Riga Local Customs

Riga is supposed to be the city with the finest collection of art nouveau buildings all over Europe. Its historic centre, in 1997, was inscribed to the UNESCO world heritage sites.

Art Nouveau/Jugendstil is an international style of decoration and architecture which developed in the 1880s and 1890s - sometimes it is also called Liberty. Emphasis is on the decorative elements (sometimwa symbolistic) of the building's facades.

Two names, to mention the best-known ones are Gaudi in Spain and Wright in the USA. And, in case you are not interested in architecture... what about a designer like Tiffany? This is Art Nouveau/Jugendstil, too.

.

The local currency in Latvia is the Latvian Lats (Ls). Cash can be exchanged at banks and exchange offices. Before exchanging money, I recommend you to check the rates and fees of a few offices. There are often differences in the rates.
The sign "0 % COMMISSION" does mostly refer only to "SELL" and not to "BUY" transactions. So don't hesitate to ask, how much you really get for your money.
Don't change your money on the street; these people usually cheat you with other foreign currencies.

1 more image

This is a very nice tradition: couples who are getting married putting locks on this bridge in this parc as a symbol for their "unbreakable" love that will (hopefully) last forever! You can find this bridge in the Bastejkalns parc.

When I landed at Riga Lidosta International Airport I was convinced I would have found all the signs written in Russian... but I was wrong cause I found Latvian and English signs!

Latvian people is always mixing Latvian and Russian all the time... so it could be better if you know at least a little Russian cause English is not so spoken among adults...

I found Russian language really charming and I like the sounds of words...

The titular nation - the Latvians - are in Riga still heavily outnumbered by the Russians. Latvia’s autochthonous population suffered most of the 3 Baltic states of the 45 years Soviet rule. The result of deportation, genocide and emigration of Latvians and mass immigration of Soviet occupants resulted in only 51.7 % of Latvia’s population being ethnic Latvians at the beginning of independence. This has now slightly changed in favour of the Latvians because most of the Latvians who survived the deportations came back as did quite many who emigrated overseas. At the other hand some Russians etc. emigrated after independence, but mostly not to the neighbouring former homeland Russia. But the number of non-autochthonous residents (legal and illegal ones) is still by far the highest in Europe.

As a means to integrate the non-autochthonus residents the Baltic countries offer now the easiest way of access to citizenship of all civilized countries (in Switzerland for example fulfillment of these conditions would not even be enough for a permanent residence as a foreign citizen). It is more than generous and quite unique that citizenship is offered to occupants and this seems still not to be enough for the former occupants as the cases at the European Court of Justice show.

But nevertheless the integration seems partially to be successful, other than in 1992 I found in 2002 that many of the ethnic Russians living in Latvia today appear quite assimilated and far less “Russian” than the “Germans” from Russia who emigrated under the last two decades to Germany and are there living often in some sorts of ghettos and are still speaking Russian.

In Latvia the most popular sports game is hockey. Already now Latvian hockey fans are well known abroad during Championships. :)
We are quiet nosy people while watching hockey! :)

And good news are that during 2006 in Riga will take place World Championship in Hockey.

November 18th is our Independence day.
If you are in Riga during this time, don't miss many different activities, like our army parade near President castle, President's speech near the Monument of Freedom and fireworks at the very evening.

Latvian language is a bit similar to German, at least during my trips when I was talking Latvian, people was asking am i from Germany.

As in Latvia lives just a bit over 2,5 million people and only half of them are Latvians, our language can be considered as not very popular.
It is quiet complicated to learn it, because even you speak Latvian but are traveling
around Latvia, you can hear some dialects which might sound very different. And not
always u will understand what people are trying to tell you.

Some most needed words:
Hello - Labdien!
Please- Ludzu
Thank you - Paldies
How are you? - Ka tev iet?
Good bye - Uz redzesanos!
My name is___ - Mani sauc____