Feast in Riga

No matter how carefully you prepare for a trip, the coincidences will be the most memorable: the challenges you conquer, the unexpected encounters, the celebrations you stumble into. Like this festive weekend in Riga.

The fact that it’s a weekend and a holiday is indicated by wedding photography sessions all over the city. Below: Guests are greeted by the cat from last year’s Oscar-winning Latvian animation movie Flow

Every second Saturday in Riga, a flea market is held in the Wöhrmann Garden (since the Baltic Germans left, Vermanes dārzs) next to Berga Bazārs. Along all the paths of the park’s labyrinth, open stalls are offering the products of artisans, jewelers, metalworkers, textile weavers, dressmakers, wood and bone carvers working with ancient Baltic motifs. A bit like the Tallinn fair, although somehow more rational, serious and reserved. Latvians are more German than Estonians.

In a tent set up on one of the wider paths, a craft workshop is teaching weaving, basket weaving and plasticine for children.

And of course, the market kitchens. At the entrance to the park, meat is being grilled on a stove and over open fire, potatoes cooked between hot stones, and cabbage stewed over embers. Both comers and goers sit down at long tables next to the kitchen. Excited seagulls are squawking in concert all around. The Latvians sweep the leftovers into a large, closed garbage tank, not caring about the seagull jumping on the top and his desires. I put the abundant leftovers of the knuckle on top of the tank, let him have a good day too.

On Sunday, at eight in the morning, we wake up to a brass band concert in Riga’s old town. We don’t know the Latvian anthem, but they seem like playing something like that. Then a mass of young people shouting, and then more music. Boy scouts? Demonstration? Political rally?

When we go down to the street around ten, the music and shouting are still going on. Then we see the first flags that look like church flags, and behind the flag bearer, children dressed in festive attire. A Catholic procession in a Lutheran town? But then more and more flag bearers come, with the names of towns and schools on their flags. And after the flag bearers, children or young people, not that much in national costumes, but rather in dresses based on them, with wreaths of flowers on their heads, and bouquets in their hands. They keep coming and coming, just as they have been for the previous two hours, without a break, from the main square, and continuing towards the Freedom Monument.

“What is it today, a national holiday?” we ask a spectator. “No, a choir meeting.” It happens every five years, so that every generation can experience it at least once. We were just lucky to come now. Latvians are not a smiling people, but here and now they fulfill their five-year smiling plan.

To enhance the folk identity, many marchers hold old Latvian runes attached to sticks, which we later see in every shop in the city on clothes, jewelry, mugs and souvenirs. Or a rattle – called, as we later learn, a trejsdeksnis –, with a few discs attached to the handle, and metal plates hanging from their rims. “What is this, does it have any symbolic meaning?” we ask a gothic-looking girl with black dress and make-up. “I don’t know, I don’t have much affinity for folk music. Ask me about Nirvana instead.”

Ten minutes from the three and a half hour parade

At noon, when the last marchers have left, and only flower petals remain on the square’s pavement, a beautiful young woman sits down opposite the House of the Blackheads, the formar company house of unmarried merchants, named after their patron saint, the black Saint Maurus, which – after the Germans bombed it, the Soviets bulldozed the rest, and then the Latvians faihtfully reconstructed it – is considered a symbol of Latvian rebirth. She unwraps a large, archaic instrument from soft textiles, a bandura, which has been a symbol of Ukrainian rebirth since Shevchenko, and begins to play it. Fascinated, we stay in front of her for an hour, listening to and sometimes filming her. She came from Nikolaev/Mykolaiv near Odessa, and the beautiful songs are well-known Ukrainian folk songs and chansons. I hope Irina can identify them.

“Ой під вишнею, під черешнею” (Тріо Мареничів)

“Ой у вишневому саду” (folk song)

“Місяць на небі, зіронькі сяють” (folk song)

“Закувала зозуленька в лузі”

“Я піду в далекі гори” (Володимир Івасюк)

“Рідна мати моя” (folk song)

“Ніч яка місячна” (folk song)

“Цвіте терен” (folk song)

Easter Sunday in Sardinia

Every year we return to Oliena for Easter Sunday, the feast of s’incontru, the meeting, when the statues of the risen Christ and Mary, carried by Sardinian men and women, meet each other on the lavender carpet of the main square, and Christ bows before His mother. The ceremony is the same every year, and yet it is always new. The faces are different, the children are a year older, their last year’s costumes are given to new little ones, other boys gather to sing four-part Sardinian folk songs, the young accordionist who last year led the dance in a girl’s dress, now wears a boy’s dress… And even what is the same seems new after a year: how they relive the centuries-old tradition, with full devotion, in traditional dress and ceremony, but as a part of their modern lives, not as a tourist attraction, but as a celebration for themselves, to affirm their own identity.

There had been heavy rain in Sardinia during the previous days, and this morning it was still drizzling, so it’s no wonder that at nine in the morning there are hardly any people in the usually crowded main square. Only the descendants of the bandits are firing rifles in front of the church, the eldest son of each clan with the ancient flint.

We go to the church of the Holy Cross on the edge of the old town, whence the procession of the statue of Christ will start. For now, the church is empty, only its floor is sprinkled with lavender, and a few woman are waiting in- and outside. But soon the procession arrives from the Franciscan church, where the body of Christ spent the previous day and two nights after the deposition from the cross on Good Friday evening. The statue is carried into the church. The assistants, chatting and offering cakes, are waiting for the ten o’clock bell to ring, when the procession will start for the main square.

At the sound of the bells, the statue is raised. The flag bearers of the religious companies stand behind it, and the procession steps out of the church gate. They move slowly, stopping at every corner, waiting for news of how the other procession with the statue of Mary is progressing.

The main square is already full. The villagers, dressed in traditional costumes, stand in two lines on both sides of the path strewn with lavender branches, waiting for the two processions to enter and for the two main characters to meet. As the statue bearers see each other at the end of the two streets leading onto the square, the processions start, and the statue of Christ bows before His mother, the Sardinian men carrying it before the Sardinian women carrying Mary, amidst the deafening gunfire of the bandits.

Then the two processions, joined by the spectators, march up the main street to the parish church, where the Easter mass begins.

Only a part of the participants go into the church. Most of them stay on the church street, where all the bars are open and running at their peak. They huddle in groups, talking and drinking, and some boys practicing four-part Sardinian songs. Not as a performance for the audience: this is also part of the local identity, renewed every year.

At the end of the mass, the people in the church also come out. The accordionists rehearse in the middle of the church square, and then the round dance begins, in which the whole village participates, regardless of traditional costume. This year, another national dress appears on the square: the colorful outfits of four young women from Dubai, which look like Muslim national costumes. They clap and wave happily from the audience, but they do not join in the dance. In the intervals I hear local families coming up to them and inviting them to lunch in broken English.

This is the accordionist boy (?) who played last year as a girl

And the climax of the dance: when the villagers dance not to the accordion, but to a four-part Sardinian choir, as they did for centuries, before the arrival of the first accordion. Everyone feels the solemnity and historical depth of the moment, and at the end they applaud the singers for a long time.

Even in the day of Easter Sunday and s’incontru, in Italy the greatest sacrament is the Sunday family lunch. Being late for it is a bigger sin than being late for church. So after the choir, most of the spectators start to leave. The Dubai girls are herded home by an elderly couple dressed in traditional costume. We also head down to the beach of Cala Gonone, to eat fish at the cave of the sea cows.

Happy Easter

“Down with Easter!”

Easter – as we have amply documented here among the Poemas del Río Wang – is celebrated in many ways in many places around the world, where it is celebrated at all. It may sound surprising, but it was also celebrated in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. This 1933 photo testifies to this.

The inscription on the school board reads: “Who was in church at Easter?” and the little pioneers write down the names of those they know were there. We can only imagine what happens next: if you were lucky enough to experience similar harassment in Hungary in the 1970s, you have an advantage.

Some data: Between 1929 and 1941, only 500 of the 29,000 churches in the Soviet Union remained open, and in 1937 alone, 85,000 Orthodox priests were executed.

But let’s look at the bright side of life: according to this, during the bloody persecution of the church between 1929 and 1941, there was still a church somewhere in the Soviet Union where Easter services were held, a priest to hold it and some believers to attend it.

Although this is not certain either. After all, under what circumstances could this picture have been taken? It is unlikely that the official photographer was there at the time of a spontaneous school humiliation and caught it on camera. Most of the official photos taken in the 1930s are pre-arranged propaganda photos. This picture may also fit into the great anti-religious campaign between 1929 and 1941, and illustrates not an actual, but a desired practice. There may no longer have been a functioning church in the site. Just as the fat and greedy priests who were often paraded as enemies in the campaign had already been completely killed or deported to labor camps.

“Training for Easter”

However, if there was no church, then there were no churchgoers either. Then the picture does not depict a real humiliation, and the names are fictitious. Which also has its bright side.

The first snow

Christmas in Kashan

Christmas? In Kashan?? At the edge of the Iranian desert?? Maybe rather in Isfahan, among the Armenians of New Julfa, or with the Assyrian Christians in Tabriz or Tehran… But the title is no mistake, there was a Christmas in Kashan as well, at least once. And guess what, one of the participants was Hungarian.

Christmas in the Armenian district of Isfahan. Photo taken in 2019 by Mortezâ Sâlehi from here

Gergely Béldi de Uzon was a member of an aristocratic family from Transylvania. He was appointed as vice-consul to Tehran in the summer of 1914 at the age of 26. In the absence of the envoy, Logothetti, he was in charge of the affairs. At first life in Persia seemed to be one of ease – in August 1914 they spent two weeks hunting in Mazandarân –, but things became complicated soon enough.

Though Persia (as Iran was called at that time) officially stayed neutral in the Great War, it was heavily under the influence of Russia and Great Britain, while in domestic politics one political crisis ensued the other for years. Soon after the outbreak of the war the Germans tried to make Persia an ally of the Central Powers which seemed to turn out a success by the end of 1915. To prevent this, Russians – who already occupied the northern parts of the country since 1911 – sent troops (8000 cavalry and 6000 infantry) under the command of General Nikolai Baratov to the south, to Qazvin.

Iran in the First World War. Source: Yann Richard: Iran. A Social and Political History since the Qajars, 2019. 123. p.

On the news of the advance of the Russians, the diplomats of the Central Powers fled Tehran (the last group of the Austro-Hungarians leaving on the morning of 14 January 1916, disguised as Bakthiyari nomads). Back in early December 1915 Gergely Béldi was south of Tehran in Qom. From there he set out to Isfahan together with a group of Austro-Hungarian officers and soldiers. Then they went on to Abade, where they turned back towards the northeast, to Kermanshah upon the advance of the British troops from the southeast. Finally he arrived via Mesopotamia and Anatolia to Constantinople, then to Vienna on 16 April 1917.

In this period, from 10 December 1915 until April 1917 Béldi wrote a personal diary of his experiences en route, a unique source in which the actual political events are mixed with his personal observations on ornithology and hunting. Later, in 1918 his ornithological notes were published both in Hungarian and German in the Hungarian ornithological journal Aquila. There he gave a brief summary of the hardships of the previous years, illustrating his involuntary Persian voyage with a map.

The voyage of Gergely Béldi through Iran during the First World War. Source: Béldi, Gergely: Madártani jegyzetek Nyugat-Perzsiából és Mesopotámiából [Ornithological notes from Western Persia and Mesopotamia]. In: Aquila 25 (1918) 89. p., accessible here

However, the entire diary was never published. Nowadays one copy is kept in the Archives of Vas County in Szombathely, Western Hungary in the family archives of the Chernel family (presumably a copy of the original, based on its even, clear handwriting). Supposedly it ended up there via Béldi's wife, Erzsébet Mannsberg, a relative to the Chernels. Maybe it is due to the ornithological observations, as a member of the family, István Chernel was a famous ornithologist of his time (and the editor of the Aquila journal), just as later Gergely's son, Miklós too.

His account would not put Baedeker or Lonely Planet to shame, though. He obviously didn't have an eye neither for the Iranian landscape, nor for the milieu in general. He writes about the landscape and Kashan (where they arrived on the evening of 22 December 1915) in such detail and manner:

“We arrived to Kashan in the evening. The road was of no interest. The great, plain Kevir [the desert] to the left and some hills to the right. A large inquisitive crowd was waiting for us outside the city. Kaschan(!) is a city stretching all over and one of no interest, with the usual narrow, arched bazaars.”

However, the wartime circumstances are an excuse for him (how would you enjoy the road if you should take it fleeing from the advancing Russian army on horseback and among uncertain rumors?), as well as the fact that even if he wanted to, he could not visit the nowadays must-see places of Kashan, like the Fin Garden (on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2012) or the historical houses.

According to his account they spent 23 December in Kashan and as they had to marched on the following day, they had an early Christmas Eve there, under rather unconventional circumstances, exactly 109 years ago:

“XII. 23. We rest for a day. Napravil commanded the soldiers that today is Christmas Eve. We had to go on the next day and we could not celebrate it then. We sat together, me, the two officers (Napravil and Daskiewicz) and the two Jewish physicians and we celebrated Christmas Eve as much as we could. We ate raisin and almond and drank red wine at the light of a candle, lying on the carpet.”

There was even time for an occasional bargain earlier that day, though it turned out very soon that it was not a good deal:

“I bought from one of the Swedish officers, who was still there, a fine-looking 6-years old chestnut stallion. I wondered at the low price he asked for it, but the next day I realized why. He went on very well and tame but as soon as I got off of him, as a tiger, he attacked the other horses and kicked them where he reached them. Thus until Isfahan I could not get off and at the lodgings I had to find an empty stable and could only get off there. I cursed the Swedish many times. Otherwise, he endured fatigue better than the other horses we had.”

On 24 December they went on to Isfahan and in the evening they arrived to a caravanserai. His short description reflects the circumstances very well:

“XII. 24. At noon we departed for Isfahan. We, Napravil and I, got lost again fortunately. We departed later than the soldiers and the people showed us the shorter way because they didn't know that the others go with a wagon and that we would go with them. When we discovered our mistake, we passed through the stony wasteland and after a long fumble and stumble we reached the others in the dark at a half-collapsed caravanserai. which was full of fleeing Cossacks. They did not have a single bit of discipline and would not make place for us. We didn't even try to throw them out as they were many and the air was already rather awful in the rooms. Thus we set up our beds in a half-collapsed stable where seemingly stray dogs used to give rendez-vous to each other. But we cleaned the place and settled in well enough. What a poor Christmas Eve!”

We hope our readers will have a a richer and less adventurous Christmas.

***

I noticed it only after writing this post that the Hungarian Iranist Miklós Sárközy gave a lecture on Gergely Béldi's diary just a few weeks ago. The recording of the lecture is available online (only in Hungarian) since 21 December but I didn't have the time to watch it until the publication of this post. Thus I wrote this post without knowing it and before it became available, waiting only for the anniversary to publish the story of Gergely Béldi’s unconventional Christmas in Kashan.