Years of austerity saw the country achieve one of the EU's most successful financial bounce-backs, yet unemployment remains stubbornly high, spurring many young Latvians to move abroad.
Many Latvians believe the influx of migrants from the USSR during decades of Soviet control was part of a concerted effort to destroy Latvian nationalism and Baltic culture, and recent government policies promoting the use of Latvian over Russian have been a source of tension.
Next day, the Latvians – Valdis and Anita – and I stuck together.
"We have our Belgian friends, the Bulgarians, the Latvians and the Lithuanians," said Kami´nski.
He had turned his modest flat into couchsurfing Grand Central – a Polish couple in one room, two Chinese in another, a pair of Latvians in a tent on the balcony, and me in a converted cupboard.
Now divided into cheap flats, many house Poles and Latvians who work as cleaners or at Thanet Earth, a nearby complex of greenhouses.
But the government's lacklustre response also epitomised its main failing: a detached and unsympathetic approach to Latvians' human and daily concerns.
The Latvians, for instance, got a last-minute dispensation to catch under-size herring, a local speciality; the Czechs are still fighting hard over the geographical designation of Budweiser beer.Everybody agrees that it would be unseemly if the great "reunification of Europe" were to be overshadowed by ungracious last-minute haggling over money, let alone herring and beer.
But the prime minister says Latvians already agreed to the single currency when they voted in a referendum to join the EU in 2004.
Polls suggest most Latvians want to keep the lat.
And the Tories' sole Latvian chum is a mild-mannered economist, a wing of whose party annually honours Latvians who fought with the Waffen SS against Soviet forces.Mr Cameron's real problem is structural.
