Candidates’ posters in Helsinki while the presidential election day (first round) was just a snowball’s throw away.

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.

The beach in Skede, north of Liepaja on January 1st.

A newspaper page peeks from under a layer of wall paper, telling of the 1991 events in Riga.

Some three years after Soviet Union collapsed most of the large block houses of Liepaja’s Karosta (the military harbour) became deserted. Gradually all usable material was removed leaving just rubble and remains of wall covering.

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.

The roadside shop in Kapsede.

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.

Kapsede village sort of stretches between two centres. The landowners in the middle wanted to stop village dwellers from using a communally paved and lit route leading through their land—which arrangement has worked for decades if not centuries. There was strong resistance as the only other interconnection is the narrow unlit highway. Many school kids must get through daily. As compromise a narrow passage with a high fence was built through the private land. In there you go, pushing a baby carriage wondering if it will slip past the lamp post on which a red sign warns “Beware of the angry dog.”

Another hindrance on the route appeared yesterday. We got a brief gale and a fairly tall lime tree said krraack. This one will be easily solved though.