Changing attitudes

Back in the 1990s, in the wake of the dissolution of the old order in Eastern Europe, there was a certain ingrained prejudice.  Of course, it couldn't be expressed against Poles or Czechs who had extensive communities in the UK and many had fought for the war effort in World War II, with all those RAF pilots the most prominent.  Hungary still had a regal grandeur to it lingering from its Habsburg days, the Balkans were written off as one corrupt, strife-ridden region and people kept confusing Slovakia and Slovenia.  So Latvia became the butt of poor-quality jokes, the more so when Škoda cars became respectable.  It sounded Ruritanian and was sufficiently eastern to engender further ignorance that to be Latvian was the modern equivalent of 'Jerry-built'.  Hence we have Red Star Belgrade renaming itself as Crvena Zvezda and when Leicester City were to play them in European football, the description in the TV scheduling was "they may sound like a two-bit Latvian side but in reality they are the giants Red star Belgrade in disguise."  You still here it occasionally from time to time but it has dropped from usage as Polish plumbers and nannys became the rage (and occasionally seasonal Ukrainian poly-farmers).
I remember a Newsnight piece on Latvia in 1996 detailing how the president of the country wanted to have his country as an EU member within ten years and, at the time, I thought that hopelessly ambitious.  Yet it was achieved in 2004, a decade ago this month.  I was on a study year in Finland at the time and visiting the country just before accession (along with Estonia and Lithuania), I saw that Latvia was a little rough around the edges but fully deserving of its place in the EU.  As Ryanair and other budget airlines began flights to Riga, others in the UK began to see Latvia in a less judgmental light - with its striking medieval heritage in the city and in the countryside, perfectly at ease with all modern amenities - not least the many stag dos that continue to throng the city (not always to the delight of locals).  EU expansion has brought the gripes about the aforementioned Polish influx but Latvia seems to have benefitted from greater exposure.  Travel does broaden the mind but with one horizon reached, maybe it also pushes the borders of ignorance a little further onward to a new horizon.