What Latvia Understands That America Doesn’t

“Having lived in Latvia for over a year…there is a selection of good things, ideas or their manifestations, which seem to pervade Latvia and/or which the United States either lacks or has forgotten.”

The heartbeat of Latvia is alternately slow and quick, depending on how one asks after it. And ask I have, since moving to the former Soviet state in the summer of 2019.

The process of acclimatizing oneself to a new culture and geography and landscape—even or especially in the time of the Coronavirus (COVID-19), and even or especially when one goes into the experience thinking how similar or bridgeable the place will be to one’s longtime home, how uneventful the experience might be, how little, even, one may interact with the local culture—is one of manifest and constant subconscious comparison and immersion as into a murky lake. Levels of analysis and intrigue one may not have accounted for, such as the way people cross the street, hail taxis, or laugh, accompany in a great, semi-permeable broth the more-predictable-yet-still-surprising-when-first-experienced cultural incongruities, such as eating routines and dietary habits, what is considered “good” manners, how people greet each other, how receptive they are to helping foreigners with language or otherwise, how people deal with daily challenges, and how people see and express the way they see the world.

Sometimes these incongruities amalgamate at inopportune moments, and one feels that the world has conspired to make him misunderstood: The struggle of trying to direct an elderly Korean taxi driver towards one’s apartment, for example, arrives in an unflinchingly unique and acute way, especially when the metro is closed, buses have stopped for the night, and he does not comprehend the map on your phone. And walking behind a little old woman who suddenly spits on the sidewalk at her feet will take anyone aback.