Updated Mission 4: Get into and go through Latvian media

These are parts of a broadcast of Riga's alternative radio station, Radio NABA. (...)

Marika, who's doing the "French Connection" show, invited me last Saturday. This time I brought some Swiss rock music, but maybe some day I'll have a chance to show off my favourite Latvian tunes.

Originally a pirate radio that was run by university students, the music radio NABA is nowadays the official fifth channel by Radio Latvia. Since all their people are volunteers and work simply out of enthusiasm for their channels, this station is really a colorful and genuine alternative voice besides all the commercial channels. Currently (and in the future) financial support is missing, so that radio NABA is unlikely to survive... but a Latvian culture landscape without radio NABA is really something I don't want to imagine.

Listen to radio NABA here.

Big thanks to Marika! I was pretty nervous, speaking for the first time into a radio microphone, and that in three foreign languages at once. But joking around and dancing a little in the studio made it rather easy in the end. You can (and should!) listen to Marika and her French Connection in Latvian-French-English at the same time every Saturday evening at 22:00 CET, 23:00 local time in Riga.



September 12th, 2009: Portrait about me in Sestdiena, the weekend supplement of Latvia's biggest daily Diena, written by Janis Rozenbergs. The text has also been published online (in Latvian), and has received a lot of comments, which seems to indicate how important these questions are - about identity, about becoming Latvian, and perhaps also about staying Latvian...




September 15th, 2009: A video report about my project by Inese Trenca from the news agency LETA. This was the first interview I tried to give entirely in Latvian. Of course with a lot of mistakes...! You can watch the film (in Latvian, no subtitles) on various Internet portals, such as TVNET or Apollo, again with lots of comments by viewers. The video isn't in the "arts" section of these portals, but under "life" - and hey, maybe that's really a better classification!


More information and interviews in Latvian media are probably going to come soon...

Comment: Eye-opener

A Latvian wrote me: "I watched the interview, and had the feeling that finally someone opened my eyes. All of this is so logical, but now I also don't know what to do. Some say: Ignore it, forget it, don't do anything. But I think that's exactly the wrong direction - ignorance is the biggest problem!"

She's talking about the interview with Dr. Michael Hudson. He analyzes the Latvian economic crisis and makes recommendations what could and should be fixed. Very important, very interesting:
Open your eyes here.

Interview with Ojars Kalnins

If someone knows what it means to be Latvian, it will be the director of the Latvian Institute, an organization whose purpose it is to inform about Latvian culture, identity, and society: Ojars Kalnins.
During a recent interview, Ojars Kalnins told me what's Latvian, and also told about a few things that are not. And he gave me some starting points what I might need to do in order to become Latvian. One thing I have to do for sure is to go pick mushrooms. Sure thing!


To switch on English or German subtitles, start the video; then click the triangle icon in the bottom right corner of the video frame; and select the desired subtitles from the second icon from below (a red shape with two white lines).