Liene Lūsīte

Let me tell you a story about my grandma's barrel of sauerkraut. My family used to have regular Saturday sauna evenings at my grandparents' magical countryside house in Latvia. But every autumn, someone else joined the ritual: the annual cabbage barrel. It always turned up the same way: shredded cab…

What happens to your soul after you die? That's a tough one, depending on what you believe. But what you have some say in is what happens to your body once you move… on. Organ donation can happen during life and after death. Naturally,  in the latter case, if you've missed the deadline (pun absolute…

If you believe the dictionary, a ‘weed' (not that kind) is “any wild plant that grows in an unwanted place, especially in a garden or field where it prevents the cultivated plants from growing freely”. <i>Unwanted?</i> Latvians might disagree. Perhaps those plants are exactly where they belong. Ever…

Every spring, Latvians all over the country come together for a day of the Lielā Talka – the nation-wide clean-up campaign. This year, more than 100,000 volunteers (remarkable in a country of just under 1.9 million) took part in it, collecting over 50 tonnes of trash, including an unexploded aerial …

About 2% of Latvia – or roughly 4% of its forest territory – is currently up for sale. That's 135,000 hectares or half the size of Luxembourg. Why? Well, in January, Sweden's largest forest owners' association, Södra, announced that they want to sell all their land in Estonia and Latvia. Latvia's fo…

A single step. A soft click under the boot. Time freezes, breath stops, and the world shrinks to the deadly trap that has just been triggered – that moment is something most of Europe only knows from the movies. The Baltic states and Poland announced their plans on Tuesday to pull out of the convent…

Yes, we've been reporting on Gints Zilbalodis' animation film Flow's (2024) success nearly as often as we cover Baltic Sea security and the melting of Arctic ice, as it kept consistently receiving awards, even a Golden Globe. But now we have to return one last time because there's no higher honour: …

On the night of 13 January 1991, Soviet forces launched a brutal assault on civilians defending the Vilnius television tower in Lithuania, using tanks and live ammunition. Fourteen people were killed, and more than a hundred were wounded. The Baltic nations declared independence in 1990, but Soviet …

A snowy week in Norway escalated into “snow chaos” in Oslo. A single day in January had 30.7mm of precipitation, breaking the 1998 record. Buses, trains, and the metro froze in their tracks. While the capital was busy shovelling, mayors of towns in northern Norway chuckled, dismissing Oslo’s chaos a…

What are you if you are neither a citizen, nor a foreigner or stateless person? A Latvian non-citizen. This status, forged in unique political and historical circumstances, as the Soviet Union collapsed, placed many former Soviet citizens and their descendants in an in-between position in independen…

The Latvian animated film Flow (2024) tells the story of a cat at a time when the world seems to be coming to an end as a sudden flood begins. As independent as cats are, this particular one is challenged to cooperate with others, very different from its own kind, making unlikely acquaintances along…

Every year in July and August, Latvians find themselves in a pickle, or to be more correct, a courgette, also known as a zucchini. Latvians have a culture of tending their own vegetable gardens. If they don't have one, there will likely be someone close to them with a garden full of homegrown cucumb…

This week, some 50 soldiers dived deep into the Baltic Sea in an annual NATO military diver training in Liepāja, west Latvia. The divers, from the Baltics, the US, and Germany, were tasked with neutralising unexploded ordnance at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Over 100 objects were found and neutrali…

Last weekend, the streets of Riga were filled with thousands of people celebrating diversity and fighting for equality. It was Pride Week and, among the streams of queer people and allies, it was hard to spot the lone protester signs – a significant change from 2005, when protesters outnumbered acti…

After a particularly warm May, nature experts fear that this will lead to another blow to Latvian spruce forests, which are widespread across the country's landscape. That's not because of fire, but the eight-toothed bark beetle, which, as the climate warms, has become increasingly obsessed with Lat…

Latvia has the second lowest life expectancy in the EU, according to the latest Eurostat data for 2023, and men seem to be the main culprits. While Latvian women at birth are expected to live up to 80.8 years, men lag behind by a full decade (70.8), dragging the nation's average down to 75.9 years. …

Each year, as winter fades, Latvians look for spring's first messengers. The arrival of every bird from their long trip to the south is important, but especially dear to Latvians is the presence of storks. The white stork has many meanings in Latvian culture and is called by many names. ”Svētelis” i…

In the 20 years since joining the EU and NATO, Latvia's GDP has nearly doubled. Despite this, it remains the third poorest EU member state according to Eurostat. Among the ten EU entrants in 2004 were also Latvia's neighbours Lithuania and Estonia, as well as Poland. All have outpaced Latvia economi…

When it comes to alcohol consumption in Europe, Latvia takes the unfortunate lead, despite a century of action against just this, starting with the ”Law on Combating Drunkenness” from December 1924. These days, the average annual alcohol intake per person aged 15 or older in Latvia is between 12 and…

To address the longstanding problem of being among the countries with the highest alcohol consumption in the world, the Latvian parliament's Social and Labour Affairs Committee took decisive steps this week by voting to increase the legal age for purchasing alcohol from 18 to 20 years old. The commi…

As the last traces of snow retreat to the shadowy forest edges, the Latvian Fire and Rescue Service is bracing for trouble ahead for the Easter holidays. It is the time of year again when folks in Latvia are tempted to burn off last year's grass from the fields, despite it being banned for years. Wi…