Spring Break Part 1 - Bus rides and Warsaw

Last week was finally a time for me to kick back and relax after my marathon of exams and reports. It was Spring Break in Riga! I had my European Union Studies exam two Thursdays ago, and I spent most of the next two days catching up on rest and relaxing with friends. On Saturday night, I left by bus en route to Berlin. On the way, I was able to see how the geography changed from country to country. That is the reason I chose to take a bus, so I could actually see the differences between Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Germany. One huge difference that had nothing to do with the geography was that each country had their own language and their own currency (with Germany using the Euro). This was difficult for me, as I had to learn 4 different ways to convert my money to the dollar. It also made it clear that one of the problems in the EU (as we talked about in class), was that the free flow of goods and services is difficult to achieve where there are as large of obstacles as language and currency. This for me made the bus ride alone worth it, since I was actually able to experience something we learned about in class.

At about 6:30 in the morning I arrived in Warsaw, Poland. I didn't realize the time change was back one hour until I got there (it was 7:30 in Riga), so I had some time to walk around and explore the city before anything opened. I took a taxi to the Central Station, which seemed to be the center of the city. Warsaw provided some interest to me because nearly all of the city was destroyed during WW2 and had to be rebuilt. Because of this, much of the city was modern, but in some places you could still see areas that were once monuments and that were in the process of restoration. Right next to the Central Station was the Palace of Culture and Science, a huge building consisting of galleries, concert halls, theaters, and a congress hall. The Palace stands in stark contrast with the rest of Warsaw's skyline, as it was built by Soviet influences soon after the war. Until the end of the USSR's influences in Eastern Europe, it was named for Stalin.




As the day went on, I had seen some churches around Warsaw and a few buildings that were never restored but held pictures of Jewish victims of the 3rd Reich. I wanted to find the old Warsaw Ghetto or the large concentration camp (one of the main ones in Europe), but I learned that both were too far away for a short visit. By mid-morning the city had become very alive, and everywhere I went I saw people holding a short stick with a variety of flowers. I realized that this celebration was taking place because of Palm Sunday, and as I made my way closer to the Old Town, I started to see churches pouring out onto the streets with people. The Old Town was about a 30 minute walk away from the Central Station, but once I got there it was definitely worth visiting. In the Old Town especially, you could see where the city had made attempts to restore what once was a very historical and cultural part of town. It's not that it wasn't that way now, but there were obvious distinctions between what was new and what had been preserved since before the war. The Old Town covered a huge area, and once again there were people all over holding the makeshift palms. There also seemed to be a lot of tourists, something I didn't expect in Warsaw.






For lunch, I had a national Polish dish, which was some sort of filled wafer and beet soup, and a regional beer. The beet soup was surprisingly a lot different from borscht, but the meal was very good. Something I learned as I got closer and closer to Germany was that the beer became cheaper with meals and any other drink became much more expensive. For example, by the time I got to Berlin, having .2 L (8 oz.) of coke with a meal costs between 3-4 Euro, while having a .5 L (nearly a pint) of beer cost 2.50-3.50 Euro. This seemed to occur throughout Poland as well, and given that the beer in both countries was very good, it seemed like I didn't have much of another choice for meals. Also, ordering tap water in most places in Europe will get you a very quizzical look, as if you are the first to have ever done it. I did this a few times, and the restaurant still found a way to charge me 1.60 for the ice. I learned from my lunch in Warsaw that this was something I would have to keep in mind all week.

After my lunch, I explored more of Warsaw and saw most of the Old Town (I saw the rest on my bus ride back to Riga), and managed to take a quick tour of the University of Warsaw. I made my way back to the bus station by 2:30, where I got on my next bus to Berlin.

A Breath of Fresh Air

Spring has finally arrived in Riga! And with the arrival of spring has also come the relief that classes are coming to an end. Sorry for the delay since my last post, but since then I've had three classes at once and have decided to focus all of my energy on those. After this past week, I was finally able to relax. Monday we had a beast of a Macroeconomics final and for the next few days I tried to balance writing some of my team's final report (it came out 30 pages, 1.5 spaced) and assignments for my other classes, European Studies and Negotiations and Dispute Resolution. Fortunately, Macro is officially over tomorrow after presentations of our reports, and this coming Thursday I will finish with European Studies, leaving me with a much smaller workload and much more time to relax going into spring break. Spring break begins on the 16th for me, and I have plans to visit Poland and Berlin. Until that time, I'll focus on getting through this last tough week of class.

However, my last few weeks have offered more than just a heavy dose of academia. Although I wondered if I would ever see the day, in the last week all of the ice and snow in Riga finally melted! Just last weekend the river that runs through the city was still frozen solid, but now it's completely melted and hard to imagine as the block of ice it recently was. With the change in weather has also come a change in the spirit of the city. After a stressful day during the past few weeks I would often head into Old Town during the day, where everything was much more alive than before. It's hard to pass through without hearing someone play an instrument, and some of the cafes have started to open up and pour into the streets. One of my favorite things about the change in weather is going to the market and buying some fresh food. Although it stayed open through the winter, now the doors are left open during the day and it's easy to get caught up in the bustling crowds while roaming among all of the shops and vendor stands. In one of the parks, there is also a fair that has set up, and walking by and hearing the music and screams from the rides brings me back to the county fairs I experience in Kentucky every summer. It's easy to see why everyone here has told me that I need to see Riga when it gets warm. The picture below is of the same park I have a picture of in January. It's an amazing place to take a walk in and to sit and relax when it's warm. A part of the park that I didn't realize until recently is the bridge you see below. Those are all locks attached to the bridge. It is a tradition for couples to put a lock on the bridge and throw the key in the river to symbolize that they are locked in love forever. It's these small hidden gems of Riga that makes me love exploring the city every chance I get.




What's more, in the past few weeks I've gotten even more acquainted with parts of the city and Latvian culture I had previously been ignoring. I went to the Museum of Occupation, which was a very educational and powerful experience. I learned too that, although not apparent on the surface, there still exists a big rift between the ethnic Latvian people and ethnic Russians. Being friends with both at school, I can tell the large differences between the two cultures that I originally didn't know exist. Also, my roommate did a study for his Economic Anthropology course, and it was easy to see from his surveys that many of the ethnic Latvian people are hesitant to trust some of the ethnic Russian people in the community. My visit to the Museum of Occupation made it clear to me why this distrust still exists. Many of the students my age are stuck between the two cultures, and therefore have to deal with mixed emotions about Latvia's occupation that are influenced by both their family and friends. The museum is pictured below.



Another part of Riga I've visited is the Baltic Times. I didn't realize until recently that the headquarters of it is very close to my flat. I've also traveled across the main bridge in town and explored a little bit of the part of town I had never been in. Though there doesn't seem to be too much across the bridge, I still found an amazing spot to take pictures of Riga's skyline across the water. I also ate at a neat noodle restaurant across the river, and plan on exploring the area a little more to see what else I can find.



I've tried to expand my experience in Riga even more by trying some new restaurants. I've found two good Russian restaurants (neither of which I can pronounce the names of), one where I had a chicken breast in a traditional Russian sauce, and another where I had some great plov, a rice-based dish with carrots, pork, and a tomato-based sauce. It's become normal for me to eat traditional Russian and Latvian meals, and although I still haven't learned to cook them, my diet has become based much more off of these foods that were strange to me when I came (such as kebabs, plov, and borscht). I've also eaten at a more traditional buffet called Metropolitan, one of my new favorite spots for lunch. I'm sure I will continue to experience new foods and go to new restaurants in the next few weeks. I also want to experience more of Riga's museums and go to an opera at the national opera house to get into the culture of the city away from school.

But going back to school now, the newest courses I'm taking are, as I stated before, EU Studies and Negotiations. EU studies is taught by the same professor who taught Macro, and he is one of the best instructors I've ever had. He has a great sense of humor and continues to make the course interesting. However, the course I really love is Negotiations and Dispute Resolutions. Each Thursday, we do a simulation where we negotiate some sort of offer with someone else in the class. We have done one-on-one negotiations and multiparty negotiations, and not only is it fun, but I've also learned that I have to adopt my negotiation styles to fit the culture of the opposing party. Each time I negotiate with a Lithuania, a Latvian, a Russian, or another exchange student, I get to see how different cultures approach similar problems. For me, this has been the most educational class I've taken at SSE, due in a large part to these new cultural differences I am constantly experiencing.

Over the next few weeks, I will start to travel and see more of Europe, but I know that returning to Riga at the end of each trip will feel like returning home. It is this ability to make me feel completely at home while still allowing me to experience something new every week that makes Riga such a great place to be.