Back once again
“Everyone gets a stamp except me”, I sigh, feeling rather left out. 
It’s about 5.30am local time and I’ve just arrived at the Latvian border. My kupey companions on Latvian Railways train number 1, the? 15 hour Latvijas Ekspresis? (Latvian Express) from Moscow to Riga are Andrei, a Russian truck driver from Moscow, and Sergei and Natasha, two US citizens who seem to speak perfect Russian. Andrei is the only one of us who needs a visa to visit Latvia, despite the fact that he was born in Riga and his parents are buried here. The Americans get? automatic stamps and I, being a citizen of the glorious European Union,? just get a perfunctory glance at my passport. 
There is something slightly warm and? welcoming about? this though, especially as my passport’s been stamped everywhere I’ve been for the last? 20 months.
“Riga Krasiva (Riga is Beautiful)”, says Andrei, clearly excited to? be visiting? his birthplace and childhood home. He says he doesn’t like Moscow but when I ask him why he lives there he looks like he wants to cry and says, “Russia is my country”. History in this region is recent, harsh
and understandably bitter,? but I can’t help feeling sorry for the poor guy. I doubt he was the one? sending Latvians to a slow death in the gulags of Siberia.
Back on the 2nd December 2004 I wrote that “Riga almost seems like coming home now”. The place has changed; things have moved on, the cobbled streets are somehow cleaner, the shop windows shinier and everything on sale much much pricier than it used to be, but this time it? certainly is the most familiar place I’ve been in months, and of course,? this is where it all began.
