MARCH 8, WEDNESDAY

RIGA CENTRAL MARKET

Our spacious and comfortable airbnb was in the old part of Riga, but it didn’t have the charm of Tallin, except for our square. So we took first tram 5 to the end of the line and back, and then in a different direction, tram 1 to the end of the line and back.

The outer edge of Riga, a Baltic port up a large river from the coast, is dingy with buildings that must date from the Russian occupation. And even as I write this I realize that until I was 40 I vaguely thought of the USSR, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as being one country, Russia. And of course that is how Putin still sees it. But in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down and the DDR, the Deutsche Democratische Republic became part of Germany againf, it began to dawn on me that all of the other so called Socialist states such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia, were not part of Russia at all but part of the Russian empire. So the dingy buildings must be reminder to the Estonians as well of their dingy colonial past, which they don’t want to repeat. But the center of Riga is a modern European city with luxury stores and an opera house and a concert hall and beautiful parks.

But the high point of our visit to Riga was wandering through the six giant halls of the Riga central market which is indoors in huge converted warehouses in which, Todd discovered, were where at one point zeppelins were built.

But now there is one giant hall of fish stalls, another is a meat market, another is a vegetable market, another a food hall with small stands selling all kinds of food. And outside, in the bitter cold were stalls selling clothing and flowers where bundled up proprietors scowled in the cold. All of the signs are in English, Russia and Latvian. We spent two hours in the Riga central market before touring the city by tram.