Riga - Going with the Flow

When Slava called to cancel our day out this morning, I was relieved.  It’s still difficult managing mornings - it never is easy, no matter what the time zone - and I also had thought of some additional material for class last night while I was lying in bed hoping to get to sleep on Latvian time as opposed to U.S. time.  Strict liability is a concept I last parsed in law school and I could tell it was confusing some of the students (probably the rest are too far gone in confusion even to look confused).

Since I was already dressed to go out and the day was clear, I took advantage of the opportunity to go to the top of St. Peter’s tower.  The cathedral was badly damaged in 1941 and that’s about all of its history I absorbed.  Built of brick and in Gothic style, it stands on the site of an older church of which the tower was entirely wood.  The replacement tower is of the same design as the wooden tower and there’s a small elevator to take tourists up near the top.  The view is panoramic but not really picturesque.  A lot of roofs, basically, which is what you can expect to see when looking down at a very old town where streets are narrow and houses jostle each other for space.

Returning via a random path to the hotel, I found an establishment billing itself as an “Amber Museum” in a charmingly secluded area, almost like a private street.  The “museum” was just an excuse for an elegant gift shop offering high-end sculptures and display pieces incorporating amber as well as the usual selection of jewelry.  I paid 1 lat ($2.00) to see a room partially paneled in amber, like the room in Pushkino, Russia, and displaying amber samples with trapped insects.  Some of those, too, were for sale.  The proprietress switched on the video screen for a history of amber, she said, but first I had to wait through a celebration of Latvian heritage.  Nice, but not related to amber.  But it served to remind me that nationalism is still alive, which I think we sometimes forget in the U.S.

And so back to the hotel, for lunch and class prep.  Perhaps a nap.