First full day in Daugavpils

Well, we made it! We have been out in the surrounding area of Daugavpils learning about the cultural and religious history of the people of Latvia today. We walked around downtown Daugavpils and met a girl at the university, traveled to Aglona to see a Catholic basilica (and got a tour-- in Russian of course) and stopped at a cemetery.

Daugavpils is nice. People seem to love to just sit and enjoy the fresh air here. There are lots of city parks, and people go there daily just to sit. Walking on the grass in the parks is prohibited (you'll get a ticket if you do it)! We stopped to eat and enjoyed beet or mushroom soup, these little pork meatloaf type things, veggies, crepes, and bread, along with homemade fruit juice (they make it in the restaurant and put real fruit at the bottom of your cup).

We met a nice girl at the university who Gary already knew, and we are meeting to talk with her on Monday.

After our tour of Daugavpils, we drove to Aglona to visit a famous basilica and to discuss Polish Catholocism and Russian Orthodox traditions (what seems to be the two most common religious heritages here) on the way.


Here are some (condensed) facts about both:
**Note- these are not solid facts out of books; only what we learned on the first day. If any of this information is wrong, I apologize.

Polish Catholocism
This branch of Catholocism differs from the Catholocism that is prevalent in America. The biggest difference seems to be the emphasis they place on Mary. In certain types of this kind of Catholocism, Mary is considered a part of the holy trinity, with God being the more strict, fatherly figure, and Mary being the compassionate intercessor. Jesus simply paid for our original sin and his role seems to end there. My impression was that when they pray, they usually pray to Mary.

Russian Orthodox
The most interesting thing to me about the Russian Orthodox is the the importance of icons in their worship. They seem to believe that to talk to God, they must look at an icon (essentially a painting) either in a church or in a corner of their homes. These icons are considered holy writings, like scripture. There is also an extremely important set of traditions they practice that are separate from scripture. Another interesting aspect of the Russian Orthodox faith is that they believe that it is able to communicate with the dead through a picture on their tombstone. When we visited the cemetery, almost every tombstone had a beautiful, detailed picture of the deceased person etched onto it. Every year on the day of Pentecost, most of the Russian Orthodox believers come to the cemetery and talk to their loved ones. The graves are absolutely beautiful. Each one has a permanent flower bed (see picture) in front of it, and most of them are extremely well taken care of. I have never seen anything like the cemetery here. Below is a picture of one of the graves from WWII, or as the Soviets called it "The Great Patriotic War." There was a whole section of the cemetery dedicated to Soviet Union soldiers. They all had the Red Star on them, like this one.

After the cemetery, we went grocery shopping at the iki (grocery store). We all met down in the boys' apartment and made spaghetti together.

Here's a funny story to end with.

While we were cooking the spaghetti, Cole asked me where the salt was. There was a cup of a white, grainy substance, so I pointed to it. He sprinkled some in the noodle water and the spaghetti sauce, and none of us thought anything of it. When we took our first bite of "Latvian spaghetti," we all said, "hmm, tastes a little different." A few minutes later, Trey said, "It kind of tastes sweet!" We still thought nothing of it. While we were doing the dishes, Robyn looked at the cup (she wasn't there when we were cooking) and said, "Oh good, we have sugar!" Cole and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. We explained that we thought it was salt. Everyone had a good laugh for about five minutes! We put sugar in the spaghetti!