Americana explosion in Riga

I never realized before moving to Europe that Americana is so exotic. But most European cities have at least one American restaurant. I'm not only talking about McDonald's.

The place might be wild west themed, have a juke box and (if you're lucky) serve onion rings. There will definitely be burgers and lots of fried food on the menu. As you, the American, sit down at your wagon wheel table and study the poster of Elvis on the wall, you might realize that these bits of Americana don't all fit together. But no one else seems to know or care.

Brian and I like to check out these American themed restaurants when we travel. As actual Americans, I feel like they should give us a burger and fries for free since we are adding such authenticity to the place. In Riga's old town, there was not only TGI Friday's but two other American themed restaurants too. Maybe people who grew up in the Soviet Union have are extra interested in Americana, the forbidden fruit of their youth. Anyway, one of these places looked particularly over-the-top, with neon signs and muscle cars and such.

The two of us stood on the wet cobblestones pondering whether to go in when we noticed a sign for live blues music. The musician playing that night was a guy named Greg Copeland. Where had we seen him before? In Hannover. He an expat blues musician who lives about 30 minutes away from us. So then we had to go in. When the host greeted us, Brian said, "we're here to see Greg." The guy had no idea who Greg was but walked us upstairs where another host asked if we had reservations and wanted to charge 10 euros for the show.  "But we saw him in Hannover for free," I argued. Didn't they realize we are kind of a big deal? Real Americans?? They should be paying us. But alas, my argument didn't work. We paid our money and settled in.

This is the ladies' room. I couldn't resist.

Main floor at Moonshine

I mentioned that this restaurant, Moonshine, is over the top, but let me explain what that means. It means that Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Coca-Cola, Harley Davidson, the 57 Chevy, the Blues Brothers, New Orleans, Rebel Without a Cause, drive in movies, Route 66, Main Street USA and the 4th of July just exploded all over each other in a hundred year old building in Riga, Latvia.

Both Wrigley's Gum and cigarettes on the menu

Greg Copeland with the Latvian Blues Band

And Greg played it up. I don't know if he could headline anywhere in Chicago, but in Riga he was the star. Greg had a great time on stage and got the crowd clapping their hands and tapping their feet. He was backed up by the Latvian Blues Band. That's really what they are called (there must only be one blues band in Latvia) and they are surprisingly good.

As Americans in the American-themed restaurant, we had our least touristy experience of the whole trip. There were only locals in the house, dressed to impress and relishing their onion rings. And if the version of America that Moonshine was selling didn't quite fit together, no one seemed to care.

Riga: shabby looking buildings, spiffy looking people

We headed to Riga, Latvia for a few days last week. It's ok, you don't have to know where it is.

Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are known as the Baltics, with their Baltic Sea to their west and Russia to their east. There are only 2 million people in Latvia. A third of them live in Riga.

Why would we go to Riga? Are we running out of travel destinations? Hardly. The answer has three parts: 1. Because it's there, 2. Because it was cheap, really cheap, and 3. There's still a thrill in visiting the former Soviet Union. What we found was a big and beautiful old town, surrounded a ring of buildings that were once just as lovely but now are crumbling, surrounded by a ring of gritty neighborhoods from the Soviet era.

Riga is also known as the top bachelor party destination for Brits. Since Ryan Air started to fly there a decade ago, hordes of drunken Englishmen have mobbed the old town streets on summer weekends. Even though Latvia joined the Euro in 2014, Riga is still a place where you can easily stumble from bar to bar and live it up like a... bachelor? On a weekday in February, though, souvenir shops were empty and there wasn't a crowd of guys in matching t-shirts stumbling around anywhere.

We made our own Riga hop-on, hop-off tour, by getting a day pass for the city bus. The shining center of town gave way to apartment blocks and industrial suburbs, until we were riding along a highway in the middle of a field. These are the moments when I wonder about the choices I have made with my life... and which ones, exactly, led to me getting on a Latvian bus with no idea where it would go. So Brian and I made the choice to get off, and catch a bus back into town.

That bus ride led to one of the best decisions I made all week. We headed into the Riga Central Market, which is a complex of three or four warehouse-like buildings and a bunch of outdoor stands. Even in February you could by vegetables and socks and faux fur coats outside. Inside, each building had its own wares, and their smells. The seafood building was particularly pungent. In the meat building (picture an old woman hacking pork parts) we found the pelmeni stand. Pelmeni is a dumpling that Brian and I discovered at Moscow on the Hill restaurant in Saint Paul. These ones were filled with meat and spices and made right behind the counter. Since I couldn't read anything on the menu, I just asked for pelmeni for 2. We topped them with vinegar, sour cream and chives and dug in... it was the most delicious decision to make on a cold, hungry afternoon. We bought another helping.

In Riga, I was again wowed by how Eastern European women can walk on high heels over cobblestones as if they've done it since birth. Maybe they have.While the buildings may have seen better days, the people were all style. And whatever decisions led me to be among them, riding the bus or eating pelmeni, I was glad to be there.

We're number one

What's the best country in the world? My answer would be that it depends who you ask.
But now, somebody has actually asked everyone.

In January, US News and World Report came out with the results of their survey of 16,000 people throughout the globe. They asked which country those people perceived to be the best, in areas like adventure, quality of life and power. Then they had to rank the best country overall.

The results are in, and the winner is.... Germany. Woo hoo.

I wonder what the point of this survey is. Probably no one who participated has been to every country, so all they know is what they see on TV or read in the news. It should really be a prize for who has the best PR campaign, or who's the most popular kid at school.

So Germany, though you may be nerdy and square (quadratisch), you have won the election for class president of the world. Thanks for letting me sit at your lunch table.

All covered up

Not since the bikini has an article of women's clothing made so much news.
The government of Bosnia recently banned the wearing of hijabs in courts and government institutions. For nearly ten years, French public employees have been banned from wearing the headscarves at work. Meanwhile, non-Muslim women are donning the hijab out of solidarity, to mixed reviews. Check out this article about solidarity hijab-wearers in my own Twin Cities.

What does this have to do with me and my bicycle? Read on.
I get most everywhere in town by riding a bike. But bike commuting is not good for my hair style.  On wet and windy days (which, in Hannover, are most of them) I arrive to school or to wherever I'm headed with hair that frizzes and flips in all the wrong directions.
I could put on a hat, but it here's what it does to my hair:

When your workplace is a school full of teenagers who scrutinize you daily, this is not a good look. So in the last few months, I have started to take a big scarf and wrap it around my head before I ride away. Not only does it keep my ears warm and my head dry, it doesn't smoosh my hair down like a hat. It doesn't block my peripheral vision like a hood. And when I get where I'm going, I can pull it down around my neck. Very practical, right?

Except I attract some stares as I pedal by people on the street. Maybe they just think I'm weird, but I think some people stare because my scarf kind of looks like a hijab. While head scarves are more common around Hannover than they were a few years ago, newcomers from Islamic countries certainly stand out.

A real hijab-wearing Muslim woman would probably just laugh at me, since I don't know how to wrap the scarf right. I couldn't wear one in solidarity if I tried. Maybe there's a YouTube video to show me how.

But if people do think I'm wearing a hijab, that's okay. I don't think there's anything oppressive about a woman covering her head, whether it's for religious, cultural, or even fashion reasons. In Cairo I saw women wearing hot pink leopard print hijabs and satiny black ones with lacy edges. Along with red lipstick and high-heeled boots they looked anything but oppressed. I worked for years with a Somali woman named Samira. She never covered her head but after her daughter was born she showed up wearing a hijab. I'm nosy so I asked her about it. Samira explained that she wanted to be a good example to her daughter and that meant wearing a head scarf.

Sure, a hijab makes a statement about what you believe and how you want to be seen. So does a Donald Trump bumper sticker, yet no one seems to have banned those. So while the bikini made news for revealing a woman's body, the hijab is famous for revealing a woman's beliefs. And in this part of the world, it takes guts to wear one. I don't pretend that my scarf is anything but a way to avoid hat hair. I also don't mind if people on the street think otherwise.

Layers in concrete

If you follow our street down several blocks, you'll find a small square. On one side of the road there's a playground bordered by a bakery and a hair salon. On the other side is a small monument. It's easy to pass up, a little dirty, and less eye-catching than the apartment buildings behind it.

The monument is to Carl Peters. What's remarkable about it that it's not only standing, but has been added to over time.

First, what I found out about Carl Peters:

Born in Germany, Peters finished university and went to live with an uncle in London around 1880. Whether his ideas about colonization started back home or whether the time in England made him dream of  empire, I can't say. After five years abroad, Peters moved to Berlin and started the German East Africa Company. With some political wrangling, he convinced Otto von Bismarck to let the German East Africa Company establish a territory in what is now Tanzania. Peters didn't want to stop there. He had his sights on Uganda and Equatoria (now South Sudan) but got chased off by the Brits and their Imperial East Africa Company.

Peters returned to Tanzania in 1891 with the title of Reichskommissar for German East Africa. With the nickname 'hangman Peters,' he was known for his brutal treatment of the native people. In 1897, he was officially condemned for bloodshed and cruelty and removed from his post.

Fast forward to 1935 in Germany. Peters has been dead for a couple of decades, but Adolf Hitler praises Peters as a fellow believer in the superior race. He issues a decree to 'rehabilitate' Peters in history. That's when the Nazi party must have constructed this monument, in Peters' home town of Hannover.

It's pretty amazing that this hunk of concrete still stands, since about 90% of our neighborhood was destroyed by bombs during World War II. People pass by this hunk of concrete all day long - old men clutching paper bags of rolls from the bakery, moms and kids heading to the playground.
Fast forward to... the 80s? 90s? I can't be sure. That's when this piece was added to the Peters monument:

It says something like this "This monument was erected by the National Socialists in 1935. It stood for the glorification of colonialism and the master race. For us it is a reminder of the charter of human rights we must use for the equality of all humans, people and races" (Real Germans out there, feel free to correct my translation. Despite all of the words running together, I learned some new vocabulary here).

What I find cool about this is that no one tore the monument down. No one attempted to erase this part of history. They simply added a layer of history to it.
And isn't that what humankind does? We slap down some mortar and build layer upon layer of experience. Some is ugly, some is beautiful.

Fast forward to... fairly recently. Someone took a can of orange spray paint and wrote all over the new part of the monument. I can't read what it says (tell me if you can make it out). I hope, really hope, that this grafitti is the name of some drunk 19 year-old who thought it would be fun to tag here, and not a neo-Nazi slogan. Whatever it says, this orange scribble is another layer to add to the story.