeta in the Born district for lunch. It is seafood – the day’s catch is arrayed on a broad table just inside the door, and upon making selections it is cooked up on the spot. Might have been the best tuna I’ve ever had.

Friday brought the auspicious return of our old friend the sun. On leaving the hotel we were inspired to just keep going, taking a respectably long walk down the Diagonal all the way to the water’s edge, but this was only the beginning of the day’s epic solar-powered quest. After taking the metro back towards the center of town, we set off up Montjuic. The view from its peak had been suggested to us earlier in the week, and glancing up from just beneath it seemed a handy goal. Alas we hadn’t been in a position to glimpse the actual summit, seeing only the first curves of what turned out to be a very long sidewalk, alternately a stairway, marching ever upwards.

Our passage thus took longer than we might have anticipated, but it surely had its moments – enormous Medusa-like cacti crowding for space among palm trees under impressive white cliffs, nesting dozens of even paler seagulls further towards the top, crowned with yet more luscious green. Our first real view of the city stretching out below, on a ledge opposite some extravagant and deeply impersonal hotel, turned out to be merely preliminary.

Our new ally the sidewalk simply kept going, past hulking bleachers around what could only be the pool at the top of the world, a souvenir of the 1992 Olympics. From there our route aligned itself with the Montjuic funicular, doubling left and later right again. And at the top? A seventeenth century castle, albeit one with a dark history.

The sun stayed with us, fortunately. We had meant to descend in a city bus, coming down, but the first one we saw limited itself to a closed loop in the park, and we were not able to find the stop for the one headed back into town – perhaps the only oversight worth mentioning. And so we continued afoot, arriving eventually at the Parellel metro station. We crossed a broad concrete pavilion to get there, filled with kids playing on a Friday after school – soccer, skateboards, a few bikes.

Our dinner that last night was at Tapas 24, which we can also strongly recommend. So we’re left with something like a foothold, for the next time…

Only weeks back from our few days in Sweden, Ker and I found ourselves in London – she was in need of a minor surgical procedure not available in Latvia, and the State Department sent her to the nearest medevac point, which for us right now is London. My own name did not feature on her travel orders, but tickets aren’t so bad this time of year as it turns out.

We were there nine days. Ker underwent her procedure midway through our time in London, following various specialized tests also only available in a place like that, and to make a long story short things went really well. We returned to Riga on Wednesday, and she hopes to return to work on Monday.

It was interesting to land in England, so soon after leaving Sweden – everything seemed so cheap, or at least more reasonable. Alas the same cannot really be said for the Underground. We were thus inspired to try our luck with a cab, once the Gatwick train had deposited us at London Bridge station, but we did not make it far – the intrepid driver happened into a sustained bottleneck soon into our journey, and after sitting there watching the meter for a few minutes we opted to get out and walk instead. Our bags were light enough; it’s a great way to see a city; we conquered the remaining distance in half an hour.

Ker had lived in the east end for six months back in 2000, whilst studying at Queen Mary University, but this time around we were put up at a decent hotel in the west end, not far at all from the clinics and hospital she would need to visit. Her appointment schedule was lighter the first couple afternoons, so one of the first things we ended up doing was to check out the local Barclays Cycle Hire program. Whole flocks of their uniform black and blue 3-speeds can be found at docking stations scattered all over London. Comparing to other options available they are also a conspicuously good deal – £5, or about $8, for a week’s access. After starting out in Hyde Park, we found ourselves returning to the reliable Barclay bikes again and again over the next few days and nights. The unfamiliar London traffic appeared daunting at first, as perhaps it always will in any new city, but it proved easy enough to just dive in and swim – cycling culture is huge in London, a real motive force in the local transportation economy, and the ubiquitous Barclays bikes comprise no small part of the mix.

The bikes’ design betrays the age of their network. On the surface they are quite similar to the Nice Ride bikes in Minneapolis or the Capital Bike Share units around Arlington and DC, but the drivetrains are not fully enclosed, and it is possible to see the crank bolts. But they all rode fine, with one passing exception. Bike lanes and maps are both relatively easy to find. It was great to see how thoroughly London’s diverse cyclists integrated into the pattern there, realizing traffic speeds and holding lanes like it was an everyday thing, which it really seemed to be.

I was surprise to see so many Bromptons all over the place! We saw dozens of their distinctive profiles zoom by, in all colors and vintages, before we just stopped counting. I’d heard good things about them, but I had no idea how popular they were. You start to realize how a magazine like A to B can thrive, in a place like London.

We had spied a more dubious rental scheme early on, also in Hyde Park, across the broad lawn just in from what they call Speaker’s Corner. Here were dozens of old canvas and wood lawn chairs, arrayed mostly in pairs and oriented in unison towards the sun, like some great resting army of manual solar panels; the deal was that you had to pay to sit in them, apparently. A guy with a neon vest was making his way around their circuit, collecting chair fares from newcomers to the field. It just seemed like an odd tax to levy on what was otherwise a sunny and lovely afternoon – surely there are better methods for keeping such places in shape. That said, having managed a bike rental shop in Minneapolis for four years I had some sympathy for this guy, explaining as he surely was the same thing to tourists, over and over again.

Ker was called in for her procedure early last Friday morning. All she remembers of the episode was the anesthesiologist saying ‘OK, now I’m going to give you a little champagne…’ Things went well. She’d been installed within a smaller private hospital, where she stayed the night before being released the following afternoon. It was all very efficient – she needed a procedure, they did tests to confirm and boom, it was all done within a week. This after years’ worth of attempting to cajole the same outcome from a series of different providers back home – clearly there must be a better way to do this as well.

Days since have passed at a slower pace, as Ker continues her recovery, but we did manage one further outing before leaving London – a bus tour. Not of the conventional kind; more the random version. Noting that the hop-on, hop-off privileges on the regular tourist bus cost £27 apiece – not to mention the fact that any hopping would have been unlikely, given Ker’s condition – we simply climbed aboard the nearest city bus instead. This was the #23, a fine modern double-decker in the famous red. We found seats up top, where the view was grand, if somewhat bumpy. The vehicle’s passive intercom announcements helpfully provided us an intermittent commentary on the world going by – down Regent Street to Haymarket, past Her Majesty’s Theater, through Trafalgar Square and eventually to St. Paul’s cathedral, where Occupy London was holding things down out front. The bus was surprisingly agile – though much taller than its peers, it was also far shorter in length, and this proved a good match for the tightly would local streets.

We traveled more over the last month than we ever had before, and at the end of it Riga really starts to feel like the new normal, three months into our time here. One thing I wish I saw more in European cities? Drinking fountains! There are none, anywhere. What a surprising omission, and such a pervasive one, observed in 4 European capitals so far this year. Are we all really supposed to buy bottled water, or should we just avoid being thirsty instead? Not always such a big deal if you carry a canteen, as I tend to, unless the restroom sink requires local change that’s not in your pocket. Enforcing the purchase of bottled water, in green Europe? But I digress… 

The calm promise of ‘normal’ can exude a powerful gravity, coming in from afar – there is no better way to explain the simple pleasure of at last learning what to expect. Yet, it is also a good part of what makes new experiences so intriguing, through the long and diminishing twilight before ‘normal’ begins to wear and tear, and this is no less true for us in Riga.

Minor accidents are commonly resolved with a ‘mutual agreement’ form here, available from the cops and at gas stations alike. The innocent party fills out side A, with their nemesis filling in side B. Is that cool or what? Any disagreements or further complications are referred to the police, but in Latvia it really can be as simple as that. ‘Sorry bro, my bad, here you go…’

As a frequent cyclist and pedestrian, two months in I am often struck by local drivers’ courteousness. Crosswalks are genuinely respected, and bikes are generally given as much space as might be practicable. Riding on busy streets begins to feel less fraught, with practice. Pedestrians regularly don’t really seem to even check for traffic before crossing streets, actually – when using the marked crosswalks, at least. I am not personally interested in shedding the reflex, but all the same the option is liberating. A single human being will prove enough to stop a river of traffic, when starting out on to a set of the city’s many zebra stripes – maybe not with the very first car or two, but soon thereafter, and without any blaring of horns or gnashing of teeth. Amazing. And we’re talking busy streets – imagine this happening on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, or Lake Street in Minneapolis.

Cyclists here enjoy the same rights and responsibilities on the road as might otherwise have been expected, as it turns out. It had previously been suggested to us that a special cycling license was somehow required to ride on the streets, but that is not the case. A cautionary tale for children, perhaps, passed down over the years from one non-cyclist to the next. It would be better to observe that it is frequently not necessary to ride on the streets – the trails network here is truly impressive. Dave and I rode out to Jurmala last week, using a single contiguous chain or dedicated cycling routes. It really is a good place to ride a bike. There is the occasional conflation of bike routes and sidewalks in Riga, just as elsewhere, but overall things work out just fine.

In other respects Latvia might sit about where we might expect it to, for an ambitious former Soviet republic. The usual common-sense precautions apply around tourist-heavy old town, where pickpockets and police are both more common, but generally speaking Latvia is much safer than many places in the U.S. Riga once enjoyed a reputation as a good place to get ripped off, but the city police chief was on hand to explain why this is less the case these days. The takeaway point might have been to confirm the price, before committing to anything – for food, for pedicabs, for drinks, which are occasionally priced in ML rather than CL.

Moving on to FS life more generally, a few broader observations:

• Go light, with the UAB shipment. Seriously. I made a few too many optimistic assumptions myself, packing things up, and once the heavy duty shipping cartons entered the mix our stuff was about 150 pounds overweight. So it was that I found myself carting boxes down to the Post Office to ship to our address in Riga, using this huge huge rolling suitcase we’d happily found abandoned by the loading docks the winter previous. Fortunately, after just a couple trips it transpired that another Latvia-bound FSO had not yet sent her HHE, so the rest of it went that way instead. Anyway, word to the wise.
• As our friend Dave pointed out, it is important to install the 220/110 voltage converters in the correct orientation, lest the ground plug end up in the wrong place. This, as it turns out, was why I’d see a big spark and we’d lose a fuse, when first setting up the computer here. (My interim solution, burying the ground plugs inside a pair of individual adapters, was also effective, if overwrought.)
• Ever heard of dishwasher salt? European dishwashers (machines) are addicted to the stuff, as it turns out. Ours needed to eat a whole box of it before it would so much as turn over again. After putzing around with things,it was further necessary to return a small knob at the faucet’s base to what must have been its starting position, for this unassuming governor seems to regulate the machine’s water supply.
• You will of course be paying for it, if you go and wreck the nice DOS furniture. Our biggest closet was found to contain covers for the shiny new table we’d found parked in our dining room, and just like that life became incrementally easier. Likewise with the dubiously-fitting couch covers we’d found on-line, which add color and an informal, collegial flair to the living room, balancing the funereal dirge emanating from the balance of our furnishings, which are stately and elegant and would have been truly happening 40 or 50 years ago.
• I hope to soon be able to announce new employment, once everything shakes out, and as an EFM a few lessons descend from the experience. There is no need to be shy; in the DOS context it is better for FSOs to make some noise and advocate for their friendly local EFMs. Don’t assume people know who you are; make yourselves known. Follow up on everything. The process may take a while regardless; aspects of it cannot be rushed.
• Go ATB. Latvia is one of those places where 26” wheels do much better than 700c, and I would further guess it is actually one of the smoother posts underfoot. Roads are passable by bike, but epic potholes abound, as do cobblestone ‘rock gardens.’ And as I learned on Thursday, when Dave and I rode out to explore some local off-road trails, a 26 x 1.5 city tire really cannot be asked to fill in for a 26 x 2.0 ATB tread. I had long imagined that winter riding provided enough rough-and-tumble on its own, and thereby eschewed the woods trails, and as I am discovering mountain biking is a whole different beast. There would have been opportunities for me to learn this before, but what can I say, I was busy elsewhere…

Riga continues to fascinate, one month in. Our exposure to its unfolding details remains lopsided, with Ker at the embassy more than full time just lately, but in comparing notes we are starting to get a good sense of the place.

Every day here remains unique. Ker has been finding plenty to do in the Public Affairs Section, helping to coordinate events from Daugavpils to Jurmala, among other projects. 

I have interviewed for two different positions at the embassy, and if all goes well, I look forward to stepping in to what sounds like an interesting administrative role.

There has been plenty to do in the meanwhile. We had stored just about everything we owned in the attic at Ker’s mom’s place, prior to leaving with the Peace Corps in June 2008, and through the miracle of DOS Transportation Affairs it all showed up here last week, unscathed, randomized into 58 various boxes and packages.

It has been a long lost reunion with all kinds of things we had pretty much forgotten about. After making do with all of 10 pounds of tools through AmeriCorps in Minneapolis and then our year at FSI – and even less, back in Mauritania – I am particularly excited to have the bikes, tools and repair stand all in the same place at the very same time. Two bikes are already the better for it. Stay tuned for a forthcoming entry outlining the evolving fleet.

Riga celebrated its 810^th anniversary earlier this month. We were somewhat consumed with unpacking that weekend, as it happened, but we did make it down to old town one night. It was crazy packed. A lot of people were looking up, when we got there – a stunt pilot was diving and rolling through a sky-writing exercise. The plane’s antique puffs of thin black smoke were obscured against a cloudy sky, but the acrobatics were pretty wild. The plane would reach a stall, or corkscrew into yet another dive, peeling up to continue its circle at the very last minute, over and over again. Neither of us had ever seen an air show before, but in the new context it seemed only as extraordinary as everything else.

A few more local observations:

• For the first time we find ourselves with spare counter space, and it is unexpectedly nice. We don’t have the hugest kitchen or anything, but from the Oakwood perspective the counter-tops are all stretched out like taffy.
• Not only can one find needle and thread at the grocery store, but also zippers. Four different kinds, actually. A small touch, but it favors reuse and DIY more than we’re used to seeing.
• Beyond the dozens or hundreds of brilliantly polished architectural gems, there are also a surprising number of rougher ones. A huge and silent surplus of them, each waiting its turn for some kind of a future. Some are already cocooned in dense industrial mesh or bits of scaffolding, but many more remain conspicuously undiscovered, biding their time beneath decades’ worth of soot, adorned with copious tags down at the street level.
• Cyclists often pass pedestrians somewhat closer and faster than would generally be the case back in the U.S., but nobody seems to mind. This suggests it has been going on for a while.
• It is indeed possible to ride to the embassy. Ker and I made our inaugural trip the weekend after the bikes arrived. The route is fine, up until the last bridge, which in some ways is problematic on a bike. It is also a long bridge, but it only crosses railroad tracks, and glancing down you can see the outlines of a possible workaround on the surface streets below.
• Uniform stainless steel bike racks grace random intersections around town. It is as if giant paper clips were somehow driven into the ground, in even rows of five, buried evenly up to their shoulders. Their selective recurrence quietly, patiently suggests plan and purpose.
• Ker’s portfolio includes the Fulbright program, and we were both surprised to learn of a project focusing on the hogweed infestation in Latvia. I had previously imagined the goathead thorns might represent something like the worst of invasive plants, for what they can do to bicycle tires, but the hogweed sounds a lot worse… Wow. Another good reason to stick to the paths, I guess.
• Walking by the canal the other day, I encountered a spectacle that proved far less dangerous – here was a young woman, aiming a silver .45 with both hands at a photographer directly in front of her, who in turn was aiming his camera at her. No big deal apparently, but I couldn’t help thinking that it would have been far more complicated back home; nothing that could just up and happen in a park somewhere.
• Coming back across the closer, friendlier bridge from the embassy, I looked down to see a comically small red and white paddle boat crossing laterally across the wide river, proudly named the Misisipi. A tourist thing obviously, but why go and mangle such a beautiful name?

Last week we discovered Riga’s night market. Marina, our Russian instructor, had told us about the place last Tuesday, and I went down to check it out the following day. It is situated just across Maskavas Iela from the central market, half a block down, behind a small round red brick building. The selection isn’t quite as broad, but the prices are better – the night market combines attributes of farmers’ and wholesalers’ markets. The produce is surely freshest after dark, when first it arrives, but the place seems to be open around the clock.

Next stop: the flea market, as mentioned in Russian class the other day…

One of the things that has surprised me most taking classes at FSI is that you never know what courses might sneak up on you disguised as sleeper “check the box” classes, and instead change the way you see your work altogether. After 11 months at FSI,  I do indeed feel like a professional student, so I may have some semblance of authority on this topic. I am going to leave alone what courses may have been a bit of a shipwreck, and focus on my recently completed Consular Duty Officer course. It sounds dry, and coming into it, I had no idea what the Duty Officer does or what the expectations might be. Nonetheless, it was a great class…engaging, relevant, and interesting enough to make me momentarily re-consider my choice of Public Diplomacy for a career path (but not enough to think about Conal Rectification, seriously the term says it all). Well done Consular training folks!