Latvia in Layers

A week ago, Nava visited, and that gave us a chance to tour the city with her and see it through some new eyes.  Immediately, Nava was drawn to the amazing Jugendstil (Art Nouveau or Art Deco) architecture we'd admired for many weeks.  When walking in the city, we often whisper to each other "up right" or "up left" to call attention to a building.  More than once, I've stumbled on the sidewalk while admiring a particular beauty.  Nava and Patricia seem to be much better at keeping their footing, but like me, their eyes are drawn to the colors, designs, and statuary typical of Jugendstil buildings.  Not sure what I mean?  Here is Nava during our walk in front of 3 pretty fantastic examples Nava in front of Alberta iela 12b, which is the Rīgas Jūgendstila Centrs Nava at Elizabetes iela 2 Nava again at Elizabetes iela 33 Rīga has more Jugendstil buildings than any other city in Europe.  There are over 700 buildings still standing.  Many are restored,...

Before I left the US, I made lots of jokes about my plans to buy a diacritic while in Latvia and even posted this modified version of my name. My joke was actually prescient, but I was a little off in my choices on spelling.  We only discovered this by figuring out that the composers we were hearing were not as unknown to us as we initially thought.  A typical program might feature works by Baha, Mocarta, an d Džons Adamss, and if you guessed we were hearing Bach, Mozart, and John Adams, you nailed it. Changing names into Latvian equivalents is standard practice and follows a set of rules.  That means the British conductor we were seeing at the Sinfonietta was no longer Robert Ames but, in the program, was listed as  Roberts Eimss.   So what are the rules for name modification?  I'm still trying to figure it out, but here is what I know so far.  Men's names have an S added at the end. Women's names end in an A.  These endings seem to facilita...