The Blaus - South America and Europe

1st of November - Riga, Latvia

We had one stop in Latvia as we continued to make our way up to Russia. Riga was not in our original plan, because it would have been more direct for us to go through Belarus to Russia, skipping all of the Baltic countries. However, we learned that we needed a visa to travel through Belarus, so we saw that we could avoid Belarus by going through Riga to Moscow. We arrived in Riga by train in the afternoon and Billy said he had a bad feeling about it. His instincts were correct.

We stepped out of the train station to discover a very modern, polished, glitzy Eastern European city with price tags to match. The value of the money here is the same as the pound, so everything is super expensive, and it seems like there's a lot of cash flowing. This is a big party destination for Limeys (especially for stag parties). It's not dissimilar to our Las Vegas, complete with gambling and strip clubs.

We went to the tourist information booth inside the train station and asked for help finding accommodation. The girl working there was cagey from the start. She insisted on knowing how much we were willing to pay and she wanted a number from us. We normally look for the cheapest accommodation available, and when we told her we'd be willing to pay 40 Euro a night for a really nice apartment or a room, she said that would be next to impossible in a first class city like Riga. Then she said that she knew of one place a few blocks away, and she closed down the office to walk us there. We thought that this was incredible customer service until we realized that she was taking us to her apartment. She had an extra room with a pull out couch bed that she was hoping to rent to us for a whopping 40 Euros. We declined and she abruptly kicked us out of her place and sent us packing. This was not the usual kind of help that we receive from tourist information offices.

So, we decided to walk to the center of town to find a place to stay there. As we are ascending the stairs of the train station exit, Jen felt someone tugging on her backpack. She turned around and saw nobody there. A few seconds later she felt the same tugging and this time Billy turned to find two gypsies unzipping Jen's backpack and trying to take something out of it. Billy went running after them and when he caught up with them he realized that they were two older ladies scrounging around for food to give to their children, and we later concluded that nothing was taken. This was our only encounter with gypsies in all of Eastern Europe, and they didn't get the best of us. In the end WE gave THEM a bit of a scare. We've been on the road for so long now that we are more frightening than the gypsies.

We finally found a room in a hostel in dorm style accommodations (which we swore off after our last experience in Vienna), but there were only two of us in a 4 person dorm room, and the price was right at $37 per night. The hostel's name is Profit Camp, which isn't really appropriate for a budget hostel and must have been chosen by someone that doesn't know better. It was conveniently located down an alley above a strip club called Mademoiselles, but it was clean, not too crowded, and included breakfast and internet. It was better than the room that the tourist info office tried to sell us anyway.

Our first night in town we went to a Latvian fast food joint, then to a bar to try some of the famous Riga Black Balsam. This is the drink of choice in Riga....the king of Latvian liquors. It was invented in the middle of the 18th century by a pharmacist living in Riga. It is only produced in Riga. The traditional recipe is based on a composition of 25 ingredients such as flowers, buds, roots and berries. It's sold in ceramic jugs. It was once used as a medicinal remedy, especially aboard sailing ships. It is dark in color and looks like medicine. They serve it in a number of ways, but our drinks were hot and mixed with black currant juice, cloves and lemon with a splash of Black Balsam. This must be how the locals keep warm, as it did the trick for us.

The next day we went out sight seeing and tried not to freeze in the cold. The temperatures in Riga hovered around zero degrees Celsius during the day. We decided it was time to break down and buy Billy a jacket. Going back to California's winter will be a piece of cake after this.

We checked out most of the Art Nouveau buildings in old town (Riga is called the Paris of the East for this reason). We went on a walking tour of the city to see the castle, the city's moat, the river, the churches, the oldest stone dwellings in town called the three brothers, the House of Blackheads, the opera house (called the White House, because it looks like a giant marshmellow). We ducked into cafes to warm up every so often. We walked through the park that runs along the canal near the city's Freedom Monument (the monument is guarded by two soldiers who slowly and ceremoniously march around it all day). Latvia is a country that is proud of its recently gained independence, and it should be. It has been occupied by Germany (at two different points in history), Poland, Sweden, and most recently by Russia. As we crossed one of the bridges in the park to get from one side of the canal to the other we noticed that there were many padlocks attached to the metal bars of the footbridge. Some of the padlocks were engraved with what appeared to be couple's initials and dates. Some padlocks were elaborate and large and others were rusty and looked like they had been locked to that bridge for years. We tried to ask passersby about the significance of the locks, but nobody spoke English.

Some everyday things are a little strange in Riga. For instance, if you want information about trains at the train station, you have to pay for it. This is the first time we have had to pay for information, but in an expensive and flashy city like Riga, it's not surprising that one must pay to ask a question. Another thing that we found odd is assigned seating in movie theaters. Because it was so cold, we entertained ourselves with indoor activities and went to a movie one afternoon. When we bought our tickets we had to choose our seats, like you do when you go to a theater production or an opera. Perhaps this is the way of the future with movie going.

Jen forced Billy to go to a chamber music concert at the small guild to hear two cellists play classical music by the likes of Vivaldi. Billy hated it (and would probably never admit that he actually attended this concert), but it was something to do indoors, and Jen was happy to sit and listen to music and take in the elegant interior of the building. The small guild had stained glass windows covering an entire wall, paintings of Baltic sister cities on the opposite wall and an extremely detailed decoratively painted ceiling with unusual lighting fixtures hanging from it.

It is funny how resourceful one can be when the goal is to save money and time is not an issue. Even in a place like Latvia, where hardly anyone speaks English, we managed to perform some miracles. For instance, we needed to repair a piece of clothing (as many of our clothes are threadbare at this point), and we were able to find a place that sold us the right accessory and then we managed to get it affixed. If faced with this task at home, we wouldn't even know where to start.

So after a few days in beautiful Riga, we were off to Moscow...the land of the hammer and sickle, and we hoped for warmer weather there.

posted by The Blaus @ 12:58 PM