Archive for the 'Kapsede' Category

The Liepaja–Ventspils narrow gauge railroad had been out of operation already for decades. In 2011 the wooden rail sleepers from Kapsede region were removed. Being hazardous waste, EU support was granted for shipping them to Sweden for safe processing.

Peculiarly around Christmas and New Year the air of Kapsede had a constant odor of creosote fumes. It turned out that mounds of rail sleepers had been driven to the communal heating house: the local school was being heated by burning carsinogens.

Skede is by the sea about seven kilometres from Kapsede. We drove there on the windy Saturday to see the waves and to fly the kite. After seven consecutive loops the kite plunged behind the drying pine trees on the dune.  This made me think of our drive to Skede two years earlier. As we stopped the car its kilometre reading was 77777, as if the car prompted that dunes a bit further south were the scene for the largest massacre in Liepaja during the Nazi occupation of 1941-45. During those years Liepaja’s Jewish population was practically annihilated.

In attempts to deal with this grim chapter of history, no less than three memorials have been erected in Skede. First, in the 1960′s appeared an obelisk which explains how “more than 19000 Liepaja citizens were murdered by Hitlerist attackers”. Contrary to the text, most of the killers apparently were Latvians. The larger text “Forever remembering the Soviet patriots!” is not on par with the site’s connection to the Holocaust.

In 2005 was built another, monumental arrangement in the shape of a seven-branched candelabrum, which is dedicated to the perished Jewish community.

Due to its dimensions this monument is difficult to photograph. Peculiar enough, still at the time of this writing you won’t see it on satellite maps — instead an empty field only.

The following year a third, modestly proportioned memorial stone was placed to balance the other two. It recognizes all the thousands who perished here, including Jews and war prisoners or people who helped them, and the ones who resisted the occupiers.

Oddly the site shares a foul-smelling entry route with Liepaja’s waste-water treatment plant — which you can see on satellite maps. Due to its dimensions this faculty also is difficult to photograph and I won’t even try to.

This is the unofficial Kapsede Under Thunder postcard.

We found a small (work)shop in Liepaja and bought this portrait by a Liepaja Art School student. While the painting was nailed directly onto the wall, I wanted some old photos framed.

I went down in the cellar to spray paint a few frames. The cellar was a good escape from the mediterranean style heat which had been on for days. Frogs live there. And it has an adorable interior too.

Riga, 7 pm local time, an umbrella walked into the gallery carrying a well dressed somewhat tipsy man. He (the man) pointed to this picture and said (in a mix of Latvian, German, English and Russian) that this is not interesting at all.

Riga. 7 pm local time. An umbrella walked into the gallery carrying a well dressed somewhat drunken man. He (the man) pointed to this picture and said (in a mix of Latvian, German and English) that it is not interesting at all.

He then gave me a long list of all the vintage cars he has collected and restored and he told of the precious medal he has won for one of his cars in Rostock. After that he listed all the important places he has been to – around the world, of course. He did not quite manage to accomplish his proud description of how fine a house he owns on the other side of the river because I had to answer a phone call.

Speaking of cars, this morning I placed my bumpy Citroen in a guarded parking lot. While paying for the service, the watchman bitterly told me how he “can’t understand why Latvia is in such dire straits, so many clever people we have. Here are no chances, no work. Here I sit all day long and all I see is cars. Only cars. This is no life.”

Name of the place, Kapsede (prolong the first ‘e’), means the place where the dunes sat down. Long ago this was where the Baltic Sea was flushing its surfs. Now the sea is about nine kilometres away. The road from the former important harbour Liepaja to the now more important Ventspils follows the protected ridge of the ancient sea shore. Kapsede is within Liepaja’s immediate reach, yet truly countryside. Liepaja Metallurg’s chimneys are still pouring red smoke though the plant only runs at a fraction of its Soviet time powers.