Quote Originally Posted by E-learner View Post
This is only a wild guess on my part, but I wonder if there is a grain of truth in it:

In essence, what matters the most for the author is not the time when they were in Latvia, but the time when they were not.
Ahhhh, yes, this is also a very good and subtle observation!

Hanna is contrasting her point-of-view NOW with the point-of-view that she had for the years and years and years before her trip to Latvia. Because the time of "not being in Latvia" was one long continuum, that favors a simple-past construction instead of a past-perfect construction.