Potato and Toothpaste Travel

Amber is fossilised tree resin, a yellowish, pellucid gem washed ashore by the waves of the eastern Baltic Sea. Sometimes there are ancient insects within it, or parts of leaves to decorate it. Amber is a souvenir-laden Cretaceous traveller, and precious. Amber is said to be protective, happy-go-lucky and helpful in making the right choices. In Latvian, amber is called dzintars, from which the name Dzintra comes.

I’d nearly not stayed there but fate granted a second chance. As I’d walked away north on that day I’d randomly met Dzintra at the doors of the Science Academy in the Latvian capital, I thought to kick myself for turning down her offer to stay at her home and worse, for not getting any contact details. I knew enough to know I should know more.

It was in the days before mobile phones. My only hope might be to try to re-find her at the Academy, but I didn’t like the chances of dealing successfully with the German-speaking Russian receptionist. It was a very big building and we hadn’t even exchanged surnames.

Yet there was a sliver of hope: I was due to meet her daughter Antra on the following morning. Dzintra had said there was a castle not too far from Riga, that it was worth seeing and I could take the train there. Without any alternative plan it certainly sounded like a plan. She had to work, she said, but if her daughter was not busy with university she could meet me at the entrance to Riga station at 9 a.m. because her daughter would enjoy the trip too. Maybe.

‘How will she recognise me?’ I asked. It wasn’t as if I stood out in the Latvian crowd.

‘She can find you,’ Dzintra assured.

It wasn’t a meeting arrangement to inspire any confidence but there was only to wait and see. What did my intuition say? Unfortunately, it said nothing.

Anyway, there was a more immediate and pressing concern: would I really find the private apartment I’d left that morning, without really taking in properly where it was?

Eventually I did happen to happen upon the right street.

At 9 a.m. on the following day, at the busy Riga station, I thought it quite impossible anybody could find me in the crowd. But sure enough, as I stood waiting, a young woman approached, saying cautiously, ‘Excuse me, you are Andrew?’ It was Antra.

‘How did you recognise me?’ I asked, quite shocked.

‘You look like a foreigner,’ she said, ‘a bit lost.’

The day at the castle was like a meandering flute melody, made easier by Antra’s English skills. The offer to stay was repeated by the daughter. This time I accepted. I fetched my luggage from somewhere North Riga and returned the house keys to the apartment’s owner. By evening I’d been whisked over the Daugava River and up that flight of stairs in the middle block of three.

Events in the Stalin-era apartment were amusing. There was quite a bit of fussing that went on, unexpectedly, over Dzintra’s dinner.

‘Did you eat?’ I heard her school-going younger daughter Anta, ask.

‘I had my dinner,’ Dzintra replied.

‘What did you eat?’ the daughter pressed.

‘Oh, you know…’ the mother said.

‘What about your dinner?’ her older daughter Antra also asked, upon coming home again later.

‘Yes, I ate.’

‘It wasn’t only potatoes, was it?’

‘No,’ Dzintra said, calling me as a witness.

It brought a smile to see the two daughters questioning their mother in the way a mother might normally question a busy daughter. It wasn’t that Dzintra suffered any horrible malady; hers was rather a wonderful disorder: she was a nomad at heart, a jajabor and it was this affliction that encouraged her to save.

About the potatoes: they were cheap and plentiful, a ready match for the generally modest public salaries of Latvia. Well back into the Soviet era potatoes had allowed Dzintra to put a few roubles aside, as she could, as a travel fund. And what did it matter if dinner meant potatoes, now and then, if one could dream of a pending destination? That was the pay-off.

I agreed to help Dzintra with her English: she was nervous although she shouldn’t have been. With the world’s most delightful accent she could have, frankly, gotten away with anything. And she did.

‘Latvians eat much potatoes,’ she told me once.

‘Many,’ I corrected. ‘Many potatoes. Potatoes are countable.’

‘Not in Latvia!’ she said.

If I’d been more observant I could have seen that jajabor sparkle in her eyes when we’d first met, but it was the potato-talk that confirmed her status. Travel hadn’t been easy in the Soviet era but she’d managed to join tours to various places across the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc. Later, she’d visited a relative in Melbourne and her apartment featured Australian souvenirs as evidence. The extended trip was also there in Anta’s English accent: it seemed so out of place in Riga to be hearing the Australian sounding English she’d been young enough to absorb.

‘Most Australians had never heard of Latvia,’ she said, ‘So I would explain where it was.’

But it was her tour to Poland that took my fancy. ‘Toothpaste was always more expensive in Poland,’ Dzintra said, so she’d stocked up and seen Warsaw and Krakow on a finance of Soviet toothpaste, stopping off at a Polish market between sites to pay for the trip.

Passion for anything is rare in this world and I admired hers. It was clear we were predestined to get along. It’s perhaps the reason why every minute we’d spent together felt as a month.

She spoke of her daughters, Antra and Anta, explaining that the elder Antra was supposed to be Anta except that Antra’s grandmother was fond of the letter ‘r’ and changed her name; so Anta was born later. 

She spoke of the other family member, the cat called Puncis which in Latvian means stomach; an accurate name for the robust feline that lounged about. 

We spoke of Australia and many other things besides, as the hours meant years.

And of course more than anything we spoke of travel. It’s a well-known fact that the next best thing for any traveller is to receive another traveller in their home city. It brings with it as close as can be the feeling of travelling, without going anywhere.

‘You can’t leave Latvia without seeing a Latvian forest,’ Dzintra said and I could hardly disagree.  I had no experience with Latvian forests.

‘I have a small car,’ she said, ‘It has some mechanical problems, so if I take a day off work, and it might not get us all the way there and back again without breaking down, but would you like to take the chance?’

We left in the little grey Ford that whistled along to every gear change for the length of the chat and laughter that was the way to the Latvian forest and back again.  I’d say the whistling Ford enjoyed the day out too; it didn’t break down.  And there was another trip to Jurmala and the Baltic Sea, so I could see a Latvian beach.

The days of my planned week in Latvia passed quickly in the way only enjoyable days can. Everything went well, more than well and without complaint until... Well I wasn’t to know how it would be, taking myself off for a day, independently, on that fateful tour to Bauska… It seemed such a simple idea.

But the amber wasn’t with me then.

The story continues here: Was There Any Chance of Wolves?


The first part of the Latvian story is here: The Latvian National Academy of Science.


Follow the Baltic Way, along the sea on a trail of amber...




Or something different? Head for Bangladesh!

This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: Potato and Toothpaste Travel

The Latvian National Academy of Science

Be free. Align yourself with the rhythm of the world to go far. Be as the jajabor, the nomad. Arrive somewhere from the soul, due to the appealing curl of its name or because it feels right or because we know nothing. Go because the time has arrived, sense it.

The Baltic States beckoned in such a way. I went because the idea surfaced. I went because it was there. Other than that, the reason for the journey was left to present itself as a revelation of yes – that must be why I came. Intuition would make the arrangements.

Due to the circumstances that had led to the meeting of a Latvian folk musician on an Estonian road, I had a private apartment in Riga, the Latvian capital, from the first evening. My pocket had keys. It gave perhaps a stronger sense that the brand new city was mine to explore; but it wasn’t the being somewhere new that brought meaning – it was a basic decision between old and older.

On that first morning, I’d locked the door of the apartment I was unexpectedly borrowing. I set off on foot down the busy street that judging by the traffic must lead somewhere; and it wasn’t long until the distinctive roofs and church towers caught sight of me. The famed old town was away to the mercantile right. Yet to the left a different type of building caught my eye: a stark, stalwart tower in brown, which seemed the very essence of the Soviet Union days. It was intriguing.

I knew I would see both pasts. I had the time. The question was which to go to first and on the thought that at the top of the tower I could take photographs over the old town I was inclined towards the left. In this way the communists won the moment. Yet, as it turned out, it was a decision that would bring me right to my sentimental Latvia.

I heaved those enormous doors, of the heavy wooden kind, and inside was an enormous Spartan lobby with proletariat looking lifts to the front, and to the left was a functional-looking booth with a sign that read ‘Enquiries Counter.’ In it was an equally functional-looking Russian woman, elderly and overweight. It was as though I had walked into one of those Hollywood films designed to promote a view of life in the Soviet Union that made one pleased to live in the ‘free world’. It was behind-the-iron-curtain in a clichéd way and I was excited.

I imagined Soviet citizens in the film, stooping to speak through the slot at the window of the booth, to make enquiries that ended in an inevitably firm ‘Nyet!’ I thought to try it out.

‘Excuse me, what is this building?’ I asked as prelude to my planned request to reach the roof.

‘Sprechen Zie Deutsch?’ she said, do you speak German?

‘Nein,’ I replied, in German, and for some unknown reason tried again in English.

‘Sprechen Zie Deutsch?’

‘Still Nein.’

We stood smiling at each other, at a loss, and she certainly seemed too friendly to play the role of Soviet receptionist in the movie. She would have been very helpful to a German.

With a dash of disappointment I headed back across the lobby to those gargantuan doors. I heaved one of them open again, wondering if the inevitable door-people in the Soviet era had developed shoulder injuries from the task. I was thinking I might never know what that building was, when a woman came in the door I’d just opened. On the off chance…

‘Excuse me, do you speak English?’

‘A little,’ she said in an accent delightful enough to flavour ice cream. ‘Where are you from?’ she asked.

‘Australia.’

‘It’s my favourite country,’ she said, ‘I lived in Melbourne for six months!’

We stood chatting in the doorway for a minute or two. The building was the Latvian National Academy of Science, her name was Dzintra and she worked there as secretary to a senior official.

I didn’t know then about the strength of her intuition. Nor was it clear I had met a Latvian jajabor; and yet the initial connection seemed unusually strong.

‘I finish work at seven,’ she said, ‘I want to show you some nice buildings in Riga that you won’t find on your own. Come back then.’

We must have spoken seven sentences but it felt as though we’d known each other for seven months. Latvian time was speedy, I was learning, Dzintra was teaching me. She continued into the building and I went out; and as I walked up the street I felt certain it was for that moment in the doorway that life’s course had brought me to the Baltic. I’d come to meet her.

On the Daugava River not long before it reaches the sea, the Latvian capital is the big city of the Baltic States. Of course its old town is well-endowed with cobblestone squares, churches and secret laneways; with faces, with golden roosters four floors up watching the sky; and a black cat, back arched in protest at being left out there on the peak of a roof. Of course there are streams through parks and on the railings of the little bridges are the permanent padlocks the Russians affix as a symbol of binding love; there’s a small castle and crowds on the streets, hopping on and off the sky blue trams that cross the Daugava bridge like scuttling insects. 

After a few hours with the usual trappings of Rigan life, wandering around, I made my way back towards the Academy. I was early by two hours and thought it’d be a bit boring to wait, although there was the Soviet-style market to look through, on the left side of things, where they still sold milk scooped up by apron wearing women, with ladles from big metallic urns. Nor was I entirely sure where my apartment was, so to go and wait there would have been a gamble. I only hoped I’d find it later. I had the keys.

I met Dzintra before I got to the Academy, under the railway bridge. ‘I left work early,’ she said. I suppose she’d felt I was on my way, I can say now. It was our second chance meeting.

True to her word she showed me beautiful streets of grand old buildings that I wouldn’t have found, up around Elizabetes iela to the north of the old town.

Now, when she tells people how we met they say, ‘You shouldn’t have done that! It might be dangerous!’ I’ve told her I agree and she shouldn’t do it again. But what people don’t properly imagine is how well we knew each other by then. If the first seven sentences were seven months, by the time we’d seen the best of the buildings at least three years had passed in speedy Latvian time. We were not strangers when she issued the invitation to stay at her house, as long as I didn’t mind if it was small and Soviet and featured a marginally malfunctioning bathroom.

It was a tempting offer but I had keys in my pocket and it’s not every day a private apartment for ‘whenever you are in Riga’ finds you. It was not something I wanted to quit, so I said ‘No’.

But of course, if you let it the world has ways to correct the decisions you get wrong. Wilful interference of the human-brain kind can only destroy the far better plans. Especially in Latvia, let the season take you by the hand.

This story continues here: Potato and Toothpaste Travel




The meeting at the Latvian National Academy of Science can be a nice precursor to finding memories in a waterfall, sort of eating dog due to a lack of fishing net casting skills, or meeting the Chittagonian whistler.



This article also published in Star Magazine, here: The Latvian National Academy of Science

Article Title: Classified

Karl Marx Avenue (Wikipedia Sourced Photo)

[Important: Do not read this article unless you are authorised to do so.  I repeat, do not read this article without proper authorisation.  If you are unauthorised, please exit the page now.]

“Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful.  Beauty will come of its own accord.” – Nikolai Gogol.

They weren’t marked on rail timetables but the train would stop there.  There was no indication on bus routes apart from the name of a tiny village nearby or a kilometre marker.  There was no demarcation on publicly available maps and as for postal delivery letters and parcels had to be addressed with the name of a nearby city as a code.  I’m referring to the cities that didn’t exist, the cities where residents underwent security checks before moving in and were sworn to secrecy thereafter concerning their classified addresses.

What follows is advice for the traveller: what to do when facing that particular predicament of having nowhere to stay in a city that sort of didn’t exist.  Secrets can’t substitute, after all, for a watertight roof and a pillow.

During the summer I reached that “place”, the one that, well, I’m not entirely convinced I should name, but as it’s acknowledged and open these days I suppose it might be okay to write it just once.  Wait.  It might be better to put it in square brackets: [Dnipropetrovsk].

Home to over a million people, that place was once a key centre for the nuclear, arms and space industries of the Soviet Union, the reason it was closed to foreigners until the 1990s.  It’s an attractive place, or non-place, set on the meandering bank of the majestic Dneiper River that roughly divides Ukraine into east and west.  It’s a location of slight undulation surrounded by rich agricultural land of the sort that led Ukraine to be referred to as the bread basket of the Soviet Union. 

The “city” itself is a typical Soviet showpiece if slightly more polished than average: it has its Lenin Square watched over by a Lenin statue; the broad tree-lined, tram-lined Karl Marx Avenue is there, at several kilometres in length; and the Karl Marx traffic lanes are separated by a parkland strip where artisans set up easels to sell paintings and stalls for handicrafts, and there are benches for loitering and street food to enjoy.  In summer the Karl Marx strip has a fairground quality.  In another park is a collection of old Soviet tanks. 

That “city” is the third in Ukraine to have an underground metro and it might’ve been one of the privileges that closed cities enjoyed.  Residents of closed cities were given salary bonuses and better housing in Soviet times.  But by 2002 when I was there, it wasn’t the city’s former secrecy that was the problem as much as a lack of reasonably priced hotels.  It was a difficulty shared across Ukraine, where the break-up of the Soviet Union seemed to have been easier than the break-up of Intourist. 

In the Soviet Union foreigners were restricted to state-run “Intourist” package tours and in each city would be at least one, generally enormous, state-run Intourist Hotel to cater for them.  Those hotels were still running and remained grossly overpriced with the cheapest room for perhaps US $50 per night and with that "city" having been a closed city there might not even have been an Intourist Hotel there.  But even if there was, the room rate would have been approximately half a month’s salary for my Ukrainian teacher colleagues.  I stood on Karl Marx convinced that I shouldn’t pay so much either.  Rather, I contemplated what Ukrainians would do: they would not be staying at any former Intourist Hotel. They’re much too street savvy.

After a few moments the answer found me: Ukrainians would stay with friends.  Problem number two: I had no friend in that “city.”

After a few moments the answer found me: I did have a friend in Kyiv who I’d always thought was clever enough to devise a successful peace plan for Israel-Palestine if she sat down for a few minutes with a pencil and a notepad.  She’d certainly given an impressive speech once at the Toastmaster’s Club.  Perhaps it would be worthwhile calling her? 

I collected kopiyok and hryvnia coins from my wallet, knowing that public phones ate them rather rapidly and there’d need to be a good number in hand to push in at speed for extra credit.  I dialled the phone number and you know, when I think about that “city” I also start to wonder if I should name said “friend.”  Who’s to say she isn’t classified?  Although, as she does tend to use her own name, I suppose it might be okay to write it just once.  Wait.  It might be better to put it in square brackets: [Stacia].

‘I’m in [insert city name here] and I have nowhere to stay,’ I said. 

‘Call me back in ten minutes,’ [insert friend name here] replied.

It was as a Soviet storyline, standing on the footpath waiting for ten minutes to pass.  I watched the comings and goings and without reason tried to look inconspicuous.  Ten minutes later with a new bunch of coins in hand I dialled again.  The answer, when it came, was all but Soviet-perfect! 

‘There’s a Daihatsu on its way,’ aforementioned friend said, ‘It’ll pull up where you are within five minutes.’  Needless to say I’d told her where on Karl Marx I was; needless to say that in Soviet times it wouldn’t have been a Daihatsu exactly. 

In the allotted time said Daihatsu did pull up at said curb in front of me.  ‘Hi, I’m Julia,’ said the driver, ‘You’ll be staying with us. Get in.’ 

The first stop was a stilt platform café on the river for light refreshment, and I’m told that the bridge across the Dneiper is 1.4 kilometres long.  I’m told that Julia’s mother is quite distressed that she won’t be able to talk to me: she only speaks Russian.

Thereafter we reached the family apartment, one of the Soviet many; and Julia’s parents, Sergei and Lidia have thought of everything: keys to the flat, access to the fridge, phone number, huge dinner, toothpaste available on the bathroom shelf and well, beer.  It was wonderful!  Lidia needn’t have worried about the communication: she fired off rapid Russian and although I couldn’t distinguish a single word, somehow the overall meaning seemed to get through; or at least, the gist.  It was just like my friend Jayanta’s mother used to do in Bangla in Kolkata.

Ukraine is said to have had eleven closed cities in Soviet days, and in modern Russia there remain forty-two, publicly acknowledged, even today.  Some are surrounded by barbed wire with watchtowers, with special security permits to be presented at checkpoints to enter.  Around one and a half million Russians still live in those “cities.”

Before leaving, Lidia kind-heartedly gave me a book, in Russian, duly inscribed on the inside cover in Russian Cyrillic lettering, as a memento of the short time we shared.  Although I can’t read it or the inscription, to me that little book is priceless.  Well, I’m not entirely convinced I should name the author, but I suppose as he is internationally renowned it might be okay to write his name just once.  Wait.  It might be better to put it in square brackets: [Gogol].

[Important: Do not circulate or discuss this article.   Forget what you have read.]

 

A Russian stamp featuring that author.
from Wikipedia

Also classified are the National Secrets of Kyiv to the west, a meeting with Mrs Val to the east, or a bit further still.... go swimming with Osama.  Because it's best to keep busy.

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: Article Title [Classified]