People Power

In Latvia public protests appear to work. In 2007 demonstrators forced Aigars Kalvītis to resign as prime minister (though the four-party coalition stayed in government, with Ivars Godmanis returning to power for a second time). After Tuesday's 10,000-strong rally-cum-riot, Latvian President Valdis Zatlers has given parliament two months to pass a law enabling voters to demand early elections by referendum. "The government and parliament have lost their links with their electors," he said.

Sound familiar?

Forty Years

And won f**k all.
The last time I saw Newcastle win anything was at a pre-season tournament in Dublin, twelve years ago. "Let's hang around for the presentation. It might be the only trophy we ever see," my mate suggested. He wasn't joking. A week later our star player went over on his ankle and was never the same again.
You get used to these things. It's not the false hope that's the worst part of being a Newcastle fan but the depressing inevitability of each and every failure.

Room 307

I teach on the third floor, in a classroom named Los Angeles. It was sparsely decorated when I arrived: a clock, a sprig of something clipped to the board, and three pieces of lined paper with the prepositions at, in and on written in capitals, blu-tacked to the wall. There's an oval table in the centre of the room, coathooks by the door, a CD player in the corner, and a window looking out on a peeling wall. A half-full carrier bag hangs incongruously from a nail twenty metres up, just below eye level when I stand at the board.

As classrooms go, it's better than most.

Another Latvia

While I was teaching ten thousand people gathered for an anti-government protest in Old Riga. My students were more fatalistic, and chose to come to class instead. "It's for nothing. People will shout but the government won't listen. They do what they want." A short walk away in Dome Square, others were taking a different view of affairs.

Going Nowhere

Although we've somehow reached the dizzy heights of eleventh in the league, I can't remember a more depressing time to be a fan of Newcastle United. We're five points off rock bottom with no new signings to show for two weeks of the transfer window, and have Wise off scouting for more Iberian prospects (as if throwing away the best part of six million on Xisco wasn't enough for one season).

Worse still, for the forseeable future we're stuck with Mike Ashley and his sports shop business plan. Surrounded by cronies and trying to bargain down survival to the cheapest possible price, you wouldn't put it past him to slap 80% off stickers on substitutes during televised games or offer our few decent players to Man City on a two for the price of one deal, with a Lonsdale t-shirt thrown in for free.

Daugavpils

No doubt it's a sign of my masochistic northern temperament but I've always liked dour, end-of-the-world places. So it was fitting that my first trip out of Riga was to a city that my students optimistically described as "dirty, cold and full of pickpockets".

From the moment you step down from the train, Daugavpils feels very much like the back end of nowhere. The last jumping-off point before the Belarusian border, the station building's stab at monumentalism is neutered by a departures board listing four trains a day, half of which were returning to the capital. It's Latvia's second city, though the lingua franca on the slush-bound streets was Russian (Latvian speakers make up just 17% of the population, only slightly ahead of Poles).

There's lots of attractive early-20th century architecture in the pedestrianized centre (like the Czechs, the Latvians had a flourishing inter-war republic) but there wasn't a great deal else to see beyond the 19th-century fortress, a grid of decaying Soviet Aviation barrack buildings inside snow-covered red-brick walls built to repel Napoleon (they worked, for a while). Our 20 santimes were taken by a man in jeans and a leather jacket with a half-smoked cigarette wedged between his teeth. Over his shoulder, a rusted playground looked as forlorn as the city centre sign saying Work in UK. Hanging above a locked-up office, it wasn't apparent whether it was an advertisement or a cry for help.

Before leaving we ate at Gubernators, a posh cellar-pub on a corner opposite the city's university (one block west of where the Rough Guide map puts it). Meat and chips cost under 3 lats; half-litres of beer were just 80 santimes.

We stayed for a while.

Lessons From The Learners: Numbers 1 - 3

"Whatever you do, don't go through the Central Market at night. We call it the changing rooms because you never leave with the same things you entered."

"You should eat at Lido. It's very tasty food."
"Yes, but sometimes cold."

"Why do you think most foreigners come to Riga?"
"Beer and sex."

The Big Thaw

When I came to work the streets were melting. Gutters turned into rain clouds, slabs of ice dropped without warning from the newly bare rooftops, and puddles of icy brown water made walking on the pavement as tricky as completing an army assault course.

I remembered something from winter in Liberec. It was never the snow I hated - it was the bits in between.

Two Million for Barton

I'd have snapped their hands off. Trouble is, so would he. Literally.

The All Important Water Question

"So, erm, is it ok to drink the tap water here?"
"I reckon so but put it through the filter jug first cos they found hepatitis in it a while back."

I took that as a yes. It's cheaper than buying bottles - and a lot easier on the arm.