It’s been a long rally and ralliers are starting to look tired. Someone had a birthday yesterday and was offering vodka shots en masse. I suspect those who accepted them to boost their short term adrenalin will suffer today…
Figure 1: Riga’s car museum is world famous.
We had a beautiful drive, a lot of it down the coastline. I would guess that quite a lot of Latvians have holiday homes near the coast and this seems to be confirmed by my cursory online research (eg see ‘Impacts of European Territorial Policies in the Baltic States’ edited by Garri Raagmaa, Dominic Stead). These tend to be fairly basic but provide all the facilities one’s needs for a summer seaside cottage. There are long sandy beaches which on a hot day looked very inviting….
Figure 2: This was Stalin’s personal car exhibited in the Riga Museum. It even has a stuffed dummy of the dictator in the back of the car….
Before arriving in Riga we visited the capital’s car museum which is world renowned. Its collection is arranged by era, and each era is supported by videos of events of their time and relevant music.
Quite a lot of the cars on the rally were represented in some form in the museum and many of us looked enviously on the museum cars to see if they could have parts ‘borrowed’ from them. There was a rather beautiful Bentley that might well have had some useful suspension bits for us….
One of the highlights is the world’s biggest collection of Russian ministerial cars, ZISs and ZILs. These huge armoured cars were heavily based on US cars of a few years earlier but with everything beefed up. They weigh 4 tons upwards, more than many trucks!
They even have Stalin’s personal car with a stuffed dummy of him sitting in the back. All rather gruesome….
Figure 3: Riga at daybreak – the church spires are surmounted by roosters, not crosses, though no one appears to know why…
Riga itself is a beautiful city as we could see from our suite of rooms overlooking the river. But by the time we arrived, it was too hot to do much sightseeing so we contented ourselves with looking at the wonderful view.
The Latvian economy is interesting. Like Estonia, they privatised fast after independence but kept the utilities in state hands. Energy is largely by hydro power. Like other Baltic states, they had a wobble during the financial
crisis with a 19% decline in GDP in 2009. But the economy is back on a growth path, based on financial services.
The latest IMF country visit reported just before we arrived. Their analysis supports the view taken in Cebr’s World Economic League Table 2019 that growth would continue to outperform most of Europe, but would slow. Riga has quite a developed financial centre but there appear to be concerns about the extent to which it is used for money laundering.
Today we move on to Poland where we spend three nights. The Polish Classic Car Rallying Club is promising great support, though we will have to avoid the rally tests if we want the car’s brakes to last all the way to Paris….
Mike and Doug are fundraising for the Harinder Veriah Trust. It provides essential equipment and tuition to enable the poorest of pupils to attend the Assunta School in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. It is a worthy cause and particularly close to Doug’s heart since his first Cub Scout Bob-a-Job week aged 6! The brothers have been supporting the school ever since. To donate or find out more please follow this link: https://www.gofundme.com/7hf8j-peking-to-paris-2019