Latvia

Riga hit me differently than I expected. I'd read about it being one of Europe's great Art Nouveau cities, but reading about it and standing on those cobblestone streets looking up at faces carved into plaster — sphinxes, screaming masks, winged figures — those are two completely different things. The Old Town is compact enough to walk in an afternoon, but every corner keeps throwing something at you: a Gothic spire, a Baroque facade, the House of the Blackheads with its ornate red and gold front sitting right there in the open square.

The food was a genuine surprise. I went into a dimly lit tavern somewhere in the Old Town, sat at a heavy wooden table, and ordered dark rye bread with garlic and a local beer without really knowing what I was getting into. That bread — dense, almost sweet, fried in butter — became one of those food memories that sticks. I also tried the Latvian cutlet over mashed potato in a stone-walled restaurant that felt like it hadn't changed in a century. Riga Black Balsam, the local herbal liqueur, I tried in small sips and couldn't decide if I liked it or not. I respected it.

What stayed with me most was the weight of the history. The KGB building still stands in the city centre, turned into a museum now. The Freedom Monument has been there since 1935, through Soviet occupation, through everything — and Latvians still lay flowers at its base. Walking past it on a clear summer morning with the sky that deep Baltic blue, it felt like the whole city was quietly insisting on itself.