Latvia is timeless. With towns founded in the thirteenth century, the Soviet era is a comparable blip on the radar, a few rings of time in a humongous oak tree. For our purposes it’s indelibly altered the landscape and people of the country. Magazines are found in Latvian, Russian, and English. Trains to St. Petersburg and Moscow leave by the hour. The sound of seagulls pervades the lush, sleepy neighborhoods of Riga but the birds are never seen. Stray cats own the overgrown lots and are too busy with their work to bother with passersby. A sharp coastline littered with massive misshapen pieces of metal—puzzling Soviet debris—beats against a blank forest landscape. Ready to serenely endure for the next thousand years.
