Welcome to my country...

The first month of studies at the university passed by so quickly and Erasmus students had great time exploring Riga and other cities, as well as getting to know each other ... and the time had come to really get to know more about Latvia and its culture.

ESN Riga holds on to the tradition to organize one event devoted to exploring one culture. This time it was not Latino or Arabic culture and, in fact, we decided not to go anywhere far, but make it a Latvian evening! We chose the calm Sunday evening for the Latvian evening so that everyone could come and enjoy the time without stress.
„Labvakar!” Santa and Kaspars greeted everyone to open the evening. The two great hosts were dressed up in Latvian national costumes, as was the rest of the ESN Riga team.
At the beginning of the evening presentations about Latvian culture, traditions and stereotypes were made by Elīna and Liene. What stereotypes did you have about the country before coming to Latvia? Which ones are true and which are not? Did you know why Midsummer celebration is so popular in Latvia? How can Latvians fly and become famous all around the world? These presentations gave a brief insight of the most important things that you shouldn’t miss while being a part of the country.
Then it was the time to get up from the comfortable seats and learn some Latvian folk dance steps. Everybody first had to find a partner and only then we could start learning by following Santa’s instructions. The first dance was called „Tūdaliņ, tāgadiņ”, which is a popular folk dance in Latvia. Everybody seemed to learn the steps very quickly and join in the dance. The next dance “Cūkas driķos” was also a lot of fun to dance and everyone was jumping and galloping in circles. Folk dancing is very popular in Latvia nowadays. For some people it is their life-style to dance in a folk dance group and travel around performing at concerts. Also three videos with some great performances by famous folkdance groups were shown.
For sure everybody was hungry after dancing and was welcome to have a dinner consisting of Latvian traditional dishes. Do you know how the gray peas taste? Many different dishes were prepared, for example gray peas, apple and curd pies … It was one of the best parts of the evening for sure.
As we found out earlier from the presentations Latvians are keen on singing as well and therefore the final part of the Latvian evening was karaoke. First we sang several Latvian songs and afterwards also more of popular songs in English and Spanish.
We are expressing our Thanks to all Erasmus that shared their positive emotions during that evening and we are hoping to see you soon in one of our upcoming events, like the movie evenings or the trip to Tallinn and Stockholm in November.

„ Beautiful mornings,
beautiful nights,
amazing colors of the twilight
Memories whisper,
memories sigh
You and I together...”

This is a song by Latvian band Brainstorm (Prāta vētra) that has become a visit card of Latvia.

By Elīna Veštere,
ESN Riga team