Riga, the Hospital, the Gulags and Kandava

So many things have happened in the last week. I have met with relatives in a Soviet housing complex, have semi-mastered the trolley bus and tram system, have travelled to a small village in Western Latvia by bus, and am now the proud possessor of a renewed Latvian passport which makes me an official member of the European Union. Along the way I’ve met people who have been extraordinarily helpful, and others who have been extraordinarily rude. I have also completely fallen in love with the architecture of Riga – the mixture of old and new, crumbling and renovated, art nouveau and traditional wooden buildings, takes my breath away. Old Riga hugs the river Dauguva. It is a maze of cobbled stone streets and 13th and 14th century buildings that open onto public squares filled with outdoor bars, cafes and souvenir stalls selling amber jewellery and hand-knitted socks and mittens. From the old city the rest of Riga extends out beyond a bank of beautiful parklands along grand boulevards lined predominantly with art nouveau buildings, but every now and then you come across traditional old wooden houses, some completely neglected and other very beautifully renovated. Of course, there are vestiges of the Soviet era everywhere. It is all so completely different from humble Hobart and I can see that my love for this place is tainted with a bad case of fascination with ‘the other’ (even though I technically belong to that ‘other’). Part of me wants to live here because it is so very aesthetically compelling - but another part of me acknowledges that the reality of living here from day to day may not be so easy.

A few days ago I visit Riga’s First Hospital, which is where my mother, Mirdza Berziņš, was born in 1927. The hospital was originally established in 1803, but the rather gothic main building, which is now the emergency entrance, was built in 1873.

I take photos from the outside and then ask the guard if I can take a photo of the interior. He says I need permission and leads me up the stairs to the management offices - I feel a bit like a naughty schoolgirl being taken to the headmaster’s office. I am introduced to Iveta, the PR Manager, who is absolutely delighted to meet me. She sits me down, makes me coffee, gives me a book of Latvian poetry as a gift and asks me why I am interested in the hospital. We talk for over half an hour, exchanging life stories, star signs, and views on what it is like to be a woman in the world today. We discover that both of us were born in 1954, only a few days apart. I am not able to take photos inside the hospital, but Iveta showed me a small museum in the bowels of the building where there is a photo of the hospital’s nursery in the 1920s or 30s. We then go outside and walk through the hospital complex and she shows me the building where my mother would have been born. Iveta gives me permission to return at any time to take more photos. We have been emailing each other since our meeting.





















* * *

When I was in Riga in December 2001, I was taken to the First Hospital by ambulance from the Hotel Latvia. I was having trouble swallowing and my breathing would often stop for a brief period of time when I ate solid food. I was becoming increasingly distressed by my symptoms and after an episode in the Hotel’s café, asked if there was a doctor in the house. They called an ambulance and it was suggested I see a specialist at the hospital. My niece, Antra, accompanied me for moral support. I vaguely remember the interior of the ambulance – it was dark and the equipment looked dated and unfamiliar.

When I arrived at the Hospital and was led inside, I felt as if I had entered a 1940s black and white movie. There was a lone woman sitting at the reception desk, bathed in a dim wash of yellowish light. A short woman with red hair led Antra and I down a long corridor. She wore a white lab coat and knee length leather boots and there was an almost military precision in her stride. In the distance ahead, I could see someone standing in the otherwise empty corridor, looking in our direction. As we approached, the person's face became visible – it was lobster red and extremely swollen, the eyes mere slits, the skin shiny and peeling in places. Our eyes met briefly. As we progressed down the corridor a voice inside my head began repeating 'Take the first available flight to London if you have to have a procedure, take the first available flight to London…'

At the end of the corridor, Antra was made to wait outside while I was led into an examination room. The red-haired woman with the boots instructed to me take off my coat and pointed to a seat against the wall next to a trolley of medical instruments. There was a small Christmas tree covered in decorations on a table at one end of the room and traditional straw mobiles hung over the large examination table in the centre. The woman sat down at a table opposite me, opened a large ledger book, picked up a pen, and held it poised over the page, ready to write. She maintained this position without moving. Clearly, she was not the specialist.

After 5 minutes or so of waiting, the ambulance officer arrived and said, ‘Well, you must be feeling much better now that you are here, in the hospital. The specialist will be here shortly – he’s seeing someone in the other building who is bleeding profusely.’ When the doctor arrived he burst into the room in a great flurry wearing a full length padded floral dressing gown and a fur hat. I immediately thought of Groucho Marx. He removed his outfit and discussed my case with the ambulance driver and the red-haired assistant. They seemed more interested in the fact that I could speak Latvian and lived in Australia, rather than the nature of my condition. Eventually I was examined. The specialist asked me to open my mouth very wide and depressed my tongue with a wooden paddle. Leaning over his shoulder, also staring down my throat, were the ambulance officer and the assistant. The specialist stood back for a moment, then moved his face very close to mine and said, in a quite loud voice, ‘Completely healthy woman, completely healthy woman, completely healthy woman.’

‘So why am I having trouble swallowing?’ I asked. ‘It’s your nerves,’ he said. He prescribed a herbal tea, donned his floral padded dressing-gown and hat again, and left. I drank the herbal tea, but the problem didn’t ease. I ended up seeing a Harley Street specialist in London who explained the how the dysphagia had started and concurred that there was actually nothing wrong with me – it would just take me time to learn how to swallow properly again. The condition eventually passed after I finished my PhD.

* * *

The next day I collect my renewed passport, dutifully sitting with others in a waiting room until my number is shown on a digital screen. The girl who stamps my papers and hands the passport over to me is young and attractive, probably in her twenties, but she is extremely dour and serious. I ask her if that’s all there is to it, and she almost smiles back at me. As I leave the building I am surprised at how elated I feel about new the passport and wish I could celebrate with someone. I end up going to Latvian Art Academy, which is just nearby, where I have a strong black coffee in their rather dingy underground café and then visit an exhibition by a Japanese architect in a massive upstairs gallery.

Afterwards I buy seven yellow roses from the flower stalls near the freedom monument and catch trolley bus number 17 to Unijas Street, where my mother’s cousin, Jānis Petersons lives. It’s about 20 minutes or so out of Riga’s centre, in a Soviet housing area. Anna, Jānis’s partner, meets me at the trolley bus stop and we walk to their building. I would never have found it without her. Last time I was here all the buildings looked exactly the same because everything was covered in snow. This time, it is green and lush and Anna shows me the back of her building where her balcony is visible, covered in flowering pot plants. We walk up four flights of stairs to the apartment. The stairwell is dank and badly in need of painting, and the concrete stairs are cracked and dirty, but the flat itself is warm and cheery, decorated with Anna’s handcrafts. The living room has a huge wall unit filled with knick knacks, a couch, a wardrobe, a small table covered with plants, and a big wide screen television.

Jānis greets me and I present him with a bottle of Asti Spumante. We drink instant coffee and eat cake. Jānis makes his drink with about five grains of granulated coffee and 3 spoons of sugar. We talk and talk, reminiscing about the time I was here with Gerard in 1992. Anna shows me photo albums of her grandchildren in America - and then Jānis tells me about his time in the gulags. I had no idea that he had spent three years in gulags in Azerbaijan – for some reason I always thought he had been sent to Siberia. I have trouble understanding everything he says, because he speaks very quickly and uses words I am not familiar with. In a way, this is a blessing, because I don’t think I want to know all the details. He tells me that he progressed through a range of labour camps, working his way up to the salt mines in Baku, which were the best place to be because at least there you were outside in the fresh air. Food rations were one cup of gruel in the morning and 250 grams of bread per day. Fifty to sixty men slept in one small room, not much bigger than Jānis’s own living room, on wooden sleeping racks that lined the walls.

There must have been opportunities to do extra work and earn extra money while in the gulags and Jānis tells the story of agreeing to build a stone fence for an Azerbaijani for a specified fee. Jānis had never built such a fence before, (of course, he didn’t tell his client this) but subcontracts a team of other inmates who have some knowledge of building stone walls. They construct the fence to the specified dimensions and the Azerbaijani is very pleased with the result. A few days later, however, he approaches Jānis and says he has decided he would like the fence to be even higher. Jānis agrees – no problem, he can make the fence higher. He consults his wall making team again but they say if the fence is made higher, it will be unstable. Nevertheless, they build the wall higher, the Azerbaijani is happy and Jānis gets paid. A few days later, he hears an almighty crash and finds out that the entire fence has collapsed into rubble.

Jānis has many more stories to tell but I have had enough for this visit. Anna walks me back to the trolley bus stop and we agree to meet again soon.

The next day I make my first big trip out of Riga and catch the bus to Kandava, a small village in Kurzeme, or western Latvia. My mother spent several years living on a huge estate about five kilometres from the centre of Kandava, moving there in 1932, when she was five years old. The property was owned by Latvian millionaire newspaper mogul, Antons Benjamins, who developed it into a model estate. He employed staff to work in the stables, the dairy, the gardens and the hothouses. My grandfather looked after the horses, and I think my grandmother worked in the gardens. My mother remembers her time there with great fondness. Her family was provided with a two roomed apartment that was completely white – white walls, white furniture, even a white stove in the kitchen. It was here that she tasted grapes for the very first time in her life. It was also here that she first used an indoor flushing toilet. There were not many children on the estate, but my mother remembers often inviting them all to her apartment, where they played games and made a big mess eating swedes by scraping at the sweet flesh with spoons. She also played in the hothouses, using seedling boxes as toy boats. I’m not sure what the estate was used for during the Soviet era, but today it has been reclaimed by descendants of Antons and Emilija Benjamins and is available for hire for wedding receptions, conferences and special events. The tourist bureau in Riga told me it is open to the public and has a small museum about the estate’s history. Naturally, I am very keen to make a visit.

The image shows Kandava Sunday School in 1936. My mother is third from the left in the front row. Her brother, Gunars, is second from the left.

It is cold and rainy when I arrive in Kandava - not a heavy rain, but a light, persistent drizzle. I wish I had worn warmer clothes. I walk up a hill toward the town centre. This is a very small village, with old stone buildings and a few wooden houses. There is a café and hotel which has recently been refurbished, and I go there for coffee. The girl behind the counter is very friendly and tells me the tourist bureau is back down at the bottom of the hill I just climbed. I ask her the best way to get to the Benjamin Estate and she says the only way is by taxi. She phones several times for me, but the taxi driver seems to be unavailable. I leave for the tourist bureau and the girl in the café tells me to come back if I have no luck there – she may be able to find someone who can drive me there.

The tourist bureau officer, Ilze, is equally friendly and helpful. She too, is unable to contact the one and only taxi driver in Kandava, who is normally parked outside the bureau, waiting for potential business. She then arranges for me to visit the museum, which holds information about the Benjamin Estate. On the way, several people give me directions, one even stopping his car, winding down the window and explaining how to get there. I feel as though everyone in Kandava knows where I am going.

The museum is a large freestanding brick building at the top of a hill with a dimly lit double entrance. There are no exhibits to speak of – just some Soviet memorabilia in a back room which I discover later on my way to the toilet.

The extremely helpful museum officer is expecting me and has taken out a pile of folders about the Benjamin Estate. I am really delighted – there are photos of the property in the 1920s and 30s, including members of the Benjamin family, the main house from various perspectives, what I assume might be the stables, and the hothouses. Antons and Emilija Benjamins were great philanthropists. There are copies of old newspaper articles about them and also more recent ones that feature their descendants returning to Latvia to reclaim their property after the end of Soviet rule. I take photos of the documents and discuss them with the museum officer. She kindly phones the Benjamin Estate for me, only to find that it is not possible to visit today because the housekeeper is out of Kandava. It seems I am just not meant to see the estate in person today.

I have lunch back in the village and then wander around Kandava for a while. I climb up the hill to visit the old Lutheran church, built in 1736, to see its baroque wooden carvings, but the doors are locked despite the sign that says it is open until 4pm. Back down in the village, in the street that leads towards the gallery and cultural centre, there is a very poignant sign outside one of the buildings that says ‘New York’. It’s a vertical light box, white with blue lettering on one side, blue with white lettering on the other. The shop sells jeans and other contemporary clothing but it’s closed, as too are the gallery and cultural centre.

I return to the tourist bureau, where Ilze makes me coffee and miraculously manages to get the housekeeper of the estate on the phone. I arrange to visit next Wednesday at 1pm, but the negotiations are laboured. Is it possible to visit the estate? It is possible. When could I visit? Not today and not tomorrow. Could I visit next week then? I suppose so. Which day would be convenient? You can’t visit in the morning. Ok, I’ll come in the afternoon, but which day would be suitable? Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? You can come on Wednesday. Great, I’ll come on Wednesday – what time? Not in the morning, only in the afternoon. Ok, what time – 2pm, 3pm? No, come at 1pm, I have a tourist group coming then. I wonder why she didn’t suggest this right at the beginning!

Ilze gathers information for me about the other places I will be visiting in Latvia and then I catch the bus back to Riga.

The journey starts

The start to the journey is not smooth. I leave my glasses at home, my flight to Singapore is delayed by four hours, and I am overcome by a totally surprising level of anxiety. I wonder whether the forgotten glasses and flight delay are bad omens. But I’m wearing something for good luck - the bracelet my mother gave me when I first left home. It was given to her when she was confirmed at the age of sixteen in Riga. It’s a Nameja bracelet, based on the Nameja ring, traditionally worn by men and made from three separate bands of silver twisted together and joined by a fourth fine braid. Namejs was a Latvian warrior who fought against the German crusaders in the early 13th century and his ring symbolises the unity of the three ancient tribes of Latvia.

In the special lounge for delayed passengers I phone my sister who lives in Sydney. I don’t tell her I’m anxious but she reminds me that at any time I can change my mind and fly back. I drink cups of tea, eat free snacks and go to the toilet too many times. I check my email. The Japanese man in the internet booth next to mine alerts me to a news announcement on the television about a problematic Qantas flight and then comments on the many mechanical faults the airline has experienced in recent months. At the gate, the flight is delayed another three times as final checks are made on the engine. At each announcement the passengers groan but there is spontaneous applause when we finally get to board.

I get to my hotel in Singapore at 5am. After a few hours sleep, I go shopping for a new camera and buy it almost too quickly - the salesman is incredibly convincing and I’m too tired to make endless comparisons. I eat delicious Chinese food in a tiny café, visit a Buddhist Temple and a Hindu Temple and get caught in the rain. I feel a bit de-realised the whole time I’m in Singapore, as if I’m watching myself from a slight distance outside my body. I go to the airport a little early and have a foot massage before the long haul to Frankfurt. I’m feeling more relaxed now, but during the flight I develop a new anxiety about which passport to use when I arrive in Germany – Australian or Latvian? Last year I used my Latvian one all over Europe and passport control was very simple because of Latvia’s EU status. But Latvian passport legislation has since changed and all passports have to be renewed to be valid. I make a sensible decision to use the Australian one, but when I arrive at Frankfurt I do the exact opposite. I feel both daring and terrified at the passport counter. The officer takes a long time checking my details but I get through, no questions asked, and make my way to Terminal 1 and my Lufthansa flight to Riga.

At the gate lounge I sit next to a Slovenian woman who was born in Belgrade but now lives in Singapore. We talk non-stop for about an hour as we wait for our respective flights. There is something about her face and her general demeanor that has an inexplicable effect on me – she is a complete stranger but I almost feel as if I know her. Perhaps it is her beautiful dark eyes and her features, which remind me a little of my mother.

After the war in Belgrade the Slovenian woman lived in Saudi Arabia for a number of years and she explains what it was like to be a woman there. She tells me about the women’s room. Apparently men have the right to build a special room in their houses where female members of the family can be locked up if their behaviour is considered inappropriate. The room has no windows and only a small slot through which food is passed. This is true, she says. No-one talks about it, but men may build such a room in their houses. We shake hands and exchange names when my flight is called for boarding.

In the plane I sit next to an elderly Latvian couple from San Fransisco. I manage to hold a conversation with them without letting too many English words drop in. I listen to Leonard Cohen on my ipod and that feeling of de-realisation sweeps over me again.

A strange thing happens at Riga airport when I arrive – I get lost. Instead of going straight down to passport control and to collect my luggage, I end up at the entrance to departures. I am asked where I am travelling to and I explain that I have just arrived. The officer points me in a particular direction but I end up in the general shopping area. It then occurs to me that I could slip out of the airport without anyone checking my status. I’m now feeling quite anxious about claiming my luggage and wander down a very long sloping floor, thinking this might lead to passport control but no, I am wrong again. The officer at the end of the sloping floor directs me back up and around the corner. He calls out after me and tells me my Latvian passport is not valid. Eventually I find the escalator that takes me down to baggage claim. No-one checks my passport.

I catch a cab into Riga. The driver is Latvian, rather than Russian, and we chat all the way. He tells me he has relatives in Adelaide but has had no contact with them at all since his grandmother died. I stare out the window - I have been to Riga four times since 1992 but this time feels like the first time. The architecture stuns me, reinforcing that I am in Eastern Europe and I wish I had my new camera with me but it’s in my backpack in the boot. We stop in the traffic near a very run-down Art Nouveau building that is decorated with a huge and elaborate relief of a witch riding on a broomstick. The windows and doors are like something out of Handsel and Gretel. The trip is slow and I am sure the cab driver is taking the long way round to get to Ausekla Street. He seems to be doing a huge circuit around the old city, but I am too jetlagged and not confident enough to argue with him.

Anda Klavina, the Project Officer for the Electronic Text + Textiles Residency, is waiting for me. I gasp quietly to myself when she opens the door and lets me in to the apartment – it is superbly spacious, minimal and modern. The studio is so big you could run dancing classes in it. After Anda shows me around we go to a little café around the corner. Waves of jet-lag wash over me and I struggle to maintain my Latvian – I am surprised at just how much concentration it requires not to break into English.

That evening I go to an exhibition opening of work by Eriks Apals that Anda has told me about. It’s in a very beautiful little gallery not far from the apartment. In the first room, walls painted a rusty red, is a series of smallish paintings on canvas - the two I remember most vividly are a rabbit in a snowstorm and a forest of fir trees in the night. There is also a slide show of stills from a U Tube video, projected beneath a small stairwell. In the second, larger gallery, painted white, is a minimal installation. Against one wall leans a smallish fir tree with many of its branches chopped off and scattered around its base. On the wall next to the tree is a crudely painted blue outline of a human figure. At the other end of this room a DJ is playing eerily distorted Latvian folk songs. The whole exhibition evokes the idea of a fairytale gone wrong. I watch people arrive. Everyone is very smartly dressed. One very groovy couple arrive with a boxer dog on a leash. Drinks are vodka shots or water. I wait until Anda arrives, say hello and then leave – the jet-lag has taken over.

On my second day I have two main objectives – to find a bank that will allow me to take a largish quantity of money out of my Visa card, and to renew my Latvian passport. I dial information on the landline in the apartment and get a number for the Department of Citizenship and Migration but every time I ring there is no answer or the line is engaged. I try about eight times but then the phone tells me that the line is busy and stops working all together.

I walk into Old Riga, following the waterfront. It’s raining lightly. I listen to voices in the street – Russian and Latvian, German, Dutch - no English. I feel strange, alien, a little unreal. My sense of self is not the same as my sense of self in Australia. Here I speak differently, without a true command of language. I realise how significant this is – to have command over language. With that command, you have command over yourself; without it, you become powerless. The idea is nothing new, of course – it’s one of the key principles of post structuralism –and as I have travelled to a number of places in the world where I don’t speak the language, or very little of it, the experience is not new to me either. But today my understanding of the concept that language and power go hand in hand is epiphanic. I think of my early childhood, of speaking Latvian at home and English at school. I don’t ever remember not understanding what was being said to me, but I do remember occasions when no-one understood what I was saying, no matter how determinedly I tried to explain myself.

I arrive at the The Occupation Museum. It is a stark grey oblong building on the waterfront, very modernist in design. I was here once before in 2001 with my mother, my sister and my niece and nephew. There are many enlarged black and white photographs of the Soviet and Nazi occupations, a life-sized model of sleeping quarters in a gulag with a detailed description of the Parasha or toilet barrel, and collections of objects displayed in black cabinets. I am particularly struck by the shoes woven from rope and the hand sewn floral padded face mask worn to protect the wearer in minus 40 degree working conditions. I don’t want to stay long today – it’s all a bit overwhelming and I am confused about my motives for the project and my ability to undertake it.

I wander the streets of Old Riga for while, and eventually find a bank that can sort my money issue. Then I feel determined to take steps to renew my passport. I have the address of the head office but it’s some distance out of the main part of the city and I’m not sure whether to take a trolley bus or a taxi. I make my way down Brivibas Boulevard past the Freedom monument, towards the Reval Hotel Latvija where I stayed with my partner, Gerard, in the mid 1990s. It is now an incredibly swish hotel, but back then it had a classic soviet 1970s interior - I particularly remember a bar with large orange swivel chairs on pedestal bases and corridors on some of the floors painted in black gloss. During the Soviet era it was where all foreign visitors had to stay. I was also here in December 2001, having a coffee in the bar. I had a disturbing medical condition at the time and the hotel arranged for an ambulance to take me to Riga’s Hospital Number One. I found out earlier this year that my mother was born in the same hospital.

In the lobby I hear someone call out my name – it’s my cousin’s daughter, Baiba, coming towards me! It is such a wonderful and totally unexpected surprise to see her. She works in the hotel and is able to quickly find out where I have to go to renew my passport. The office is just around the corner and it’s open until 4pm. I go there immediately and after some initial confusion, which takes me up and down the stairs twice, I get to see an officer. Her name is Indra, the same as one of my sisters. She speaks incredibly fast Latvian and I have to ask her to repeat most of her questions. I fill in some paper work, have my photo taken and then I’m asked to read a statement out loud that declares the information I have provided is correct. I decide to pay LVL25 to get a fast track passport. It will be ready next Wednesday.

On my third day I visit the Arsenals Museum to see a big exhibition of art made during the Soviet era – it’s called Mythology of the Soviet Land and features propaganda paintings, sculptures and videos. The videos are extraordinary. I’m particularly disturbed by one that shows a group of Latvian women folk-dancing in traditional costume, accompanied by a full orchestral rendition of traditional music. The dancers wear perfect smiles and their movements are perfectly co-ordinated. The message is that Latvian culture has been both preserved and celebrated under Soviet rule. Of course, the opposite was true.

There is also a smaller exhibition of art made during the Soviet era that was considered subversive. The staircase that leads to the gallery is one of the most extraordinary pieces of design I have ever seen. It is ridiculously and hazardously steep and I have to brace myself to tackle climbing it. I cling to the wall where the steps are widest and by the time I get to the top I am trembling. The exhibition itself is much smaller than I expected and all I can think of is how I'm going to make my way down that staircase!

Later in the afternoon I meet Zane Berzina, one of the Directors of the Electronic Text+Textiles Residency. We meet at Osiris Café, the place to be if you are associated with the arts. We talk about our respective art practices, my residency and some practical things, like finding a suitable site for the exhibition that will result from my project. Zane studied at Goldsmiths College of Art in London, specializing in textiles, and has just landed a professorial position at an art academy in Berlin. She invites me to join her and some other friends in the arts for drinks in the evening.

I have dinner with my cousin Mara – it is great to see her and Viktors and know that I have some close family here. She feeds me mushrooms and schnitzel and then I head off for the Wine Studio, on the other side of town, to meet Zane and her friends. It is a very pleasant evening and I feel a great sense of rapport with the new people I meet, especially Vineta, a painter based in Riga who has had residencies all over the world. Vineta and Zane were teenagers when Latvia gained independence in 1991. We talk about what it was like to grow up during Soviet times and Vineta explains how even as a very young child, she was aware of unspoken rules for speech and behaviour in public and private life. But she also says that there was an ever-present sense of hope that things would change one day and recalls the time of independence with great fondness - but also nostalgia, claiming that the idealism of the early 1990s is now completely gone. I leave after midnight, not because I want to, but because I can barely stay awake. (Zane is in the centre in the first image, sitting between Frank and Karl (from Ireland); Vineta is first on the left in the next image.)