Approach at Sea

After a quick and windy sailing along the coast we reached Ventspils, where there had been made plans for our arrival. Here Albert had let another friend of his, Janis Matulis, arrange a press conference. At three tables sat representants for the Latvian green movement and other environmental organisations, artists, and us, from the boat. Quite a few journalists and even local TV were there. The environmentalists were presenting their activities and organisations, we were asked to present the project, and the local artists presented themselves. Nearly all participants were coming up with some ideas or comments. We went into discussions about democracy and ascendancy over the local polititians, who seemed to do as they liked, or what they were paid for from those with great influence (=money). In Ventspils area the environmentalists are concerned for example about what is happening with the sand dunes along the coast, which has, due to the soviet times, been saved from exploitation so far. Also questions about what happens in the harbour areas were important issues here. The Baltic Sea itself was not the first priority but one of the female artist claimed that she was swimming in the open sea every day the year around, (but she was terribly afraid of being on boats). We were fascinated and very thankful for a wonderful, and to us, quite unusual, arrangement.

Pictures of meeting organized by “Zala Kustiba Latvija” (Latvian Green Movement) in Ventspils (”artists, greens and journalists” - like Janis announced it …) Photo by Albert Caspari.

After the press conference, we invited everybody to come onboard the boat. We had some nice chats, the boat is a good friendmaker.

We have promised to come back to Ventspils to make more concrete plans, because these people are really serious about cooperation. A little problem, though, is the language – Birgitta doesn´t speak latvian and most of the people we met here don´t speak english. We had very good help from the vice president of Latvian Green Movement to translate everything that was said. Also Janis Matulis, the organizer of the conference, speaks good english. If everybody wants to cooperate it has to be made possible even with different languages.