Random Riga: a story of 4 students, Russian kitchen and retro elevator

Latvia is a land of mixed cultures – this is something nobody will refute. Despite all the conflicts and major issues in terms of integration, the reality is that these cultures and nationalities live shoulder by shoulder every day. Yes, and I mean mostly Latvians and Russians. Since I come from a small town where most of the inhabitants are Latvians, it was quite hard for me to get used to this kind of cultural mix, when I moved to Riga.

As the time passed, I accepted the rules of the game and took all the political/ ethnic issues more calmly. Now, when specific dates come,

 Soldiers who fought in German legion during WWII are honored on 16^th of March, whereas the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany is celebrated in 9^th of May

I avoid visiting the city-center, because mostly its a useless fight between two opposing sides for an argument that simply is neither right, nor wrong. I can’t stand when history is being re-written again and again each year. And mostly it is serving only as a political weapon in the arena of elections. This year’s 16^th of March is over (with several acts of strife, of course),  and I have no desire to find out what’s going to happen on 9^th of  May.

Similar pointless and nationalities separating action took place in February, 2012 when a predictable referendum took place. Everybody knew that Russian won’t become 2^nd official language in Latvia, and yet it was necessary to bring this topic up. Everybody were so obsessed with the past and language issues that a simple human being was left somewhere behind. Nobody wanted to compromise. Everybody wanted to win a fight where no losers or winners are actually possible. One day, somewhere in this madness, me and my friends suddenly found ourselves in a completely random situation where politics had almost no effect on simple warm relationships between 4 Latvian students and a Russian family. Please take a note: this is not a story about drinking alcohol or Latvians and Russians – this is a story of a friendship and surprises Riga can bring you if you open your heart to this diverse city.

It was like any ordinary night when me and my mates – students of Baltic languages – were hanging out. And just like any ordinary night with Baltic languages students, this also meant visiting the night shop for refilling the stocks of beverages. As we waited in the queue, some young Russian woman, apparently warmed by some alcohol, noticed our good mood and started a conversation. Today, I no longer remember what exactly we were talking about, but it ended with Anzhelika (that was her name) inviting us to her apartment to take her dogs out for a walk. Since my friend likes dogs a lot and since we were slightly drunk, we didn’t hesitate to agree. And there we were – suddenly in some apartment where we got introduced to her daughter, who at that time had a splint supporting her arm, and her two dogs who came with us back to the night-store where the rest of my friends were waiting. By that time, her husband Timur had got himself in a fight with some aggressive men and had blood all over his face. As a truly warm-blooded woman, Anzhelika went to protect her husband and once this odd row was over, the couple found our company somehow enjoyable and decided to invite us to their place. Carpe diem! was our moto of the night so we returned to the apartment of the Russian couple, the broken-arm daughter and two dogs.

We didn’t really know what to expect so barely anything could surprise us. Maybe it was a typical Russian kitchen, maybe it wasn’t, but there was a huge jar with some pink drink inside that we were kindly offered to try. The conversations were a bizarre mix of two languages. The time passed quickly and  we heard the story of the extraordinary couple and many other things during the night, but we were never able to reach any agreement when it came to the language issues. Eventually, we realized that politics and disinformation has created an enormous gap between the two nationalities. Those simply were two completely different points of view and at the point I was asked “But w h y the **** do I need to speak Latvian?”, I knew I had nothing to answer. Not to them because the fact that this kind of question is even asked indicated that integration of  non-Latvians will be impossible until necessity of Latvian language will be put under doubt. So I gave up. I didn’t capitulate , nor I was defeated (as it was not really a fight), I simply gave up because arguing was not what we wanted that night. And I felt that Anzhelika and Timur in their hearts were more than national identity or language. So we continued our stay in their kitchen till somewhat 4 ‘o’ clock when the couple got tired and we decided to leave. At this point, our odd intercultural meeting ended, but we couldn’t leave the house without getting ourselves in another small adventure.

In the apartment house, there was a beautiful, old, steel elevator. As we were about to leave, one guy from our company came up with an idea - “Hey, guys, let’s take a ride in this one! It’ll be like in the movies! ”. Me and my friend agreed, with other guy being left somewhere behind. We got in the elevator and the guy was right -  it simply couldn’t be more “like in the movies” - the light suddenly turned out and the cage stopped lifting few centimeters below the 5^th floor. It was somewhat 5 am and we were stuck in a 100-years old elevator with the only person outside the elevator being the most drunk of us! We tried calling the elevator service but couldn’t really explain our location as we hadn’t payed any attention to the address of the house. Meanwhile our friend, who wasn’t in the elevator, decided to ask other residents of the apartment-house for a help. Unfortunately, at that point, he wasn’t able to realize that loud knocking on the doors and pulling the door-handles is not the most appropriate method at that time of the day. This resulted in our encounter with the police that was called by some old lady who thought that our friend was a crazy drug-addict that tried to break in her apartment. As we tried to look as polite as possible, our friend seemed to have lost it completely, and was barely able to calm himself down to not to get us into more trouble. “There is no God, old lady!”, he kept telling the senior resident with a reason known only to himself. Eventually, the owner of the house also arrived and later came the elevator service. A full team of angry men tried to get 3 students out of a retro elevator.

After an hour or so we were finally free. The police let us without any penalty, but the house owner couldn’t prove that we had bounced in the elevator (which we truly didn’t). The old lady went back to sleep and the quarter was also tired of adventuring and went home to fall asleep in the point this extraordinary night began. Once we woke up, it seemed logical that we had doubts of whether there was any Anzhelika and Timur, any kitchen or elevators. It might’ve been a fiction. Besides, I walk that street back and forth nearly every day. I’ve never met any of the couple so far.

The next time you walk in the city, look up to all the buildings. Look at the windows and imagine how many stories each of them carry. Riga. just like any other city, has so many things to reveal. You just have to be open to everything and ignore all the stereotypes and conflicts. It’s not worth fighting for politics or history (especially the way these fights take place in Latvia) if other values are being neglected during such pointless fighting.