Joined: Fri May 12, 2006 11:24 am Posts: 7523 Location: Rome, Italy
hey folks,
me and Mikko had the opportunity to be on the road for a nice trip to Latvia. The Latvia National Assay Office purchased a custom GemmoRaman-532 so we decided to be both there for installation and training. it was really a nice trip, especially thanks to Peters Brangulis , the head office, who kindly assisted us and arranged for a great welcome there. Hope you will enjoy
GemmoRaman-532 SG setup ready for packing!!!!
Helsinki - something better than a restoring sauna after a flight? Actually not but, if you’re not accustomed to that, please, let’s have a shower before and take it wet. Maybe your business partner wouldn’t warn you that otherwise you will be struck by a ball of fire once the water hit the HOT stones...
Leaving the Helsinki Harbor, weather was just awesome for all the time
Approaching Tallinn, Estonia.
Short break on the VIA BALTICA heading south
Another stop just by the beach, Baltic Sea!
Former Estonia-Latvia border, now almost abandoned.
Hundreds kilometers of nice forests. Roads are good but no highways..speed limits are quite annoying....
Riga, finally!!!
Entering the city, it’s almost sunset
Day one, ready!!!
Latvia National Assay Office, in the center of the old town
Funny coincidence, the Italian Embassy is located just one floor above the Assay office, which is 1st floor. The window between the 2 figures holding the small terrace is from the room we will work in.
Sculpture on top of the building. The 3 atlants hold an awesome metal frame and colored glass big globe. found an impressive night view here: http://www.photoriga.com/2010/07/atlants.html
Ok, we must fill this empty space....
DONE!!!!
With Peters, ready to start working on his new fancy unit.
Maris Gertans, another scientist from the lab, joined the training session. His XRF skill impressed us: we were barely able to follow his finger pointing different elements on the screen.....wow
Fancy UV-VIS-NIR setup side by side with a nice scope
XRF, FTIR coupled to microscope, definitely lots of goodies there
This is the window between the 2 sculptures. The building you can see from here is and WAS a hotel for foreigners even during the cold-war. It seems from this window KGB photographed people going in and out from the hotel.
After full day training, time for a bit of relax, Riga Radio and TV Tower (Rīgas radio un televīzijas tornis) the tallest tower in the European Union, Its highest point reaches 368.5 m (1,209 ft)
Peters was so kind to drive us to a very nice place: Jurmala. This place is renowned since ages as the fanciest sea place around here, it's just ten mins south Riga
Plenty of wonderful villas here
Not all of them are still in good condition, but it seems it doesn't matter, tohugh, the lot remains quite expensive regardless the situation of the house
Relics from Soviet Union ages. More than 1 million people spent their summer holidays every year here, even during that times, almost all couldn’t afford for a villa, these hives were likely made for them
Pedestrian boulevard
The beach. Someone was swimming with 16°C water temp, ouch!!
Nice wooden structure just on the beach……..for sale!! (prices are crazy HIGH, btw..)
Back to Riga in the nite, relaxing UV bowling……… definitely a gemmo-nerd amusement....
The smartass won 2 rounds on 3…….
Day two: before starting work Peters took us for a small walk in the historical center
Weird pedal-driven vehicle, there’s room for 8 pedalers.
other views of the old side
Back to the office: this is a panorama view of the main gemmo lab room. There are MANY others, we were quite impressed by the activity going on there....
The Unit is ready to face diamonds, room temp and liquid nitrogen immersion. Let’s start with a nice CVD synthetic one!! (actually the spectra displayed on the screen)
Mr. Vaidas Cerebiejus (left) ,The head of the National Assay Office of Lithuania joined us for the training day.
We set up even the standard GemmoRaman-532 unit.
last LN tests, almost he end of the day, time to get home.
Windmill under maintenance close to the Latvian border
after several hundreds of km.......Tallinn, ferry again, late at nite...........
On the plane towards home…….Ok, I thought I cannot eat this………but hunger was stronger…..actually it was not as bad as it seemed at the first glance......but the temperature reminded me some Liquid nitrogen experiments we made during the previous days....
it was a very intense tour, thanks again to Peters and to all the staff!!!
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:22 pm Posts: 21602 Location: San Francisco
Wow, this is really interesting. The Latvian assay office is equipped to the moon.....what are they using these sophisticated spectrographic instruments for? When I think of assay office, I think of metal fineness. Are they doing stone ID too?
I mentioned after my trip to Russia that one can not legally sell a gem which is not accompanied by an official identification report and every metal piece of jewelry must be assayed, quality stamped and hallmarked! Great consumer protection, but time consuming for the vendors.
Joined: Fri May 12, 2006 11:24 am Posts: 7523 Location: Rome, Italy
question:
Barbra Voltaire wrote:
Wow, this is really interesting. The Latvian assay office is equipped to the moon.....what are they using these sophisticated spectrographic instruments for? When I think of assay office, I think of metal fineness. Are they doing stone ID too?
answer!
Quote:
I mentioned after my trip to Russia that one can not legally sell a gem which is not accompanied by an official identification report and every metal piece of jewelry must be assayed, quality stamped and hallmarked! Great consumer protection, but time consuming for the vendors.
actually they are VERY well equipped. there's even a room almost filled by a BIG a mass spectrometer , the situation is quite similar to Russia. they need to be able to release gemstone reports for every piece submitted.
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