Everything is Old

What is amazing to me on this trip is how old everything is. There are cities that are 800 years old with people who have been living here for two millenia. That is impressive. I guess when everything is so old it needs to be restored periodically. That is what seems to have happened in Latvia. All the old churches have either burned down, or crumbled, for just gotten face lifts over the years. So while you have an 800 year old church, the version you are now looking at is about 150 years old, because over the past few centuries they have pulled off the old walls and built new ones. They may have removed all the grave stones (because they aren't using it as a crypt any more). They are restoring the organ for the third or fourth time. It is truly amazing how old some places are and everything in Riga, Latvia is old. Or restored.

This trip has made more more clear to me the impact of the Soviet Union on all the republics that made it up. I don't think that I truly understood the devastation of culture that was brought on by the Soviets and the Cold War. They didn't like something, they tore it down. They didn't like you, they either killed you or sent you to Siberia. Add to that the Nazis, and you can see why Eastern Europe, and these countries in particular fought for their independence. In an act of defiance and nationalism, there was a 650 km human chain of more then two million people from Tallinn to Vilnius. So much of the architecture wasn't destroyed by WWII but by the Soviets if they didn't like it, or it didn't represent the "right ideals". Luckily, many of these cities are building replicas of everything that they had.

I did a walking tour of Riga today and then wandered a bit. I will spend the day tomorrow exploring Riga and then decide where to go from there! Oh yeah, my dorm room in a very highly recommended hostel? Yeah, it smells a bit like vomit. Shame.