Liepaja

We make an excursion to the city of Liepaja (German: Libau), where my mother grew up. The entire city was strictly off-limits for visitors until recently as the Russians had a naval base there. When the Soviets finally pulled out they scuttled some ships in the harbor, just out of spite. Now the Latvians have to clear the wrecks and rebuild the facilities of the harbor which are in a deplorable condition. [At a nearby army facility the Russians purposely trashed the place, even pulling the electrical wiring out of the walls. They saw the Baltic States as their colonies and resent being evicted. The Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians take all this destruction in stride. They are overjoyed to be rid of the Russians. As I heard it often said here: We are grateful that the Russians liberated us from the Nazis, but we didn't invite them to stay on for fifty years!]
July 31. We take a walking tour of the old part of Ventspils. There is still evidence of old European architecture and ornate wooden buildings such as one finds in Scandinavia. Renovations have begun in the hope that the town will become a tourist destination. There is a lot to be done. Nearly every building is in disrepair; some are beyond hope and need to be razed. A building which was once a classy hotel is a shambles. The Russians appropriated all the best buildings for themselves then trashed everything. There is still a large minority of Russians living in Latvia. Most of them live in the cities, dominating certain areas. I notice later in Riga that where every street sign was in Russian and Latvian, the Russian has been blacked out. People don't want to see the Cyrillic alphabet anymore. There is not a good word to be said about the Russians here. My aunt tells me that there are good ones and bad ones. She is very reasonable. Most people aren't. She also tells me that Latvia is fifty years behind; they know what Western Europe is like and they want their piece of the pie.
We attend a piano recital at the local conservatory. (One of my aunt's best friends is a professor there.) The pianist is Andra Zandmana. [A few years later we had a wonderful foreign student at the UMKC Conservatory, Inara Zandmana, who turned out to be the daughter of the pianist I heard in Ventspils that evening! It is truly a small world.]
The photo is of the house where my mother lived in Liepaja as a girl, just before the First World War. The name of the street then was Bahnhofstrasse.