Riga and Western Latvia

It was quite a pretty drive along the coast from Tallinn to Latvia’s capital on a luxurious (and cheap!) Lux Express coach: endless forests of lush green pine, spruce and birch intermingled with the occasional farm here and there. It was so green! Reminded me of Washington in the spring (minus the mountains). After getting yelled at by the coach driver for getting off the bus one stop before intended – sorry driver, but “labdien,” “paldies” and “sveiki” is about the extent of my Latvian – it was a short walk through the bustling hive of central Riga to our expansive apartment on Dzirnavu Iela to unload.

The kids got used to having some kind of urban playground on every block from our days in Tallinn, so asked for somewhere to expend their batteries after we arrived (good job kids: get your energy out instead of unleashing it on Dad or each other). The city block-sized playgrounds, sports fields, pump tracks and skate park at Centra Sporta Kvartals was the perfect spot to burn some calories after a few hours on the bus. Without a doubt the largest playground complex I’d ever seen, the kids had me take them back there every day we were in the city. It was great to see so many young kids enjoying the outdoors in the middle of a city without their parents hovering, something we also noticed during our time in Tallinn: city kids – even some as young as five or six – with a ton of freedom. In particular the absence of kids with smartphones was very noticeable, quite the contrary to the plague of constant thumb workouts kids in the US sadly seem to consider normal these days as they spend every available moment with their faces glued to small screens…

I don’t know what it is – maybe my Latvian roots – but I do love the prevalence of pickled food and pork in this part of the world. Pork and potatoes: Baltic staples. We explored a handful of local eateries during our time in town, I think my favorite was a hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Lokals Karbonades specializing in plate-sized chicken and pork breaded cutlets served with all manner of customizable toppings. The kids shared one covered in cheese, bacon and BBQ sauce. Mine was slathered in a bechamel-y sauce, French ham, pickled onions and melted cheese. They were divine but I was in pain after clearing my plate, so much food! The schnitzels and fried potato cakes with bacon at Gauja were a notable standout as well (another great find thanks to Reddit). And the pastries in Kukotava below our apartment were delectable with such incredible presentation: I remember eating berliner donuts as a kid, but the ones from Kukotava were a cut above. One local eat we’ll all remember was the Baltic version of garlic bread: in Latvia it’s made of rye bread – another staple at my grandparents’ house when I was growing up – which was deep fried, coated in fresh garlic and served with a dipping sauce that was a bit of a cross between sour cream and marscapone. It was incredible, there’s a pic below of Lilia holding a tray of it at the Riga central market, we saw it a few times on menus as a snack.

One of the reasons I wanted to tour the Baltics with the kids was to show them some of their family history: my grandparents resided in Riga before the Soviet occupation of 1940, moving to Saldus in the early 1940s and ultimately fleeing the country in 1942. The staff at the National Archives of Latvia were kind enough to help me locate the addresses where my grandparents lived prior to our trip so we could take a bit of a journey through Valtenbergs history. Central Riga was a bit of a mishmash of beautiful art nouveau facades intermingled with apartment blocks that have been left to crumble since the Soviet era, my grandfather’s old apartment on Valmeiras Iela was certainly an example of the latter but it was interesting to visit, nonetheless. We also visited my grandmother’s residence of record from 1938 on Gertrudes Iela, a stylish art nouveau apartment building in the heart of the bustling city center only a block away from the ABNB we rented. I can just imagine her strutting along Gertrudes Iela in one of her fashionable leather jackets all those years ago when Latvia was an independent country…

Riga’s central market is the largest market in Europe (a fact I didn’t know before visiting). Located a stone’s throw from old town Riga on the banks of the Daugava River, the sprawling campus of four airplane hangar-sized halls and literally hundreds of outdoor stalls had everything from fresh produce to clothing on offer. It was quite a sight to behold. As in Tallinn, the berry season in Northern Europe was in full force when we visited, there were scores of vendors selling the most luscious-looking strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and cherries with hundreds of locals queuing to take home as many as they could physically carry. The strawberries were very cheap at anywhere between €2.50 and €10.00 per kilogram (which equates to about US$1.30 to US$5.25 per pound). Supply and demand… There were small tractors bringing the berries into the marketplace vendors by the pallet, as quickly as the vendors could put them on display they were bought and refilled with more. We bought a bag full of cherries as we ate our way through the market, so rich and perfectly ripe.

Max was enamored with the butchers in the expansive meat hall. They all had large, round wooden blocks on which to work, using hand saws and axes that looked like they were pulled off a viking ship to prepare carcasses of everything from hogs to beef, goats and lamb. The slabs of spiced pork fat on offer were something we’d never seen before, the line queued to purchase them was one of the longest we saw during our time at the market. While the aroma of the seafood hall certainly took us some getting used to, the array of fish on offer was absolutely mind blowing. The photos below depict it better than I describe, I still can’t get over the variety of species being sold (especially the smoked and dried fare).

We nibbled on a few offerings from the cheese and bread hall, all voting a soft, sweet, buttery bread twist covered in poppy seeds as our favorite pastry of the day. We also managed to hunt down a baker selling piragi that were still warm from the oven. Bacon-and-onion-filled piragi were a staple at all Valtenbergs family gatherings when I was a kid, although my doting grandmother used to make special ones just for me – the only grandchild – without onions because I was a picky little shit. I make them now and then for Lilia and Max and they are always devoured in short order. Before we arrived in Latvia both kids mentioned the need to find some during our visit so I’m glad we could check that off the list. The piragi we found at Riga’s central market didn’t disappoint, they made me realize I need to work on my dough when we get home, I need to add more butter.

When we toured Western Europe with the kids in 2021 we didn’t drag them to hardly any museums. We didn’t even go to the Louvre during our time in Paris. But I did want them to visit the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia during our time in Riga to give them a bit of an understanding of our history on the Valtenbergs side of the family. As part of their school curriculum the kids actually learn quite a bit about World War II, but the Red Army’s occupation of the Baltic states and subsequent 50+ year occupation by the Soviets is not something they touch on in the US classroom. The museum in central Riga was very well done, we spent over an hour on our journey through the history of the Soviet occupation, learning how the Latvians fought with the Nazis to expel the Red Army with the hope of regaining statehood but ultimately had their hopes quashed and endured decades of oppressive Soviet rule.

Not only did the museum provide an incredibly detailed history of the World War II period when the Soviet occupation began, but it also did an impressive job painting a picture of the period post World War II when the Soviets attempted to effectively erase Latvian culture: banning the celebration of Latvian holidays, changing the official language to Russian, ceasing to educate ethnic Latvians in their native language, eradicating Latvian folklore… It was brutally horrible, hard to fathom what it would have been like enduring so many years of Soviet rule. My great aunt – who sadly passed away a few weeks ago just before we could visit her – was a teacher and the only Valtenbergs to stay behind when the rest of her family fled the Soviet occupation. Sobering to think she would have had to teach her ethnically Latvian students in Russian for her entire career. The museum was quite moving, pretty touching when Max started to weave together our visits to his great grandparents’ old residences and the fact that his own relatives had to endure the history described in the exhibits. I’m glad we went, it’s important the kids know where they’re from.

Old town Riga to the north of the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia was covered with an impeccably well maintained collection of art nouveau buildings, many of them with bars and cafes spilling out into the surrounding courtyards. As we strolled through it was the first sun we’d seen since leaving California so felt compelled to soak up some rays with a few cold drinks and a does of people watching. It was touristy beyond belief: guided walking tours filtered through as we sat there, as well as a handful of bachelor and bachelorette parties and even a pedal bar hosting a group of Brits who were so plowed they could hardly control the limbs that were supposed to be powering them forward. Max enjoyed seeing one of the shirtless pedaling Brits get whipped with a belt by the female pedal bar host! Well worth the time spent in old town, and the kids enjoyed a bit of solo time exploring the handful of European clothing stores dotted through the courtyards.

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Exploring Latvia outside of Riga required a car – the Baltics don’t have the train networks of Western Europe – so we grabbed some wheels at the airport and headed west to explore some of the countryside towards the coast. On our way west we stopped by the quaint village of Tukums to meet up with a family friend who is my great aunt’s nephew by marriage and looked in on her during her elderly years after her husband passed. Was great to meet Sandris and his son Kaspars after emailing back-and-forth over so many years, we enjoyed a hour-or-two chatting next to the town square with some morning coffees, reflecting on everything from family history to the current plight of the Baltics given the situation in Ukraine.

From Tukums we tackled some rural dirt roads to make our way to Saldus, the small village where Johnny Valts entered the world after my grandfather was moved there to engineer the installation of high voltage power lines in 1942. It was June 14 when we made the drive from Riga to the coast, the date on which the Soviet occupation began in 1940. In remembrance the countryside was quite literally littered with Latvian flags at half mast – alongside many Ukrainian flags at full mast – in somber remembrance of the beginning of occupation during the war. Once in Saldus, again thanks to the helpful folks at the national archives we managed to track down the house on Skrundas Iela where my grandmother went into labor with my dad all those years ago.

We set up camp for a few days in the seaside town of Liepaja on the Baltic Coast, the town where my great aunt and uncle lived for most of their lives. Our apartment was pretty fun: we stayed on the top floor of a giant brick grain storage facility (pictured below) that was more than 150 years old. All the old wooden beams were left exposed inside, some quite cool handiwork to get it transitioned from an industrial complex to livable apartments. The building was used to store wheat from Ukraine during the Soviet occupation, fed by rail lines that were built across Eastern Europe to Liepaja, which back then was a huge Soviet port for gains exports primarily to Germany. Liepaja was also a major cog in the Soviet military-industrial complex and was home to a huge assortment of factories and production facilities for a number of decades: everything from metalwork to textiles, food processing to weapons manufacturing. It was amazing to see the almost endless array of massive factories and smelters surrounding the town, huge buildings now left to ruin with broken windows and crumbling facades, all of them completely abandoned. Some of the most expansive factory buildings I think I’d ever seen, one after another in all directions. In addition to manufacturing, a short drive north of Liepaja in the now decrepit settlement of Karosta was the main Baltic submarine port for the Soviet military. Really a pretty depressing window into the past…

These days Liepaja is a coastal destination in the summer months, known for the white sand beach that stretches along the coast to the west of town. Even though it was quite sunny and warm in town during our stay, any Latvian will tell you, “Liepaja is where the wind starts.” It was no exception when we visited: the cool breeze whipping off the Baltic Sea necessitated long sleeves even under a cloudless sky. The kids enjoyed more exceptional Baltic outdoor facilities at a park near the beach, and we enjoyed a couple of strolls on the promenade alongside some of the huge ships moored in the harbor.

A day trip to the quaint rural village of Kuldiga was a nice drive through the incredibly green western part of the country: with 55% of Latvia’s landmass covered in forest and 32% devoted to cropping, there’s a hell of a lot of green during spring and summer. Endless fields of cereal crops stretched to the horizon in all directions as we drove inland, no fences in sight, just the occasional swath of native forest in between the fields. While also being quite a picturesque village, our main target in Kuldiga was Ventas Rumba, Europe’s widest waterfall. The falls stretch 110 meters (360 feet) across the span of the River Brenta and were a fantastic spot for a dip in the warm weather. Max was boosting off the rocks in short order and we even managed to get Miss Lilia in for a quick dip. While the Latvian-styled kebabs we tried from Voyage Voyage weren’t on top of the kids’ list of favorite foods from their time in Latvia, I absolutely loved their fare: chicken or beef kebab meat with pretty standard kebab sauce, but complemented with a Baltic touch of pickled cucumber, pickled carrots, cabbage and – of course – a hint of dill. Yum!

From Kuldiga we took the coast road back to Liepaja, skirting the sand cliffs from Jurkalne to Strante and eventually finding a spot in Ulmales where we could get down to the beach next to a private campground. While the temperature did drop quite a bit from Kuldiga inland – from around 78°F/26°C to 68°F/20°F on the coast – it was still warm enough for a bit of frolicking in the water and a few pings of the Aerobie. Such a picturesque coastline, and nice to have lucked on a spot to ourselves away from the windy sand of Liepaja to the south.

Last time I visited Liepaja was in 2007, and at the time I was with my great aunt and uncle so didn’t explore the town a ton by myself. The kids and I agreed the town had probably seen better days: even in the city center there were a lot of abandoned buildings and eateries that had obviously just closed their doors due to lack of business. Great to be able to swim in the Baltic Sea, though, and the trip inland to Ventas Rumba was definitely a highlight of our time in Latvia.