We have Independence Day here in Latvia on Tuesday, and not just a regular one, but 90 years since the first independence. In case anyone didn't know, it started in '18, on November 18, and ended on August 5, 1940, with the annexation of Latvia by the Soviet Union, which they like to call an occupation here in Latvia.
From my point of view, none of this matters at all. Once the crisis fucking hits, there'll be no time for that. But we're still holding on for now – so they're celebrating it with some pomp.
In particular, the festival of light Staro Riga - “Riga Shines” - is taking place these days. Isn't it a great excuse to go visit friends? Especially since the working Monday was moved to Saturday so we'd have 4 days off in a row. So I went. First I cleaned up my apartment, and then barely had time to throw some music and Philip José Farmer's audiobook “The God Business” onto my player, and, true to tradition, almost missed my bus. But I didn't miss it, even managed to pop into a kiosk to buy a battery. My player, by the way, is dying, but that probably doesn't matter because I'm planning to buy a smartphone anyway, or rather, a communicator. There's no shortage of candidates, but I'll write a separate post about them. As for the story “The God Business”, it's amusing, but nothing more. I wouldn't waste my time on it in print.
“Riga Shines” – is mostly buildings and bridges illuminated by multi-colored spotlights. The buildings look nice, but nothing more. The bridges and the Saules Akmens skyscraper turned out way cooler. I already showed you the railway bridge when I was flying to Crete, it's always illuminated. But the cable-stayed bridge blinks and sparkles perfectly – the green flashes remind me of one of my favorite computer games – Flashback. The Raddison Hotel Latvia building was also interesting – like a mosaic, only dynamically changing.
As you can imagine, you have to see all this in motion, so the photos show absolutely nothing. The photos are from Flickr, click for the original, as usual.
Then we went to the Vairak Saules eatery, famous mostly for its pizzas. The prices there aren't particularly humane, but tolerable. I ate a French vegetable soup with seafood and a Siciliana pizza. The soup was okay, but somehow unexpressive. That makes sense – the ingredients are probably frozen, not fresh, that's where the problem stems from. The pizza was wonderful – with “Mozzarella” cheese, red onion, black olives, gherkins and jalapeño peppers. I already mentioned the peppers in my US report, and here they called them all sorts of names in the menu; I still haven't figured out the right way to say it.
So if you're a fan of pizza (which I'm not) – feel free to hit up Vairak Saules. It's located at Dzirnavu 60, which is relatively close to the railway station or, say, the cathedral.
And since I've started writing in reverse chronological order, I'll tell you what we did in the morning . Namely - we watched the Max Payne flick. I found it boring – Max spends too much time walking around doing nothing, the shooting is somehow sluggish, and the plot is completely absent, which could have been forgiven if not for the first point. The only thing I liked – the valkyrie visions, beautifully done. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of them on the net yet, and it's not worth going to the cinema just to look at them.
That's roughly the uncomplicated way we spent our time. Not counting learning all sorts of educational facts about setting up simple Linux clusters using heartbeat, mysql replication, and drbd. Just strictly general concepts – I don't need any specifics on the matter, but it's interesting to listen to.
And yesterday, as I was leaving, I also popped into the premium-class deli in the mc2 shopping center. I've wanted to go there for a long time, to see how the rich live. They live beautifully – the food packaging isn't flashy, but on the contrary, austere, there are mountains of all sorts of exotic stuff. There's jamón - the famous cured pork legs hanging from the ceiling, I dream of trying it someday. There's also cured horse meat. I didn't buy it, got stingy – costs 30 lats ($60) a kilo. But I did buy a chocolate bar with nougat and some tea. By the way, everything is sold behind counters, not like in a supermarket, the sellers are all polite, unobtrusive, and give useful tips, like how green tea shouldn't be brewed with boiling water. The price of tea in mc2 is listed per 100 grams, and there's a jasmine tea there with a 16 Ls price tag, which, not knowing this fact, I almost bought.
However, I haven't resolved the question of whether the part of the wealthy people's world where groceries are bought actually looks like this, or if it's just some kind of facade. Maybe rich people usually eat at restaurants – but you still have to eat something at home, right? I'm not talking about those with personal chefs, of course, but just the upper middle class or thereabouts.
And when I was leaving, I did all sorts of things too. First, I bought some huge Azerbaijani pomegranates at the market - crazy expensive, damn, but delicious enough to justify every penny. Then I popped into the xlpelmeni dumpling spot at the station and had lunch. Ate some solyanka and meat pelmeni. The solyanka was – meh: lacking spices, poor variety of fillings. The only thing justifying it is that for 1.20 Ls you can pour yourself a hefty bowl, scooping up the thick parts and skipping the broth. The pelmeni were better, but didn't make much of an impression – not nasty, but not very flavorful either. By the way, it's funny, but there's no Russian language on the chain's website, even though pelmeni – we all know whose dish it is. On the flip side, they pour vodka in these pelmeni places, which some traditionalists would highly approve of.
Overall – it's an alright place to go if you want to stuff your belly relatively cheaply – for 3 lats I ate my fill. Didn't experience any joy, though, because at home I could've had an absolutely wonderful dinner for 3 lats, even if I'd have lost about 50 minutes on cooking.
And also, just as I was finally leaving, I bought some milk chocolate at Emihls Gustavs. They don't have any without nuts – an annoying oversight, if I had actually liked the chocolate. But it was quite boring, so upon arrival I just left it for my parents. In general, unlike dark chocolate, somehow fewer companies try to make milk chocolate well – Fazer and Lindt are tasty, but all the rest are mediocre.
I got back quickly, because I was reading tech docs and again listening to an audiobook – The Picture. It's not bad, but it would only amuse today's children of the internet - since what's described in the story has essentially materialized in the form of Estonian boars and storks.
Overall – I spent what you call quality time with friends.