Museum Night 2015

The word "museum" in this event becomes ever more symbolic with each passing year, because Museum Night involves not only municipal enterprises - such as the Riga Municipal Police this year, opening their premises to visitors - but also factories (Aldaris), libraries, and universities. And that is not such a bad thing. It is a day (night) when businesses and institutions are at their closest to society, to each of its members, to each interested party.

This year we visited the Riga Municipal Police building on Hanzas Street, where one could visit the department museum, take part in traffic rules knowledge games, sit in a police car and on a motorcycle, activate the siren that in other circumstances is far less appealing, observe the art of assembling firearms, and acquire for oneself a student squared notebook, a parking disc, an information brochure on career opportunities and employee benefits.

Right there also the Fire Fighting Museum, which on this day is always full of visitors. This year there were no special attractions prepared for the event - except for photo opportunities by the red vehicles with uniformed staff. One of the exhibition stands is also dedicated to the tragedy of the Maxima building collapse and the selfless work of the State Fire and Rescue Service personnel in mitigating the consequences.

Although we have been several times before, we nonetheless stopped in at the War Museum, where, in my view, the museum staff had done an excellent job both with the exhibition dedicated to World War I and with creating the mood - entering a tunnel lit by little flames, a play of coloured lights, and background music: songs about the fate of the nation in wartime. A large old map of Latvia laid out on the floor attracted the interest of several visitors - one could walk across it from one end of Latvia to the other and find one's home region.

The Museum of History and Navigation, meanwhile, was fully accessible to visitors. All three floors, the inner courtyard with a blossoming apple tree, outdoor candle lights, and monks' chanting. To be honest, this museum visit took the most time of all, and even so not all the exhibits could be explored thoroughly. Ah well, the night is only as long as it is.

We hurried back to our own neighbourhood, where Aldaris was celebrating its 150th anniversary in style. The men had a beer. In the inner courtyard live music played, while images, colours, and patterns were projected onto the building facades. We made it to the performance by the band "Jumprava", to the good old songs one could sing and dance along to.

Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention. At the St. Paul's Church square, as part of Museum Night, installations were placed - improvised grave mounds with white crosses. On each, a meaningful saying that makes one think about the purpose of one's life: for example, "the bad news is that there is no key to the gates of happiness; the good news is they are not locked" - or the inscription on a cross: "victories can look different - even like this".