Sometimes, as I wander along the streets of Riga, I wish to get more intimate with it. To see where the city dwellers hang their long underpants to dry, which fly high above our heads…

Mkay, strike the last sentence…

However, there is a garment here you might acquire while visiting Riga. What I have in mind is a handmade hat from a local hat maker’s workshop. The dominating style of these hats resemble the famous story of “Vārnu Street Republic” – a story featuring one of Riga’s neighbourhoods, one where the factory workers would reside in the early 1900s. Everyone familiar with the story will unmistakeably recognise this kind of hats that Sanda Ezeriņa, the hat designer, makes as the same hats worn by the heroic boys in the adventures depicted in the story.

The workshop can be found in a small wooden house located in a yard of one of the most popular streets of Riga – Kr. Barona street. I come here occasionally to have my cinnamon bun or sit down to finish my ice-cream (you cannot buy these here). And if it is a sunny day when you wander in here, perhaps you would want to lie down on the green lawn behind the house (it is possible if you make friends with the hat-lady), and enjoy counting pigeons gathering for a feast thrown at them from the many windows facing the yard. An urban idyll is what I call it.