Riga - A Meeting and a Party

I met with Aiga Čikste on Tuesday morning.  It was more of a “how-nice-to-finally-meet” encounter than a meeting for information.  There wasn’t really much information to impart anyway.  I cleared up some details about the exam on Monday, about turning in grades and marking papers, and that was about it.  Aiga is a graduate student; she accompanied Prof. Šavriņa to the conference last week (which was in Germany, as I found out from Aiga).  Prof. Šavriņa returned by plane; Aiga and other students spent two days on a bus.  Rank has its privileges.

Tuesday was chill but dry.  I headed toward the national art museum (as opposed to the museum of “foreign” art, which I visited last week) but found out it was closed on Tuesday.  Since the sun was out, I strolled around the city once more.  Bypassed the history museum, as it seemed to focus solely on armor and weapons.  I was amused to note that the plan of the exhibits divides them into the following periods: 8^th-16^th centuries, then comes the 20^th (what happened over the intervening 500 years?), which itself is divided into parts: the Russian revolution; the brief Latvian independence period of 1920-40; World War II and the “Soviet occupation” -- a none-too-subtle message -- ending with the post-1991 period.  Continuing my stroll, I revisited the open-air markets, which seem to be in every town square in the Old City, reviewing once more the same selections of amber, woolen hats, mittens, scarves and whatever, wooden trays, spoons and whatever, hot wine and cider, snacks and coffee.  Father Christmas hung out in one square; American and Latvian Christmas pop tunes were background music.

Class tonight was on the jury system and we went through exercises of voir dire and jury selection.  They got the idea behind jury selection, which I thought was impressive considering that juries are not part of their legal system.  

I ended class 1/2 hour early, as promised, so that we could all troop to Pekka's apartment for Finnish Independence Day.  He lives about a mile from the university building, in an apartment that strongly reminds me of a SoHo or Greenwich Village pad.  Narrow, dank halls, narrow, curving staircase, peeling paint, crumbling plaster, ends of wire and cable protruding from the walls.  Inside, however, all was reasonably neat.  I would up chatting mainly with another Pekka, the boyfriend of one of the women in my class.  They had just left a reception at the Finnish Embassy, where Pekka is an attaché.  I think perhaps we two were the oldest there.   And perhaps the only two with full-time employment.  About a dozen students had gathered, not all Finnish.  Pekka, our host, read a brief history of Finland, taken direct from Wikipedia and freely corrected by the crowd.   Finnish delicacies included Karelian pasties, which are dense pancakes made of rice with a rye coating, and thick slices of warmed cheese.  Both quite good.  The multi-national atmosphere reminded me of the parties at Columbia's School of International Affairs so many years ago.  I might well have enjoyed the Foreign Service.  Or not.  No way of knowing.