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Europe

Europe 2022 - Part 1 - Riga

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The House of the Blackheads

 

 According to Wikipedia:
"Riga began to develop as a centre of Viking trade during the early Middle Ages" and soon became an important Baltic centre of trade and a founding member of the 'Hanseatic League'", an association of powerful traders who, in time, came to dominate the Baltic trade and thus trading cities as far away as Holland.

They even raised their own armies, like the British East India Company. The building that dominates the town square is The House of the Blackheads, a guild for unmarried merchants, shipowners, and foreigners in Riga.

Yet it is essentially a replica. The original was bombed by the Germans in 1941, when Hitler turned on his erstwhile ally, Stalin, in Operation Barbarossa. The Russian occupiers then levelled it. After independence, the Latvians completely rebuilt it in 1999, as proclaimed on the façade, and it's now a museum (with replica contents where the originals were lost).

Riga struck us as another very liveable city.

Europe22 Germany to Holland 51

It is not without some modern aspects.

Europe22 Germany to Holland 52

 

As is the case in many communities, ethnic identity is defined (encompassed?) by language, shared values and, to a lesser extent, religion.
In most Baltic states the religion, since the Reformation, has been predominantly Lutheran Christianity with Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity in the minority.

Europe22 Germany to Holland 53

 

Until the 1935 census Judaism was also among the minority groups but they did not fare well in the following decade.

Latterly some Muslim refugees have arrived in most Baltic States. In 2018 the Office of International Religious Freedom (of US Department of State) estimated that religion in Latvia was split as follows: Lutheran (36%); Roman Catholic (17%); Eastern Orthodox (9%); Other Christians (2%); Other Religions (1%). Those declaring 'no religion' made up the balance (35%). So, Latvia is more religious than Estonia; and Sweden; and Denmark but still a long way short of the United States.

 

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Travel

Canada and the United States - Part1

 

 

In July and August 2023 Wendy and I travelled to the United States again after a six-year gap. Back in 2007 we visited the east coast and west coast and in 2017 we visited 'the middle bits', travelling down from Chicago via Memphis to New Orleans then west across Texas, New Mexico, Nevada and California on our way home.

So, this time we went north from Los Angeles to Seattle, Washington, and then into Canada. From Vancouver we travelled by car, over the Rockies, then flew east to Toronto where we hired a car to travel to Ottawa and Montreal. Our next flight was all the way down to Miami, Florida, then to Fort Lauderdale, where we joined a western Caribbean cruise.  At the end of the cruise, we flew all the way back up to Boston.

Seems crazy but that was the most economical option.  From Boston we hired another car to drive, down the coast, to New York. After New York we flew to Salt Lake City then on to Los Angeles, before returning to OZ.

As usual, save for a couple of hotels and the cars, Wendy did all the booking.

Breakfast in the Qantas lounge on our way to Seattle
Wendy likes to use two devices at once

Read more: Canada and the United States - Part1

Fiction, Recollections & News

Recollections of 1963

 

 

 

A Pivotal Year

 

1963 was a pivotal year for me.  It was the year I completed High School and matriculated to University;  the year Bob Dylan became big in my life; and Beatlemania began; the year JFK was assassinated. 

The year had started with a mystery the Bogle-Chandler deaths in Lane Cove National Park in Sydney that confounded Australia. Then came Buddhist immolations and a CIA supported coup and regime change in South Vietnam that was both the beginning and the begining of the end for the US effort there. 

Suddenly the Great Train Robbery in Britain was headline news there and in Australia. One of the ringleaders, Ronnie Biggs was subsequently found in Australia but stayed one step of the authorities for many years.

The 'Space Race' was well underway with the USSR still holding their lead by putting Cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova into orbit for almost three days and returning her safely. The US was riven with inter-racial hostility and rioting. But the first nuclear test ban treaties were signed and Vatican 2 made early progress, the reforming Pope John 23 unfortunately dying midyear.

Towards year's end, on the 22nd of November, came the Kennedy assassination, the same day the terminally ill Aldous Huxley elected to put an end to it.

But for sex and scandal that year the Profumo Affair was unrivalled.

Read more: Recollections of 1963

Opinions and Philosophy

Gone but not forgotten

Gone but not forgotten

 

 

Gough Whitlam has died at the age of 98.

I had an early encounter with him electioneering in western Sydney when he was newly in opposition, soon after he had usurped Cocky (Arthur) Calwell as leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party and was still hated by elements of his own party.

I liked Cocky too.  He'd addressed us at University once, revealing that he hid his considerable intellectual light under a barrel.  He was an able man but in the Labor Party of the day to seem too smart or well spoken (like that bastard Menzies) was believed to be a handicap, hence his 'rough diamond' persona.

Gough was a new breed: smooth, well presented and intellectually arrogant.  He had quite a fight on his hands to gain and retain leadership.  And he used his eventual victory over the Party's 'faceless men' to persuade the Country that he was altogether a new broom. 

It was time for a change not just for the Labor Party but for Australia.

Read more: Gone but not forgotten

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