Latgale Trip V3 -

I skip the city center’s chain cafes. Instead, I take tram #3 to , a working-class district on the old Polish border. Here, wooden houses lean into each other. A bar called “Pie Alekseja” serves piva (beer) and šprotes (sprats) on black bread. The clientele: factory workers, a retired KGB officer (he tells me; I don’t ask), and a young Latgalian poet named Zane. She recites a line from memory: “Mūsu valoda ir migla / Mēs elpojam cauri vēsturei” (Our language is fog / We breathe through history). She gives me a photocopied chapbook. Price: a promise to read it on the train home.

The first two trips collected sights. The third collected wounds and salves – the fortress’s grief, the basilica’s hope, the ferryman’s dignity. latgale trip v3

Built by Tsar Alexander I after Napoleon’s invasion. Never saw a single shot fired in anger. Instead, it became a prison, a barracks, a concentration camp (first for Poles, then for Jews), then a Soviet garrison, then a museum. Walking the ramparts at 9 AM, alone except for a stray dog, I feel the weight of nested tragedies. A plaque in three languages: “Here, in 1941, 1,400 Jews were held before execution. Among them: children.” I skip the city center’s chain cafes

Pie Krodziņa – no menu. You eat what the grandmother caught that morning. Smoked perch, pickled milkcaps, and kvass from a plastic jug. Heaven. A bar called “Pie Alekseja” serves piva (beer)

Forget the itinerary clock. In Latgale Trip V3, success is measured not by kilometers covered, but by how many times you lose cell service and find peace.