Sunday

I think Sundays are officially my favorite days here in Riga. All Riga seems to decide that it is a day of rest. When I awake, there is almost no street noise. Even the crowds move slowly. While I walk to church, I can hear the bells from the churches along the way: the rapid “ding dong” of the Lutheran church offset by the slow “bong” of the Eastern Orthodox church. It is a lovely call to worship – but one which only a few Rigans heed.

The church I have attended the past two Sundays is about as far away as you can get from where I live – but it’s a nice walk. It’s an Anglican church, and a fairly old one at that: it was founded in 1857. It, unfortunately, has not had a continuous congregation, since the building was closed by the Soviets and later (God forbid!) used as a discotheque. The current congregation is English speaking, about half and half Brits and Americans with some nationals and other cultures (say, Japanese) and the occasional tourist.

(Incidentally, they did, pragmatically, choose a good place for that discotheque: the acoustics are impeccable. …You haven’t lived until you’ve heard a pipe organ/viola duet :). The viola didn’t even need to be mic-ed. In fact, the church has no sound system or any need of one.)

I don’t know if I’ll end up staying there – I like it, but I’m easily the youngest attendee and I’d kind of like something… longer. More time for singing and preaching. *shrugs* Ah well…

After church, I enjoy walking around the old part of town and finding a place to eat. This, I assure you, is a fine art. You must walk down many side streets before you come to the proper place for lunch, which is generally the place you find when you’re beginning to get hungry ;). Last week it was “Samuroy’s,” a Japanese restaurant, and this week it was “Indian Raja,” an Indian restaurant (no duh). Yes, there is a lot of ethnic food – so much so that it can actually be rather difficult to get traditional Latvian fare. I still need to hunt down the “Cuba Café”…

The second half of the day is then (ideally) spent in shopping and sight seeing. Today, unfortunately, I had to come on home so that I could get a start on packing and cleaning. *sigh* Yep, I’m moving. To another apartment. Via a bed and breakfast. It is… well… it’s not ideal, but it’s happening, and there’s not much I can do about it. For y’all, this means that I will be out of contact for about a week. I could, ostensibly, check my email from work, but with Novell not working... If you’d like to get in touch, email me at my work address – the State Department won’t mind :).

See you… later… sometime… :)