Why?

A few days ago I met a woman in a shop that unofficially is called ' the Swedish shop' but it imports second hand stuff from Norway. She asked me a question which I didn't understand because I don't speak the language.

I have done some halfhearted efforts to learn it, but these efforts have failed, partly because my teacher tried to convince me that we should go to the local branch of the Mormon Church, pray a little end then ask for their superior language courses. "The Mormon Church is very progressive, they are wealthy, powerful people. Even the vice-president of the USA is Mormon."
I remained a bit reluctant.

So I have to speak English to anyone, including this woman.

She really got enthusiast when she learned where I come from because she had been working with Dutch people in Riga and liked them. It fact, it was one of her dreams to move over to Holland because she believed that her children would receive a better education over there.

So the big question was: Why did I move from Holland to Latvia when her dream was to move into the opposite direction? It is a good question.

I know that in the time that I made my first steps into this adventure, I had the feeling that there was not so much to accomplish in my country, that it was finished. And Latvia needed to renew itself from the Soviet times, it had to build itself up again. To me this seemed to be much more dynamic position to be in. Of course my idea's have changed over time. Or maybe the situation has changed because I have found myself situated in a city with a steadily declining population because more and more people have started to work abroad where the salaries are a multiple of what they can earn here.

I have a friend who is collecting historic postcards o the city and some time a go he showed his collection in the form of a powerpoint presentation. It showed the city in its splendor, one century ago. Of course, the Soviet times have not been very beneficial to the many classical buildings, as those postcards were often the only remaining image of a building long gone. But there are still quite a lot of beautifully designed classical buildings left, not all of them in a state of disrepair.

So my impression of the city has changed from being a very dynamic place to a city that has had its best time a long time ago and hasn't yet proven to be recovering from a long period of decline. Decline is a very Romantic feature.