World looks at the clocks and waits New Year today.

I love those moments when I stumble upon some previously unseen building or corner in Riga's centre which I seemingly know like my right hand's five fingers. Today I discovered several beautiful and strange buildings at the same time - in small sidestreet Pērses street. I have been on this street before, but due to some job affairs, so back then I didn't even paid attention to what was above my eye level. Now I think - how many people lives in Riga like that, running through the centre every day but never look up? They even don't know how Riga's architecture looks like, they have never seen the city where they live! And then they every summer vacations pays large money to travel to Paris or London to wonder about buildings there... Don't get me wrong, traveling is beautiful (I do it myself everytime I can afford) but - it's stupid to travel and appreciate faraway places if you haven't even noticed wonders in your everyday's surroundings.

Here you can try to imagine the views from upper floors in Riga centre buildings.

Riga Central station and it's square in Christmas look - the same every year.

Merry Christmas to Photoriga visitors!

Different Christmas trees are set up in Riga - some real, some artficial ones.

Riga canal bridges plays with colors. It looks especially beautiful when the water is calm and reflects the lights most accurately.

Btw, if you have Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer, you can open this post and compare the colors. You will see that in Chrome and Explorer they look much worse than in Firefox (desaturated, "washed out"). I noticed this only with these photos which I processed from NEF (Nikon's RAW) file - never had this problem with photos I shot in JPEG. Do you know how to solve this problem? Because I want my photos look great not only in Firefox but in other browsers too...

Edit: it seems, I figured out the problem - Explorer and Chrome doesn't support Adobe RGB color profile. When I saved from NEF through sRGB profile, picture appearance doesn't change. I changed the first picture, so that one should appear on all browsers the same.

Artificial snow flakes over Čaka street (upper picture) and decorated Vaļņu street.

Mouse's perspective.

I stumbled upon this amazing installation in one of newest Madrid metro stations. It was moving, and photo can't show it's beauty in full.

When there are wet and grey weather outside (we're struck into depressing meteorological zone between autumn and winter), there comes a wish to be in Southern hemisphere. "Lucky bastards" are enjoying summer down there. :)

Btw, my dream places where to live are Australia and New Zealand - due to many factors like nature, weather, quality of life, absence from all other world affairs and thus a peace, beautiful and modern cities, etc.

If Riga is "Little Paris" then our Eiffel Tower is Riga's TV Tower. Just it isn't "Little Eiffel" because it's actually higher than Eiffel Tower - 365 metres.

No, it's not even close as snowy, sunny and cold in Riga this winter (which is de facto rather like bad autumn currently), but I hope it will be. I don't want second autumn instead of winter ;)

Gates of a cemetery in Vecmīlgrāvis district. "Don't cry, your dead ones lives" is written upon them. Latvians are very obsessed with cemetery culture - every dead has it's own mound which is being tidied and fresh flowers brought every few weeks.

Yesterday in Latvia's Twitter network rumours were spreading about Swedbank's financial problems and people hurried to ATMs to drew out their money (over 24 million lats were cashed out). When I heard about the rumors in TV, I had a bit comfortless feeling too, because all my money is in Swedbank. However it seemed more like a mass panic without a real ground to me and I didn't run to the nearest ATM. Today there is started criminal procedure about these rumors, because state considers they were created intentionally with bad purpose. Although some people still rows at ATMs, for most is clear now that the bank is safe and alarmism has no reason. Rumour clouds has lifted (in pictures - Swedbank main building in Riga, office tower in Ķīpsala):

Tallinn - Estonia's capital city - is city where you can observe the sharpest differences between old and new - medieval Old Town exists right besides to modern blocks and highrises.

Media reports there is a fire again in Galerija Centrs - department store in Old Town. This is Riga's oldest shopping centre and also the most troubled one - there has been several fires and even explosion back in 2000 (1 died, 28 injured). Explosion was organized by people who wanted to rob the store, only 1 people of 5 criminals sits in jail.

This department store was built from 1936-1940 as an economic store for Latvia soldiers. Back then it was very progressive and modern building - with first escalator in Riga, climate control, automatic fire-alarm system etc.

Inside, after reconstruction, when roof-covered Rīdzenes street forms a pathway between old and new side of department store:



Modern side:

Today when with wet & snowy weather winter is picking up speed here I wanted to take a look back to the autumn which was rarely sunny, warm and beautiful until half of November. This picture with old woman walking in autumn scene a bit resembles a beautiful picture by Eric in Paris Daily Photo thread. At least the story it tells is a bit similar.

And this is Riga today. I hope the coldness will turn on and the snow won't be wet and melting, but we will have one more white, snowy, cold and (maybe) even a bit sunny winter.

Latvia Art Academy building was built in 1905 initially served as a commercial school. This Neo-Gothic style building served also as appartment house for teachers (windows of their flats at this side of building). Later famous Latvian painters, including Constructivist Gustavs Klucis, has studied there.

In Saturday I wandered around Skanste district and saw some workers doing "acrobatics" on DNB bank building's roof. DNB Nord bank has became just DNB bank and thus changed it's logo - pity, imho, because the previous logo was more attractive. This one too simple and plain. Other "acrobatic" jobs in Riga posted here: roof cleaner in winter and window cleaner.

First snow in this winter behind my window just an hour ago. In spring I posted here picture with lantern and rain now it's lantern and snow. Check out also picture of previous winter's first snow.

Few pictures of moon I took in Riga in recent time.