"Ice Cold in Riga" Riga by antistar

Riga has been in the grip of the coldest winter and worst recession in decades. The winter temperatures dropped as low as -30, the sea and river were permanently frozen, and the icicles grew so big and long that Latvians were reportedly firing bullets at them to get them down. The recession has had an even more profound impact, with personal wealth falling over 20% in just a year, and unemployment rising to nearly a quarter of the adult population.

In many ways this helped me as a traveller: prices were lower, the city was under a beautiful blanket of snow, and the tourist crowds were nowhere to be seen. And none of the scare stories I'd read about were in evidence: no streets of empty shops and closed down restaurants; no armies of desparately poor thieves stripping tourists of their belongings. It was cold though; damned cold.

Riga

Riga is famed as the "Paris of the North", due to its many glamourous Art Nouveau buildings that hark back to better times. This gives the city a grander feeling than its Hanseatic neighbour to the north, although I found Tallinn's old town to be prettier. Unlike Tallinn, Riga has retained little of its medieval core, but it has gained some impressive buildings over the years since, all the way up to the Communist era additions of the enormous tiered TV tower and the Stalinesque Academy of Sciences. But for me the most impressive of them all was slender spire of the 13th century St. Peter's.

Like its Baltic neighbours, Riga has a fascinating, sometimes sad, and ever changing history. Many great powers have squabbled over this land, with the last occupiers being the Soviets. They all have left their mark, on the language, and particularly the ethnic mix. Riga even has more Russian speakers than Latvians. These factors, and being sandwiched between the two other Baltic states, has turned Riga into the region's biggest, most dynamic city. The Latvians wanted to use this to turn themselves into the "Baltic Tiger", but over-ambition and a financial tsunami changed their course dramatically.