Prison Time in Latvia

My roommate Zane (sounds like Zahn-eh) is from a small town in Latvia called Liepaja (sounds like Leah-pie-uh). There are two other girls and two guys from the same town who all hang out with us, and when they talk about Liepaja, they sound similar to how I sound when I talk about Santa Barbara (oh the love…).

A little over two weeks ago, Toms (sounds like Toh-ums) announced that he was taking my friend Ashley and I home with him for the weekend. It was more of a “just so you know” rather than a “would you like to come?” kind of thing. So five dollars, two hours, and one passport stamp later, I was in a new country with five Latvians whom I’d met about one week prior. Toms’ mom met us at the bus station, and he told us later that the first thing she said to him was, “Wow! I’m so surprised! I was expecting American girls to be fat…but your friends are so…small.” After awkwardly translating the greeting, he said we should take it as a compliment.

I loved the food his “Granny” made for us. I have no idea what it was, but it reminded me of something my grandma would make for me. Good memories.
During dinner Toms explained that his dad was on sick leave from work because he broke his leg falling off his bicycle when he was drunk about a month ago. Within minutes of the story being told, we heard a noise outside, and there he was, the man himself, teetering up to their house on his bicycle…WITH a full-leg cast on. What a champ.

After dinner we all climbed into the smallest car I’d ever seen to drive over to Toms’ fifth floor flat where we’d be staying for the weekend. The perpetually drunk, broken-legged man ended up driving. Not so sure how that ended up working out, but it did. Ashley and I each had our own rooms in the flat. It was so nice to be out of the dorm for a mini-vacation. Our friends paid for everything. If we even tried to return the favors they yelled at us or ignored us.

Saturday morning the Latvians all got together to decide what they were going to “make us do” that day…and we kept hearing random English words like “prison” and “jail” thrown into the mesh of Latvian language. Toms pulled the car up in front of a daunting, old brick building with barbed wire surrounding it and a large authentic-looking WWII guard in a Russian uniform.

He walked over to the car, literally pulled Toms out of it and yelled something in another language. I knew it was at least kind of a joke because Toms was kind of laughing as he got back into the car, but the whole thing was still very weird. Toms started the car and asked us if we minded buying the guard cigarettes before we went in because then he promised he’d “go easy on us.” Not having any idea what that might mean, we willingly went and bought him cigarettes.

Back at the prison they had our group line up and march through the gates with our hands behind our backs. The rest of the two hours spent inside that prison was just a long and semi-painful blur. The guards were constantly shouting instructions in Russian, which my poor roommate would try to translate under her breath before they’d yell at her for talking. They had us doing push-ups on the gravel outside, then squatting like ducks with our hands behind our heads for up to half an hour (that, for me, was the worst). They marched us back and forth through the dark halls and up disintegrating staircases deep inside the building somewhere and then shoved way too many of us into a tiny tar-coated cell.

It was supposed to give you a true-to-life experience of what it would have felt like to be a prisoner in occupied Latvia prior to their independence from the USSR. True-to-life is an understatement. Ashley and I decided that this would be so illegal in the States…and surprisingly, our Latvian friends agreed.
Educational experience nonetheless. We met one of the guards after our trip through hell was over, and he was actually a really sweet guy/very attractive. :)