More than 5 months I am now in my EVS in Klubs „Māja“! And finally the hard and cold winter has arrived and I am very happy about it as I wanted to experience a real Nordic winter atmosphere. Meanwhile everybody seems to be annoyed by the weather; so I guess I am the only person in Latvia who is demanding always for more snow and lower temperatures :) Now when I will return back in Germany, I can say that I have experienced -28°C with freezing breath on my scarf and ice-glasses. Before I could only remember how -10°C in Germany felt. For Dina this was very funny: in the beginning of my EVS I said that I won’t dress like an onion in the winter because I want to look fancy on the streets even in winter. But now I have to confess that you need indeed MANY MANY clothes to survive in the cold outside! Well now who needs fancy jackets anyway… :) and according to wearing glasses: in Latvia there are obviously only people without any problems with their eyes. At least I have never seen so less people with glasses like here. I guess I can count the people I know so far on one hand!

Sveicināti visiem!

Happy New Year to all of you even it is almost the middle of January! :)

Time is really running in Latvia as I am now 4 months right here. Christmas has passed by so quickly. I took the holidays to spend this time at home in Germany with my friends and family. Just before leaving we had a christmas celebration with Klubs „Māja”. It was an interesting evening with making traditional Latvian christimas decoration. After that we had a big dinner with lots of small and different snacks. So far I found out that in Germany the influence of the Christ religion is much bigger than in Latvia.

Today I would like to share a few reports about the Latvian culture. Unfortunately, I have less and less time to write, because I'm still pretty much on the road - both professionally and personally. I do not know where the time went. Now I'm 3 months in Latvia. In the office, I have spent most of my time preparing my German classes and wrote an invitation letter for the schools. Now 2 groups of German basic course are over and my participants got certificates I especially made for them :)

Moreover, I have twice weekly Latvian lessons. I would still love to learn with my own Latvian learning book from Germany, but however, I hardly can find any time as I am ļoti čakls :)

In the evenings we go often with other volunteers in Riga out for some beers. My weekends are kept mainly for travelling. Travelling by bus and train is in Latvia fantastically cheap compared to Germany. Although I must say that the bus system is a bit better than the local railroad. Here there are only regional trains which are stopping very often at really small stations. The locations of most stations are barely even on a normal map. It follows that for short distances you take lots of time. The last time we took a route that is roughly comparable to Münster-Osnabrück. The trip was about an hour and 20 minutes, but it has also only cost around 2 euro.

But now back to the bus: there are many large bus companies based in Riga, and almost every town in Latvia has a nice bus station. In the last weekend of October I went with an Estonian bus to Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. The ride was about 4 hours at a price of 15 euro. In the bus, the seats were very comfortable with plenty of legroom, plus free Wi-Fi, coffeemaker and a toilet. About Vilnius I don’t write anything now... the city is very usual and cannot compete at any point to Riga. Well it is just not near the sea, but close to

Belarus…

Now another topic: On 18^th November was the national holiday here in Latvia and it has been enthusiastically celebrated with drums and trumpets, noon and evening, with a military parade and with a giant firework at the Daugava – and we were directly in. There were like millions of people in the streets, everyone wanted to see this day outside and celebrate. I've never seen so many people in Riga at once and I was really asking where they all come from. But I can see very clearly how the Latvians are proud of their small country. And now I am also a little infected by the Latvian patriotism and love this country.

Welcome to my first blog entry. I know that so many people have waited impatiently for it after my kind of «promotion» mail to the Ehauss group. Now I have already spent two months here in Latvia. There were so many experiences and impressions that I cannot chose about what I should write firstly. But I guess my German class is a nice topic to start with as it was also mentioned on our homepage.