Our Last Day in Riga
Trip Start
Jun 21, 2007
1
7
Trip End
Jul 06, 2007
Riga, Latvia
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Our last day in Riga was a pretty simple day. We went to the Latvian Occupation Museum and to St. Peter's Church. The Church was okay--we did not do a tour of it b/c it was not anything exciting to look at from the inside even though the outside was beautiful. However, the museum was great. The country of Latvia had been controlled by the Russian Empire throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. After World War I, it gained its independence. Unfortunately, independence was short-lived for the Latvians. As a result of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939, Latvia, along with Lithuania and Estonia were deemed part of the Soviet sphere of influence. By 1940, Stalin basically annexed all three countries. In Dec. 1941, began the Nazi occupation and at the end of World War II, Stalin would not grant or even consider giving them independence.
The museum basically gave a narrative of these events plus continued Soviet rule through 1991. There were artifacts from the meeting and even the secret provision of a treaty signed by Stalin and von Ribbentrop (the German negotiator) agreeing to the fate of Latvia.
Tomorrow, we leave our hotel by 4:30 to begin our long journey home. We fly from Riga to Moscow to Amsterdam to Memphis to Knoxville. It will be a long day, but we're looking forward to getting home.
