Riga

It’s just dough, spin­ach, cheese and garlic, but the first bite into a piroski trans­ports me instantly back to child­hood. Even just the dough: there’s some­thing in it that tastes like no other dough. My mother used to make meat piroski too, hot and juicy. 

Riga is a town of con­tra­dic­tions. Gor­geous river, gor­geous canal where the old for­ti­fic­a­tions would have been, decrepit rot­ting old Soviet build­ings and way-too-new renov­a­tions with spot­less paint and com­puter-gen­er­ated trendy font signs care­fully painted onto per­fect walls, the Kodak Digital Labs build­ing all in fros­ted glass and grey over­lay, the impec­cably restored medi­eval build­ings with bright cobalt paints and red brick­work in the old town, the art nou­veau build­ings in the new town designed by Sergei Eis­en­stein’s father.

The ferry ride from Là¼beck was superb: clear skies, a sweet boy from Ten­nessee doing a PhD on Schopen­hauer, music and genius to chat with all day, stolen pas­sion on the top deck of the boat under clouds at 2am…

Stay­ing at a hostel with Zack and his friends from Ger­many that he came here to meet, although that’s a little odd since they mostly just want to hang out on their own, so I’m spend­ing days alone. Yes­ter­day was the first day of driv­ing rain in my whole trip, pound­ing down. I got soaked to the skin trying to find the goth club, which was closed, while they all appar­ently ended up knock­ing back Vodka at a retro Soviet club.

I *think* my first story for the Aus­tralian should have appeared on Tues­day. Did anyone see it? Can anyone get a copy? I could­n’t find it on their Web site. Anyhow, if it did, there should now be a story from me in the Aus­tralian every fort­night, in IT Alive.

My French pen­friend Chrystà¨le rang me to say how sorry she was that they missed me, and if only we’d been able to get in touch before she could have at least given me the keys to stay at their house while they were away. Humph. Anyhow, I now have all the new and cor­rect num­bers for her, an e‑mail address (finally! I’ve been trying to get her onto e‑mail for years) and she’s trying to entice me back to Paris before I leave. Since I will be in London, I guess that only really depends on money. I’d be crazy not to when I’m so (rel­at­ively) close.