Dinner the following evening was at Silvija's cousin's, Anda's. Silvija's aunt Zina and niece (and goddaughter) Kristine are always happy to give us a big smile. We've purposely left out any pictures of the food at the table so as to not torture our readers with temptation!

The main topic of conversation was the upcoming local elections that Sunday. We can only observe through our relatives' reactions and comments... there's a fairly large amount of cynicism. For example, we heard the story multiple times about one of the candidates using used state funds to repay company debts. When it was discovered, he, of course, promptly paid the government back. And, whenever questioned about it, he gets indignant -- after all, he did pay back promptly! In Latvia, he's running for office. Anywhere else he'd be running, alright -- from the law! No wonder many consider politics a haven for "legal crooks."

We noticed that "ricibas cilveki" (you could translate that as "folks who get stuff done") -- the Fatherland and Freedom Party -- were advertising heavily. If advertising budget was any indication, they were going to sew up the election! But, as we are keenly aware in American politics, the biggest dollars don't always win the campaign. The main observation coming from dispassionate observers was that in a country with first world prices and second world wages and third world pensions, it was an awful lot of money to be throwing away.

In the end, one of the family cats solved the problem of how to cope with the constant din of television ads. She simply covered her ears and went to sleep!

Returning to Riga proper across the Vansu bridge, it didn't look so much like American political advertising as a time warp back to the Soviet era: one face for each side of the bridge, glowing in the dead of night, endlessly repeating, fading into specks in the distance.

It was with wry amusement that we noticed a couple of days later, on the morning after elections (at 6:30 in the morning), that the "ricibas cilveki" heads were already all gone, replaced with more propaganda: endless identical images of a cell phone.

In a seemingly impossible juxtapositioning of feelings, it was at once both amusing -- and perhaps just ever so slightly chilling -- that the method remains the same even if the message is more benign.