Saturday, April 15
 
 

 
Cesis Castle, 12:34
 
We travel from Valmiera to Riga the long way. We stop at a castle (Cesis Castle, fact fans) for a guided tour that lasts three hours longer and feels like three days.
At one point we look carefully at some armour from 1499. I photograph the helmet, suspecting that whoever wore it didn’t see very much. I try to imagine two men dressed in helmets like this, fighting each other with long, heavy swords.
The armour weighs 30 to 40 kilos. I imagine both of them staggering around blindly and then collapsing from exhaustion before they have even hurt each other.