Art Nouveau at the Depeche Mode Bar

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

In the morning, I went to the grocery store. There were farmer ladies selling blueberries out front and another selling differentberries inside. At a counter cafe called Coffee Tower, I got a latte. This whole trip, they pronounce that as "lotta" and get confused if you say "lot-tay." By this stage, I had learned.

About ten years ago, in Iceland, a guy in a cafe pointed to a sign reading "Coffee is not made 'to go'"  He had written it himself in chalk. The "to go" was significant. Most Europeans say "take away" (For here or take away, for here or to take away, for here or taking away), so "to go" was kind of a jab to American tourists (I felt).

Additionally, the very concept of ordering a coffee and going somewhere else with it was, then, nuts to them. You order a coffee to sit and drink it. It's not a tool, it's an experience. It's a culture. That's changed pretty radically since then. Everywhere you go has coffee windows and paper cups now. You can tell it's a fairly recent change, though, since they still advertise it.

I got my "lotta to take away" at the Coffee Tower and tip-toed back home.

The household was awake now. Pauls was eating granola and yogurt. A sleepy boy with floppy white hair. Male names in these Baltic languages almost always end in "s" and female names with "a". It's deeply weird to them when a name doesn't. In Lithuania, they wrote my name as Simonis in a note, and I wondered if these guys were thinking of me as Simons.

I asked him if he thought dinosaurs were cool or for babies. He said they were kind of for babies, but he liked them.

Lasma came out, also sleepy, and asked if I had a family. I told her I didn't. This seemed to make her sad. No children? No, I said. She said if I moved to Latvia, I would have a big family and it's normal for dads to be old. Women should have babies in their early 20s, she said, but men can be as old as they like.

I thanked her. Why tell her I don't wan't children? The Prime Directive prohibits Starfleet personnel from interfering with the development of alien cultures.

Ate some apples and did some writing and went out to see the Jugendstil.

It was my first day in this city with the camera and I took my time returning to things I'd seen yesterday without it. A thousand exciting curiosities in this town. Statues of men with milk jugs, weird stencil art of people fencing with vape pens. Just marvelous.

It was kind of a haul to get up there but it needn't have been, I was dodging frequent trams and buses that would have taken me there more quickly. The walk was purposeful. Not all who blogger are lost.

It was, as advertised, quiet in that district. I stopped into "Robert's Books" and found a Bruce Chatwin and a Theodore Dreiser I hadn't read. Treasure. A cute surprise to find a giant stack of used books in English at a nice little cafe I found by accident. Robert touched his heart when I told him I didn't need a bag. The Dreiser has Cyrillic footnotes and I noticed idioms were underlined. How long ago had some Russian student tried to make their way through it? Treasure!

Into the district!

One of the points of "art nouveau" is to bring the wild curves of nature into art and also to make art fit in with nature. Like, instead of some blocky-ass building, you get a wild facade as loopy and curly as a wisteria in bloom. And why not make those fancy loops and curls look like hot dudes and chicks?

It can be crazy and overdone or it can be inspiring as hell. Why shouldn't a spatula have Medusa's face on it? Of course my front door should show a body-builder sitting on an Egyptian queen's head.

So nice to just drift around corners and find hidden wonders. Wealthy people live in this part of town, I also saw several embassies, and now and again a Fancyis Dans with a trim beard and a thin cigarette would pop out of one to give me a disappointed look. He was hoping, perhaps, I was the kid with the chemicals.

A few seemed to have an attitude of, "really, photos?" which I met with an attitude of "You did an amazing job when you built this building in 1903; you should be proud of your work. Also, don't you live in the one with the belly-dancing griffon down the block? Dude there looks exactly like you."

Mostly, though, it was other tourists folding and unfolding maps of "key Jugendstil buildings"

I was witness to an amazing battle between a crow and a couple of cats. The crow wanted their kibble and conceived of many stratagems to acquire it including sneaking his beak under some plywood. I enjoyed watching them. The cats made many interesting sounds.

Made my way back to the Old City and did a systematic little walk through the squares and down the winding alleys. It's a really nice mix of romantic and public. You can be a Spring Break crazyperson or a lingering pair having a quiet love affair in the still peace of St. Gertrude's narthex.

Or just a family showing the kids what colors flowers come in. Theaters and plazas. No street singers, the first place I've been to without any. A few panhandlers in the park (and wouldn't you love to love them) but no guitarists, etc. Many of the cafes had live performers, though, so perhaps there was too much professional competition.

When I got spire-tired, I took a bus across the mighty Daugava and poked around on the other side of the river. Crazy hot-pink Orthodox church with bright blue onions. It's where the Russian Barbie takes communion, I reckon. Ate at a local place with fresh local vegetables.

Had the asparagus and some very nice eggs. It was cold at the outside table, and I was under-dressed (the previous day had been hot) so I wrapped a little afghan around me while I ate. I'm sure I looked just like a local grandmother. The rest of the patrons were Latvian Ladies who Lunch. Little dogs and silver bracelets.

A brave sparrow jumped up on my table and ate bread right out of my basket!

Went back over a different bridge, the Daugava a rich blue beneath us, and went home for a recharge.

Lasma was there. She and Madara (who is Pauls' mother) make their living from airbnb. It's their whole job, and they're great at it. People in and out of there. I was lucky to find a room for three days. Previously, she told me, they had been live internet casino dealers. Record scratch!!

"The pay was amazing, but the job was shitty."

It's a thing. They have these giant casinos with no people in them, just rooms full of women spinning wheels and flipping cards in front of a camera. Dudes (almost always, I am told) pay to gamble and talk to them. So many images there. Of course I asked what was shitty about it.

"Imagine every day a wedding."

...

"You have to do your hair perfectly, your face, perfect, your nails your dress, everything perfect. And even if you hear something sad, you must always smile."

I wanted to know a lot more about that, but I needed a nap before hitting the Depeche Mode bar. It's only open four hours a day.

I took an apple into bed with me like I was a Hawaiian piglet and dreamdozed. Woke up and wrote a little then armored up for the DM Bar. They're less actively anti-Russian here, so I dared to wear my navy sweater. It was cold.

The place was small. They have a pair of Dave Gahan's shoes. A sign says "We Sell Hell and Suffer Well," a reference I don't recognize. There's also a teapot next to a picture of Martin Gore drinking tea? The walls were covered with signatures and quotes from citizens of the world. "SPAIN LOVE DM!" "Let's play master and servant - Argentina."

There's a sad dart board and a sadder foosball table. Neither adhered to the theme.

They were playing a recent concert on three large televisions. The drinks are named after the type of liquor in them. I was hoping to knock back a few Broken Frames or a Black Celebration shot. Instead, I drank an "absinthe."

When I ordered it, the bartender, a woman in her 60s who spoke no English, got on the phone for instructions. She kept holding up a finger to indicate my drink would be ready any moment now. On the TV, the band sang a very beautiful slow version of But Not Tonight, which is, it turns out, my very favorite Depeche Mode song.

When she got off the phone, the bartender set a straw and a napkin on the bar in front of me. She poured the absinthe into a brandy snifter, lit it on fire, and poured it over ice in a different glass. Then she slammed the snifter over half of the straw and bent the other half toward me. She indicated I should sip the drink and inhale from the straw.

I did.

The drink was fine, the inhale tasted like burnt plastic and cancer. I didn't get a buzz but I didn't choke, so I think it evened out. I like thinking that the person she was talking to on the phone assumed I was a Sophisticate. Or a libertine. Or that I lived in one of those Art Nouveau buildings, anything. I can't quite recommend this place. It's like being anywhere with a concert on a monitor.

But I did like the anticipation I felt walking in. I almost ran when I saw the sign.

A dude in a thicker leather jacket than mine was taking pictures of the concert on the TV. Remember when film was a thing, and photos cost money? He was mouthing the lyrics to the songs and making sure the three other people there knew he really liked Depeche Mode.

I had a second absinthe. I asked her to skip the straw thing. I tipped her not to do it.

Thick Leather went up for a drink and started hassling the only other guy there, a sleepy local at the bar.

"Depeche Mode, innit? Best band in the world, innit! What's your favorite album?"

The guy said he wasn't really into them. Thick Leather either didn't take the hint or didn't want to.

"What bands do you like, British bands? What British bands do you like?"

"I don't know," the man said, "The Beatles?"

I thought that was magnificent, because it might have really meant "fuck you."

Then Thick Leather, unprompted, started talking about the unrest in the world caused by Obama having armed ISIS after Bush destabilized the Middle East. I was going to ask him if he was familiar with Winston Churchill's statecraft in that region, but I'm a happy drunk and not a fightpoker. It seemed against the spirit of this place. And it was closing anyway.

Outside, I was almost immediately clocked by a Russian whose job it is to clock drunk Americans. I suppose my navy sweater didn't fool him.

"Hey-lo," he said all comrade-like. "Do you like girls?" The Depeche Mode bar version of me does like girls. "Waah ooo gah," I said, like an Hanna Barbera wolf, "where are they?"

They were, said the Soviet, at Blow Party. I was a little drunk and a lot louche, so I agreed.

Oh my god, Blow Party. It was a real place. A Madame extracted twenty euros from me, and I was allowed to see three girls dance to Britney Spears and...Major Lazer? I got pretty tanked. They had absinthe too. Whoops.

These girls then used all of their wiles, all of their skills, all of their biblical power to extract more money from me. But I am a blade forged in the fires of Wroclaw (where I, to my everlasting shame, spent $390 in the Cognac Room), and I told them no. I'm sorry Anastasia. Alas, Kristiana. I don't have 70 euros for ten minutes with you. I don't have fifty euros to buy you a glass of champagne.

There was nobody else there, and they weren't dancing. They also weren't trying very hard to fleece me. No touching, no asking. It was just me, alone in a strip club, surrounded by the staff (all potential murderers from Central Casting).

It was definitely a bad scene.

So I had one more drink.

"Ha ha ha ha ha How lucky we were/We hit the cat houses and sampled their wahrs/We got as drunk as a couple of Czars/One night I spat out my lucky stars"

I would have been very easy to roll. I only had, like, ten bucks on me, though. No cards.

When I went to the similar place in Wroclaw and ran out of money, they convinced me to use my card. When I got those handjobs in Cambodia, the girls went through every one of my pockets, poked around in my shoes, checked my belt for a secret lining, everything before holding up all the bills they found and naming their price.

So, I make sure I don't have any more than I'm willing to lose before I go into these places.

I was floating up to the ceiling like a Mary Poppins character, so I got the fuck out. Nobody said goodbye. Rode on the green fairy's wings to a Turkish place and must have ordered something, because I had tea and gyros in front of me and two little crab claws were bringing them into my mouth.

Scuttled home and sobered up in the chill on the way. It's not a vacation if you don't have a bender, right?

It could be.

It just wasn't