Tucked Away: Latvia
I'm instantly drawn to quiet, unassuming places that almost seem to hide on world maps. It's an orientation toward the underdog, a penchant for improbability. And hence, I needed to head to Latvia! And I was lucky enough to spend a night in prison.
Below is an excerpt from Somewhere Found.
Situated on its namesake gulf, an offshoot of the Baltic Sea in Europe’s northeast corner, Riga is too far removed from the usual travel itineraries to receive the number of tourists it deserves. Eight centuries old, it was once a major trading port and member of the Hanseatic League, a medieval-era guild confederation that bestowed upon Riga a measure of prosperity and a significant Germanic influence. Near the turn of the twentieth century, Riga enjoyed a boom time, resulting in a construction frenzy of the latest architectural styles, and today the city is well known by art enthusiasts for having the greatest concentration of art nouveau buildings in the world.
Its most photographed landmark is likely the House of the Blackheads, which is not a dermatology clinic, but an old guild house that was destroyed by both the Germans and the Soviets, and rebuilt by independent Latvia in the 1990s. With its red bricks, white accents, and Mannerist curlicues, it looks like a dozen gingerbread men were given a tray of party drugs and told to build a firehouse. But the city’s most iconic structure, given the volume of products and souvenirs that bear its symbol, is the Cat House, which is not a brothel, but a grand building from 1909 whose two pointed turrets are each topped with a statue of a cat, its tail raised, its spine arched and hackled. The cat’s profile is found in some medium or another in nearly every downtown shop window.
At the city’s center and dominating the skyline with its massive bell tower is Saint Peter’s Church. From its observation deck I gaze at the city and port below, at the rooftops shadowed in silver and powder blue by a basket weave of clouds that’s moved in from the sea. I’ve spent three days here, checking off the city’s must-sees and its meticulously preserved eras. So I look now toward the horizon, as flat as a newspaper and as dense in unread details. There is one more site in Latvia I aim to see, far out in the distance yet firmly lodged within my mind. And it happens to be, or at least it was, a prison.
This much I know: In the deserted outskirts of Liepāja, a western city on the Baltic coast, is Karosta, a former naval base of the Russian Empire that changed hands several times between Tsarist, Latvian, Nazi, and Soviet forces. And tucked among birch forest, according to internet photos, is its old prison guardhouse, a hulk of rust-colored brick brooding behind barbed wire fencing. And for only fifteen euros, one can spend the night there in a prison cell. I was determined to stay there the moment I read about it.
To read the entire chapter and many others, you can purchase the book here.