I NEED HELP IN UNDERSTANDING LATVIANS

Here are a couple of sites you all might be interested in:

http://www.latvians.com/
http://www.latviansonline.com/index.shtml

i remember that latviansonline site. good stuff.

so littlek, dlowan and i want to go to latvia. hmmmmm. let's start saving.

[quote/merryandrew="Ms. Olga -- what a perfect description of me!"

Andrew

Thanks for the links and explanations!

MA
I'm sorry now I didn't take up your suggestion of going to Latvia when I'm in Europe next.

I decided to go and beat up the Brits instead!

Margo -- so alter your itinerary. It's a relatively short hop from London to Riga. I'm just not sure whether there are direct flights. You might have to change planes in either Frankfurt or Copenhagen.

Thanks, Andrew for explanation. Now I understand, though, I have never heard of any Russian noblemen having Latvian serfs, the serfs of Russians usually were Russians themselves, and majority of the serf-owners in Baltic areas were either German barons that were subjects of the Russian Empire (Russians used to call them Ostsee Germans) in Latvia and Estonia, or Poles in Lithuania. I think, it is more likely that intermarriages contributed more to Slavification of the Latgallian surnames.
By the way, since it was very uneasy to get a permission for a foreign trip in the USSR (even to GDR), many Russians spent their summer leaves in Riga or Tallinn in order to feel themselves for a while "as if in the Central Europe" (some of them confused Latvians and Estonians with ethnic Germans). Well, historical center of Riga looks very much "Teutonic", for explicable reasons. I cannot say anything about Estonian Tallinn, since I have never been there.
By the way, are Latvian Christians Roman Catholics or Lutherans?

I hope to someday visit Estonia, Latvia, and those countries north of the Black Sea. Also wouldn't mind a revisit to Russia. c.i.

Those cities certainly look "teutonic" - it's called Brick Gothic and was the main architecture style during the Hanseatic times.

(Unfortunately, there is only a Swedish site online of the "Projektet EUROB - European Route of Brick Gothic, whic will run from Germany/Denmark through Poland, Latvia, Estonia.)

re. Religion

So do I. When I have enough time for travelling I would not mind to revisit Riga and to get a personal impression of Vilnius and Tallinn.

Steissd -- Walter Hinteler has answered for me (Thank you, Walter). The majority of Latvian Christians are Lutheran, with Roman Catholics constituting a sizeable minority. There is an even smaller minority of Russian Orthodox worshippers and this group includes a number of native Latvians as well as ethnic Russians and Ukranians. Latgale is largely Roman Catholic.

Numbers are COOL. Here we go!
The U.N. Human Development Reports summarize overall statistics for 175 countries.

It tracks health, living conditions, economics, business, technology, military, environment, gender, and crime.
Get the complete report (292-page .PDF file) at:
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2002/en/
Or all 15 data spreadsheets (from the report Appendix) in one zipfile at:
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2002/en/indicator/indicator.cfm?File=index.html

I checked some interesting numbers for a few countries, as compared to ... LATVIA !


POPULATION INDICATORS
1) From Latvia's population to plunge, says UN report:
"Even if fertility rates continue to increase, Latvia's population could drop to 1.33 million by mid-century, according to new projections by the United Nations.

Latvia, which now has the second highest negative population growth in the world, would maintain that ranking in 2050. The country's growth rate is predicted to increase from the current -0.93 percent per year to -1.51 percent per year by 2050."

2) Other social stresses and demographics are described at:
http://www.unece.org/stats/documents/ces/pau/1998/19.e.html




HEALTH INDICATORS3) I had no idea people smoke so much! In Japan, 3076 cigarettes per person per year amounts to 8.4 smokes a day, on AVERAGE across the whole population! That's equivalent as if once an hour, EVERY working hour, the entire country just stops -- and everyone smokes a cigarette. If you don't smoke one, then someone else smokes two.

And yet they still have the highest life expectancy at 81 years. Very strange.

4) Russians aren't doing so well, even though they have many more doctors.
Do doctors cause lower life expectancy, or does lower life expectancy cause more doctors? :wink:



ECONOMIC INDICATORS
(A)* = Unemployment Rate, from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/social/unempl.htm
(B)* = % of Tertiary (college) Students in Science, Math, Engineering.
(C)* = Scientists and Engineers in R&D, research and development (people per million).

5) One out of five Americans are functionally illiterate! They can "read a little but not well enough to fill out an application, read a food label, or read a simple story to a child". Wow. Think about that the next time you wave a sign in somebody's face. (More info at Literacy Volunteers of America and National Institute For Literacy).

6) In 1999, 28% of Latvians were below the $4/day poverty line.
Latvians make about a fifth of what the average American makes, even less than people in Mexico or Brazil (according to the Gross Domestic Product, GDP per person). Though it seems Mexico has a much larger lower class, with 37% living on less than $2/day and all the real money going elsewhere.

7) MOST of Russia (53%) lives on less than $4/day. How does a country function?

8) Column (B) shows that 48% of all Russian university students go into Science, Math or Engineering. No other country is even close, although Japan has the most existing engineers, with 4,960 R&D people in each million. There are almost no scientists and engineers in Brazil.



Okay, enough fun for one day! :-D

CodeBerg, Your observation about Japan's smoking habits and their longivity has been the subject of many investigations on health. It seems that their habit of drinking green tea seems to help reduce the effects of smoking. Just don't ask me why. c.i.

Thanks for a good advise, C.I. I am a heavy smoker, and I shall switch to the green tea from the black one from tomorrow.

Guess I'll join you, steissd.

Just smoke the green tea!

a stick of tea? aren't you old-fashioned, margo. you beatnik chick, you.

Gad!! I had forgotten we used to call it 'tea.' Nowadays the kids speak of 'smoking trees.'

Trees? Damn it, 't'ain't no tree. Kids have gotten away from the earth, I tell ya.

Oh, i don't know . . . the thought of a spleef so large that one would refer to it metaphorically as a tree . . . although somewhat duanting, hell yes . . . fire up my iron lung and pass that damned thing . . .