Balt from the blue

So I did the thing, and I’m just going to have to admit to it now.

It was a very warm day. The heat will do things to you, if you’re not careful. And it was the hot European summer of 2026. Northern Europe wasn’t built for heat. The Old Town of Riga is a narrow cocoon of high-sided Germanic shops and residences, charming and old-time, but constricting and unyielding when the heat builds, although they do offer some shade from the high Latvian summer sun.

And it was a humid sort of heat, down on the banks of the yawning Daugava river through which Riga’s fortune flowed. When the humid air meets the flower beds in the picturesque ring of parks on the Old Town’s north-east edge, there’s a sweet, languid fragrance in the air, a tropical feel that belies the image of a stolid, reserved Baltic city. The bitter northern winter would probably feel very different. But it was summer. And warm. And I was knackered, and there I was in the Old Town, beer in front of me, trying to come up with ideas for my blog.

A set of conditions that might tempt you to cut corners…

So I pressed the button and did the thing. And I was overcome with an intense bout of shame, a shame that burned fiercer than the late July sun.

A shame greater than that of those medieval missionaries who’d failed to bring the pagan peoples of the Gulf of Riga to the true faith of the Holy Roman Empire…

A shame greater than that of the Latvian functionaries of the Soviet era, forced to facilitate the ongoing oppression of their own people and work against their national aspirations…

A shame greater than that of a visiting stag lad when videos of his behaviour in the Old Town started appearing online…

…ok not as shameful as the last one, but it was bad enough. Because I’d decided to cut a corner and come up with a quicker way of blogging. And also get down with the kids, and more importantly our new tech tyrants.

So I did the thing. I opened Google Gemini on my phone, and typed in

“create a blog post about riga in the style of orwelliantwo.com”

And it did – well sort-of. See what you think.

AI-GENERATED

Parallel lines

July 31, 2026 Step out of the monolithic concrete cavern of Riga Central Station and you are immediately confronted by a city that doesn’t just display its history; it layers it like a complex, geological strata. It is a metropolis of stark architectural dualities, where the fragile, swirling whimsy of German Art Nouveau aggressively collides with the heavy, unyielding grey stone of Soviet occupation.

The Daugava River splits the city cleanly in two, a wide ribbon of slate-grey water rolling out toward the Gulf of Riga. It’s a body of water that has brought Riga its immense trading fortunes since the days of the Hanseatic League. But looking across the banks today, it’s hard not to feel that the river is a physical fault line between competing versions of the European century.

The Gothic and the Grey

Start your wandering in the Vecrīga—the old town—where the narrow, cobbled alleyways are so tightly packed that the tour groups seem to bleed into one another. Here stands the massive Riga Cathedral, its dark towering spire defining the skyline. Like its counterparts in Bruges or Zurich, this place was built on the supreme self-confidence of medieval merchants who got very rich, very quickly.

But walk just a few blocks east, and the romantic illusion evaporates. The House of the Blackheads, a beautifully reconstructed Gothic fantasy of Dutch gables and ornate carvings, sits directly opposite the dark, brooding concrete block of the Museum of the Occupation. It is a jarring, brilliant, and deeply uncomfortable juxtaposition.

The original medieval square was completely flattened by German artillery during the Second World War. When the Soviets moved in, they didn’t bother restoring the merchant glitz. Instead, they erected an unyielding monument to the Red Latvian Riflemen. Are we looking at a celebration of revolutionary heroes, or a stone-faced reminder of who owned the town? It depends entirely on which calendar year you choose to look through.

Directing the Narrative

Speaking of monuments that make people nervous, a short walk down Brīvības Bulvāris brings you to the Freedom Monument. At the top, “Milda” stands high and proud, holding her three golden stars to the sky, representing the historical regions of Latvia.

During the Soviet era, the authorities desperately wanted to pull her down or rewrite her story. Propaganda is a funny thing; when you can’t demolish a symbol, you simply change the script. The official narrative was swiftly reverse-engineered: the public was told Milda was actually Mother Russia, and the three stars represented the Baltic republics safely gathered under her protective embrace. Talk about an impressive bit of political doublethink! [1, 2, 3]

The local Rīdzinieki knew better, of course, keeping a quiet, subversive counsel as they walked past under the watchful eyes of the state.

Gargoyles and Heavy Spirits

To clear the head of all that heavy political baggage, take a walk into the Quiet Centre. Riga possesses the highest concentration of Art Nouveau architecture anywhere in the world, largely thanks to Mikhail Eisenstein—father of Sergei, the famous Battleship Potemkin director.

Alberta Iela is an absolute riot of human and animal faces staring down at you from blue-brick facades. Screaming sphinxes, bloated lions, and elongated stone maidens twist out from the stone. It feels like stepping into a manic, turn-of-the-century dreamscape. It’s gorgeous, but like John Nash’s Royal Pavilion in Brighton, it is eye-wateringly over-the-top, a showy statement of late-Empire wealth built just before the entire world fractured in 1914.

My time was drawing to a close, so I ducked into a quiet basement tavern to try the local cure-all: Riga Black Balsam. A thick, jet-black herbal liquor that dates back to the 18th century, it was originally brewed by a pharmacist to cure Empress Catherine the Great of a stomach ache.

Drinking it neat in the damp Latvian afternoon is a profoundly humanizing experience—partly because it burns your throat with the intensity of pure jet fuel, and partly because it forces you to sit entirely still while the tram rattles past outside.

Two nights here is barely enough to scratch the surface of a place that has been conquered, liberated, rewritten, and redesigned so many times. But as you walk back to the station, passing the colossal, repurposed Zeppelin hangars that now house the Central Market, you realise that Riga doesn’t hide its scars. It simply incorporates them into the architecture.

END AI-GENERATED

And maybe I can just travel now without having to spend too much time on the blog? Well, as I say, sort-of.

It’s captured something of my style I think, the titles, the attempt to summarise what’s happened in a place and blend it in with what you feel when you’re there. And to me it looks like it goes further, it’s more comprehensive and authoritative than my witterings, it’s a complete summary of the whole place in one go. And – ahem – maybe it reads better?

But if generative AI can maybe build something out of what you feed it, at the moment it can’t capture you. And there’s nothing here that captures my stick – the corny jokes, the old-man milieu, the attempt to work in as much sport as possible. And I think that what I try to do is put my experiences out in this blog, my own internal dialogue as I work out my own spin on what’s around me – sometimes fun, sometimes serious – and I’m not seeing that in the AI version. A good thing or a bad thing? Up to the reader.

Interestingly the three links it’s given as its source material (see the bottom of my post) are all about George Orwell’s version of “Orwellian”, whereas I’m just mainly channeling the East Anglian river in my handle (the same one Orwell took as his penname). Obviously it’s been asked to use “Orwelliantwo.com” to write about a place that’s undergone Stalinism and added two plus two together.

And very appropriately, if you know your Orwell, come up with five.

Oh, and there’s no pics. And, come on, where are the statues?

The main shortcut here is that I’ve now told you all about the basics of Riga’s history in something that’s based on my style rather than a cut-paste from Wikipedia. There are a few bits missing that could be brought out, but this is a city – and region – with a complex, challenging past which I hope to bring out as we wander around over the next two-and-a-bit days (I don’t know where Gemini got two nights from. I’m here for four. Still not enough to get the complete picture across).

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