President Bush was in Riga earlier this week for the NATO summit. It was a holiday here and all the Old Town core streets were restricted. I think the President likes Latvia. It's one of the few countries that still welcomes him. The Cold War didn't end that long ago here. Now with the poisoning of Litvenenko in London, the world is getting a taste of the Russian approach to perceived international threats that the Latvians know only too well.
3 comments:
I heard about his visit earlier on the news. . . Sad to say I don't know that much about Latvia and their relationships with other countries. Now I'm intriguied to find out and be more aware. Thanks for posting this, it's a good thing.
Thanks for dropping by. Latvia has a pretty tragic history, a small country caught between two historically antagonistic ones: Germany and Russia. Many have suffered, but now they have what they've dreamed about for decades, NATO and EU security. After spending the first 40 years of my life in America, I love living in a small country. It's just a much different dynamic. It's difficult for me to articulate, but it feels something like how life was in Port Townsend, Washington when I was a kid. That's all gone now, but there are still echoes of it here.
One other thing if you're interested: I have an old blog at http://latme.blogspot.com where I wrote more about, well, everything, but it became too much like homework so I switched to this more foto-based approach. I'm just getting lazy, I guess...
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