Here, Eat This! The Adventures of Kiki Maraschino

I kept calling this town Valdimort til I realized that was a Harry Potter villain. We went to visit more relatives. They took us down to the beach by the harbour. We also drove past a lot of public art, but there wasn’t really time to stop and take pictures.

I like climbing on things. I am five.

The mayor of Venspils is known for getting things done, maybe with a little cash to the right people. He thought it was sad his daughter had nowhere to sled, so he built this hill for his city. It is the highest point in the flatlands of Latvia.

What do you do when it’s not snowing?

He also built a BMX bike track. Why not?

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Our last morning in Kuldiga we stopped for breakfast at the Metropole Hotel. They served an amuse bouche for breakfast.

We had a very nice egg sandwich

I noticed this is the one place in Latvia where I have seen stencil art

and chalk art

We checked out the Kuldigas Rumba, or waterfall.

It isn’t the highest waterfall in Latvia, at only 2 metres, but it’s the widest.

In case of rapture, you will lose control of your bike.

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Kuldiga is one of Latvia’s older towns, with intact Gothic and Rennaisance buildings. On our way out there we finally stopped at one of the Hessburgers we had been seeing in the road.

It was like a Big Mac but with better meat. The fries were hot and salty.

We tried to get into the building where we had rented an apartment and much to our relief, couldn’t get in. It looked pretty run-down.

The hotel suggested we were looking for a building at the end of the road which pleased us greatly.

It turned out the old building was ours. It’s the oldest wooden building in Kuldinga, built in 1620. The first building was the town hall. Only Americans would think the government building was their hotel. At least it wasn’t this building:

It turned out to be pretty modern inside in an IKEA kind of way.

The stairs of doom. There was a big hole in the floor I was sure I would fall through, but we all escaped unscathed.

We ate both nights in a little cellar restaurant called Pagrabins that used to be the town jail.

The goulash soup was spicy and sweet.

Chicken in crimini mushrooms highlighted one of the cook’s skills, which was cutlets.

Something Asian Bob ordered

Vegetable eggrolls, Latvian style

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We went to the opera twice on this trip, once for the ballet, and last night to see The Nature of War, also interpreted as War Sum Up. It is a visual and auditory depiction of a war machine, with the “lady in yellow” setting the wheels in motion. It tells the story of the soldier with PTSD, the warrior lost in the land of ghosts, and the spy, who is the only one to find redemption. her song, “Superwoman” is the one I would put on a compilation and play over and over again.

There was a little cafe downstairs

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The Bell Tower of the Jelgeva Holy Trinity Church has views of the entire city from the 9th floor, around 80 metres high. Don’t ask me to change that into feet. It’s pretty high, but not Seattle Space Needle high. The Holy Trinity Lutheran Church was built so the duke’s wife could practice her faith near the castle. But the church was razed during bombing attacks in 1944. The tower was completed in 1862 and survived the attacks.

ta;

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Yesterday we drove to Jelgeva to the palace of the Dukes of Courland and Semigallia. The palace was bombed during WWII but has been restored. It is the largest architectural monument in the Baltics.

The only part of the palace open for public view was the crypts of the Dukes of Courland from Danzig.

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Last night we went to a birthday party for Aija at a farmhouse next to the Lielupe River in Jelgava. The farm was gorgeous. We saw storks and storks nests.

 This cat thinks he is a chicken

The dinner party was lots of fun, even if we don’t speak Latvian.

The food was cooked by the owner of the farmhouse.

There were ground meat rolls like kibbeh, plus potatoes, latkes, pierogies, homemade cheese and a specialty called herring in a fur coat, which is herring and sour cream covered by beets and chopped hard-boiled eggs. I finally decided I was full.

The Latvians kept gesturing and pressuring us to drink more. I had a cranberry liquer and three brandies. Bob was drinking Black Balsam. I was watching them crack each other up, using their hands to gesture. I told Bob, “One more of these and I’ll understand them.”

Bob said, “One more of these and I’ll start talking to them.”

The cake was layered with walnut creme.

They had some old albums and we enjoyed looking at the covers.

We took a walk with the owners of the farm, and they told us their story. The area around Lielupe River is known as the kettle, because it’s where everything boiled over in WWII. The German army was on the side where we were, and the Russians were across the river.

Their father’s first wife stepped on a landmine and was killed. The Germans were retreating and didn’t want to leave any resources or shelter for the Russians so they were destroying everything. Their grandfather begged them to spare his house because he had a young child. Out of compassion the nazis only burned down half of his house.

Lying awake in the late evening sun looking out the window at the beautiful scenery it was hard to believe this was the site of such carnage. In America it would be like Bunker Hill and military buffs would come visit the site. But there has been so much war in Latvia it’s just another farmhouse with a terrible story to tell.

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Bridin befriended a woman on the plane whose daughter, Signe, happens to host dinner parties at 10 Lats a head. 10 Lats equals about 20 USD. When she told her daughter she had a returning Latvian to invite, they decided to make a traditional Latvian meal for us, and to have a friend hunt for boar. I’ve never had anyone kill a boar for me before. It’s very exciting.

Signe was congenial and outgoing, providing a lovely environment for the English-speaking friends she had invited. They did tend to lapse into Latvian though, so there was some confused nodding and smiling on my part. To drink, we had birch champagne, which was very similar to regular champagne. With the meat a blackcurrant wine was served. Although I don’t normally drink wine, I tried it and it was more like a liquer – very fruity with a sharp kick.

The first dish was a soup. After a long and dark winter, one of the first signs of spring is a green that no one knew the name for, but it is like sour spinach. It may have been sorrel. It grows wild in the yard, “So you just cut the grass and you have soup!” There were also lovely new potatoes and quail eggs, which they set in your plate and ladled the soup over.

Her bread was so moist it was almost like a quick bread, with a large, soft crumb. It was served with homemade dairy butter. Black bread, the national bread, was served with hemp seed butter – like the poppy seed butter we had bought at the market.

The next course was a selection of dried fish, including eel, which was delicious, and lamprey, which was kind of strong for me. I didn’t know the Latvian word for lamprey, so I asked, “Is this the one that sucks your face?”

They pointed out the second one from the front of this picture, and said, “That is the one that sucks on you.”

Signe said effusively in her Russian accent, “Take it! You don’t like it, I have big dog!”

There was also an assortment of cheeses, including the same mild cheese with caraway seeds we had bought at the market.

The main course was boar, which one of the guests’ husbands had shot. Boars in Latvia have to be certified. If they are not, you have to boil the meat for 2 hours to remove any parasites. The meat was very mild, being grass-fed as opposed to foraging. The side dish was a risotto made with hulled wheat and wild mushrooms, a perfect accompaniment to the boar as well as a vegetarian main course. Very smart.

We had been seeing a rye bread dessert on menus, but it didn’t seem very appetizing. It took me about four bites to figure out this “cheesecake” was made from rye bread crumbs used like Graham crackers layered with a pastry cream.

There was also apple cake, Bridin’s nemesis.

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Today we drove into the country to look at castles. First we visited “The New Castle” in Segulda. It was once occupied by Knights of the Sword. When you joined Knights of the Sword, you joined for life.

Their city hall was in front of the castle, and it was really grand.

It was nice to be out in the beautiful countryside. There are lilacs everywhere.

We followed the guidebook to lunch at Aparjods. I like the game here, so I ordered the rabbit. It was explained to me later that there is so much grass here the animals don’t resort to eating bark and leaves, so they are essentially grass-fed.

Next we were going to see some ancestral castle of Bridin and Bob’s family. We were stuck on little roads with construction forever.

Then we had to drive down a really long unmarked unpaved road. I really didn’t think they were ever going to find it. We had to splosh through mud puddles at high speed so as not to get stuck, and the wake of mud bathed the car with every bump. This is the good part of the road.

I finally asked, “All this for a castle?”

Bridin: It’s not a castle. The castle was wood and burned down. It’s a mound.”

Me: All this for a mound?

Bridin: If we’re lucky there will be a goat on it.

Me: Well, OK then, if there’s a goat…

Bob: Come o-o-o-n-n-n  goats!

The woods were beautiful, and we found the ancestral mound, but alas, no goats.

It was another Mr Toad’s Wild ride coming back, and lots more construction on the main roads. We stopped for coffee at a place with a trippy ceiling.

When we got back we discovered that the front license plate had been torn off, so we have to deal with the rental car this morning. It will be the third rental car of the trip. Hertz, donut?

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After going to the cemetary with Bridin’s cousin Aija and Aija’s beau, Alberts, we went for lunch in the hotel cafe, which was very elegant. We were all thrilled with the fried camembert that was accompanied by rhubarb.

 I had a Frenchy chicken and mushrooms under puff pastry.

Aija and Alberts are older and met later in life at the same cemetary where we had gone to visit Bridin and Aija’s grandparents. They are a sweet couple, and Alberts has gorgeous blue eyes that darken when he speaks of Siberia.

His family was sent to Siberia when he was young because his father was a policeman. The father was sent to a work camp and the family was sent to a Russian concentration camp. They did not see their father again until 8 years later when they were released. The whole family survived to make it out, which was not true of most people in Siberia. Alberts still walks with a cane from those days.

I asked if it snowed year round and he said no that in the summer it was milder and they could grow potatoes. He said that the air is so thin and so quiet there that you can hear people talking from many kilometres away

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We walk into the exchange and we are the only customers. Two bored-looking clerks sit behind the counter staring into space. I approach one and she gestures towards the other one. I turn to her and she gestures to the tickets. I look at her like, “Really? You want me to take a number?” She just stares back blankly.

So I take a ticket – number 170.

The number 167 flashes on a board. The second customer service girl calls out, “167.” I stare at her. The room is still empty except for us.

“168” I stare at her harder.

“169” I stare at her as if she just took off her own head off and spun it on her finger like a basketball.

“170”

“170”

I hand her my ticket and she exchanges my money.

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