Arriving in Riga, by bus, is dreadful. Luckily that’s the worst part of it. It doesn’t help that large portions of the drive in are under construction, nor that the route goes past some rather drab architecture before arriving at the bus terminal.¹ Even after arrival you need to scurry under an industrial overpass and through some Soviet-era pedestrian tunnels to get to the city center. I arrived at my hotel on the edge of the Old Town very late Saturday afternoon and wasn’t in the mood to explore, so I just grabbed a burger at Burger King and found a showing of Oppenheimer.

That gave me the rest of the week to see the city, and I found that Riga — the touristy center of it, anyway — is one of the best places I’ve ever been to just wander around. Most old towns are kind of small and cramped and represent a very specific historic moment.² Riga’s isn’t. It’s got a lot of architecture surviving from around the 14^th century, when it first got wealthy, but the streets are wide and spacious and the architecture just keeps changing. It’s a heady mix of just about every architectural style that passed through Europe over the past millennium, integrated in such a way that it never feels jarring.

That’s because Riga started out as a key member of the Hanseatic League from the 1200s through the 1400s, became a part of the Swedish Empire in the 1600s, the Russian Empire in the 1700s, and finally briefly the German Empire in 1917 before regaining its independence as a part of the Republic of Latvia in 1918.³ Throughout all that it’s been a major port, and the wealth flowing through the city has enabled every generation to make its mark. Most surprising to me was Art Nouveau; the latter half of the 19^th century saw Riga double in size and that prosperity and growth lead to an architecture boom at the turn of the century in the most fashionable artistic style at the time. Nearly ⅓ of the buildings in the center of Riga are in that style, giving it the highest concentration of Art Nouveau buildings in the world.

Riga feels like a long way for Art Nouveau to spread, only of course it isn’t.⁴ The problem is I tend to think of Riga on the edge of the map, in the hinterlands, straddling the border between Europe and Mother Russia. That’s the image I always had growing up during the Cold War. But that’s not even smart on its own terms; Riga had seven centuries of history before the Soviet Union was even founded. For most of that time it’s been smack in the center of a dense web of mercantile networks and trading routes. If nothing else, travel forces me to redraw my mental maps.

So it’s been a pretty good week, relaxing, studying the architecture, drinking Black Balsam⁵ and Mai Tais.⁶ And I’ve learned a bit more about Latvian history, and a bit more about medieval trade routes, and a bit more about the spread of artistic movements. And I’ve been reminded, once again, of the dangers of preconceptions. Riga’s great. It deserves to be seen on its own terms.

Since I saw Oppenheimer at the start of the week I had a lot of time to think about it while I was wandering around the city. The reviews are mostly correct; it’s beautifully filmed and incredibly well-acted, just an out and out amazing bit of film making. The soundtrack’s a bit loud, but that’s by design and didn’t bother me. It wouldn’t have carried the same tense dread infusing the theater without it. That dread is one of the really astounding tricks the movie manages. It’s a three hour runtime for a movie which is almost entirely people standing in rooms talking to one another — and we even know how the story turns out — but Nolan makes it feel as taut and lean as a thriller.

Most of the criticism I’ve seen is that the movie doesn’t have a lot to say about Oppenheimer. We never find out what makes them tick. We see Oppenheimer express different opinions at different times, we see uncertainty and a reluctance to get pinned down, but the movie never tells us what we should think. I don’t think Nolan’s even sure. The movie’s as ambivalent about Oppenheimer as Oppenheimer was about the bomb.

But that’s the point of the thing. Nolan’s movies are famously all about misdirection, about getting you to focus on something irrelevant while the really interesting bit is happening just off frame. Oppenheimer isn’t really about Oppenheimer. It’s about the spaces in between the action, the agonizing pause between a bomb igniting and the shock wave washing over you, the time after a decision when the consequences are still unknown and unknowable. That’s what I think the movie’s actually about, the way we all have to live in that uncomfortable space where our past decisions continue to reverberate throughout our lives, firmly out of our control. We’re all living the aftermath of Oppenheimer’s bomb. And none of us will ever fully apprehend the consequences of that.

Before I left Latvia I took a day trip out to the Gauja National Park. It’s only an hour’s ride on the train to Sigulda, a small town right in the heart of the Gauja Valley, and once there I spent about five hours tromping around the scenery.

The Gauja National Park is known as the “Switzerland of Latvia,” which gets at the look of the place — lots of trees nestled along the banks of the Gauja River — although that vastly overstates the size of the hills.⁷ It’s renowned for its scenic beauty, and if I had more time and was better prepared I’d have considered going kayaking on the river.⁸

Sigulda boasts a surprising number of castles, although they’re generally ruined or built in the 19^th century. The best one, I thought, was the Sigulda New Castle, a smallish manor house built by the Kropotkin family⁹ in 1881 in the Neo-Gothic style. It’s been recently restored¹⁰ and there’s some incredible Art Deco details in there, installed after the Russian Revolution when the manor was converted to house the Latvian Writers and Journalists Trade Union.

It’s so close to Riga it’s well worth the visit. Sigulda’s got a tram which will take you across the river, which provides some really great views of the surrounding valley. The Turaida Museum Reserve is nearby, with a partially restored medieval castle and historic buildings¹¹ and sculptures inspired by Latvian folktales. There’s even a bobsled track, open to the public, available to ride year-round.¹²

But it kind of signaled the end of my time in Latvia. I’m off to Czechia¹³ on a flight in a few hours. I really would stay longer if I could, maybe find a place for a month and just loiter around the edges of the Old Town without doing much of anything. I’ll have to console myself with another visit, someday.

Next: Prague (PRG) to Dublin (DUB)
Prev: Tallinn to Riga

Footnotes

¹ The bus terminal is right across from the Riga Central Market, a set of five massive buildings which are converted WWI German Zeppelin hangers and each one looks vaguely similar to the Hall of Justice from Superfriends. They’re striking, certainly, but they’re not human-scaled and they’ve seen better days.

² From what I’ve been able to tell, cities typically get an “Old Town” by having two waves of money wash over them in the past. The first goes into constructing a lot of buildings in a noticeable style. The second happens some time later, long enough that people don’t want to tear down the old buildings. So they build out beyond that (often calling it the New Town) and now the Old Town is a Thing™ and people actively work to preserve it.

If the waves of money are too close together or too steady then there’s never a clean separation between the old and the new — think of New York, where development just never stopped — and if they’re too far apart then everything gets run down and is more likely to all get demolished to make room for the new new thing.

³ And promptly losing it again to Germany in 1941 and the Soviet Union in 1944. It was a rough century for the Baltics.

⁴ Mexico City and Buenos Aires have a lot of Art Nouveau buildings, after all.

⁵ The local herbal liquor. It’s … an acquired taste. And at 80 proof, a hard one to acquire without getting wasted.

⁶ The Mai Tais are available at the Tiki Bar and are strictly for the tourists. Also not especially gentle with the alcohol content.

⁷ 98% of Latvia is under 200m in elevation.

⁸ I travel with one pair of shoes and while I’ve got a pair that’s reasonably versatile I don’t think they’d survive being submerged.

⁹ Yes, that Kropotkin family, although I’m not sure Pyotr even visited.

¹⁰ Recently enough that my guidebook claims you can’t go inside.

¹¹ The 1700s Lutheran church is a standout.

¹² That’s courtesy of Prince Nikolai Kropotkin, who installed a bobsled at their manor in the 1890s. The modern one was built in 1986.

¹³ Not for a dissolute weekend in Prague, for once