Baltic Visitor

I don’t remember having read Baltic Bulletin before, although its RSS feed is in my aggregator so I guess I must have done. Today I stumbled across an article which is a few days old, in which Mike Collier evokes spring in Riga – something which reminds me of my extended trip to Latvia last […]

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It isn’t exactly a comprehensive survey, but I enjoyed About.com’s Latvian Culture 101 in Photos when I stumbled across it today. There are only seven images, but it provides a nice cross-section – I found the paragraph on writing sins down on rocks particularly interesting. The photos are well-chosen too.
Actually, as I was writing this […]

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Following a string of incidents involving tourists behaving badly at the Freedom Monument in Riga, a British visitor to the city has been imprisoned for five days for urinating on Latvia’s most potent symbol of the struggle for independence. I would like to think that the sentence will deter others, but having seen the behaviour […]

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Regular visitors to this site may have noticed that I recently added an Amazon widget in the sidebar on the right hand side of the page, allowing visitors to buy copies of some of the best Baltic guidebooks. I thought that it might be a good idea to give a run-down of the main options […]

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The first thing that most people mention about the climate of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is that the winters are really quite cold. This is undeniably true, although it never gets anywhere near as chilly as much of neighbouring Russia. The temperature in many parts of the region rarely gets above freezing between December and […]

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The Latvian capital has a decent selection of hotels to suit every budget, but outside of the capital things are not always so rosy. Major cities such as Ventspils and particularly Liepaja have some good options, but smaller towns may only have one or two hotels and some of them are unappealing Soviet relics.
Earlier this […]

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[ 2 December, 2007; 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm. ] Although there are several rival explanations, the Latvian capital Riga lays claim to being the birthplace of the Christmas tree.

One story goes that it was the handiwork of the members of the House of Blackheads, an organisation for unmarried foreign merchants living in the city. They supposedly set fire to a tree and left it […]

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The good news, reported in Diena newspaper this week, is that tourist numbers were up in Riga this year and that visitors were spending more money. The bad news is that they were also complaining more. Top grumbles were about poor service and excessive prices – and with rampant inflation the latter issue is not […]

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Until a few days ago I had never heard the term ’scooper’ when applied to beer. Then I started doing some research into Baltic drinks, and came across a site called ScooperGen. I had always realised that some people like to try as many beers as they can, eschewing dull mass market brands and checking […]

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In a new post on All About Latvia, Aleks tells a tale which should serve as a warning to tourists planning a bus journey from Riga to Ventspils. With no rail connection to the port city, there is no other transport option unless you have a car – but at least after reading Aleks’ story […]

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