My Latvian blogger friend, Ilze, who I mentioned yesterday, said in answer to a comment I made on her blog that she was surprised by how much she had learned in a year of blogging. Not only can I say the same, though with me it’s just over five years, it is for me one of the delights of blogging.

Before I ‘met’ Ilze I knew almost nothing about Latvia, although I did once visit Riga briefly when the country was part of the Soviet Union. I can’t even remember why I went though it was on a trip which also included Helsinki and St Petersburg (then Leningrad). All I remember of the Latvian capital is the architecture.

Daily life

Not that Ilze writes specifically about her country; her blog title, a day in the life of a Latvian mum (though she uses the American version ‘mom’), sums it…