Riga; Monday, 31 January, 2005

After a filling breakfast we headed out of the hotel into a biting wind and nasty gritty snow. Our destination for the morning was Darzini. First to the station to get tickets. At the equivalent of £3.60 I thought it was good value for a return, until I was told that was for all 6 of us and not each!

Darzini halt is identifiable by being the first one completely in the woods since leaving Riga. On this basis they feel that it's not important to offer such luxuries as station signs so with some trepidation in case we were alighting at the wrong stop we got off the train.

Located in the woods, about 1 mile from Darzini is a memorial. The memorial is located on the site of Salaspils concentration camp. Here, during the Nazi occupation over 10,000 people died and 10,000's more were kept until they could be dispatched to the death camps to the south in Poland. Today all that remains is an empty clearing and monuments and a strange feeling loss. When I visited Dachau it was on a warm autumn afternoon with lots of other people around. At Salaspils it was snowing heavily with biting winds and the only people around were the 6 of us. I think I came closer to starting to understanding the suffering that people went through, and that was with the benefit of a thick coat, and warm hat, gloves and scarf.

The site is well worth visiting, especially during the winter, to realise what people were put through, and not that long ago. Getting to the site should be easy, but the "good signage" that the guide book boasted has corroded and rotted in the weather and only empty frames now stand giving no information.

After visiting the site and coming back into Riga we stopped for a long lunch to warm up, before heading off into a clear late afternoon for a wander around the centre of Riga and down to the completely frozen river.

We walked alongside the river until we reached the castle, by which point most of the light was gone. We then walked back towards the hotel going past the Cathedral.