Blame it on Riga
I think its safe to say that I have never prepared for a trip with less of an idea what to expect. Like many Americans, my knowledge of Eastern Europe and Asian geography comes from a Risk board. I knew that Lativa was somewhere around Ukraine and thus a total pain in the tookas to try to defend.
And if you asked most of my friends to put Russia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia on a map, we’d get at least 25% of them right. But I did a little research before leaving and was quite pleased to see that Latvia was on the coast of the Baltic Sea, near Finland and Sweden. Now to me the words Baltic Sea, Scandanavia, Russia, and late October conjure up images of bone biting cold and army troops on skis, so I checked out the weather channel before I left and discovered it would indeed be cold – somewhere between 27 and 40F.
An aside – I think it really is something about this civilization that not only can I fly to Riga today, but I can check the weather report from my desk at home. Just a random note there.
The Liverpool to Riga Express makes two trips back and forth a day, starting at 7:00am. Liverpool is roughly the distance between Seattle and Everett, so we needed to awake at 4:00am for the 5:00am cab to the airport. Security to travel to this former Soviet Bloc country was easier than flying from Seattle – San Francisco, so we had a few minutes to sit in the gate area and watch with astonishment the group of 20 or so English guys, ages 18-48, laughing and enjoying their pints of beer at the airport bar. Yes, you read that right. 6:30 am and these guys are swilling pints. It made my stomach hurt just to watch.
Everything else went off without a hitch and we were Riga Bound.
Now as I mentioned before, I expected it to be chilly. I bought gloves and packed appropriately. I was mentally and physically prepared. But when I stepped out the plane to descend the stairs to the tarmac below, the first thought my brain could manage about this strange land was, “Holy Fargin Christ it’s cold.”
As you can imagine from the fact we deplaned to the Tarmac, the Riga airport isn’t much larger than say, the Pyramid Alehouse. But there is a very distinct thrill when you get into a terminal and see signs in Russian and Latvian (coupled with a small disappointment when they are in English as well.) Then you listen and hear some strange combination of letters that don’t even really exist, forming a language you could not possibly understand. And that’s when the thrill of being in Latvia kicks in.
The fear of being in Latvia kicks in seconds later at Customs where the most stoic and cheeriless figure I have ever encountered stared at me in a drab green uniform and asked for my passport. Of course, he could have been asking for a stick of chewing gum for all I know, but I went with the passport thing. That’s when you get that little shiver – did I take the steak knife out of my bag. Is ibuprofen considered an illegal narcotic? But of course, I went unchecked and I was able to successfully smuggle in 42 pairs of Levi’s jeans.
Vittorio and I shared a cab, while Eugene (the one guy who speaks Russian) took a cab with Lillian and Irene, because while we knew the Chinese girls would be kidnapped eventually, we thought they deserved to at least see a little of the city first.
Before we got into the cab Eugene had gone through a fairly extensive negotiation with the cab driver, and a price of 5 Lats was agreed upon. (Roughly 1 Lat = 1 Pound). This negotiation had gone on quite some time, before Gene left us and the cab started moving toward Riga. So Vittorio and I were quite surprised when the cab driver looked back and asked, “Where go?”
This was the first in a continuing series of humorous moments provided by our Russian speaking tour guide. I cannot even fathom how he was able to go through the whole negotiation without once telling the cab driver the name of the hotel, and then forget to think that might be a piece of information Vittorio or I would find useful. Boggles the imagination, but the more important issue was that we were now driving aimlessly as far as 5 Lats was going to get us, without a way to contact our friends.
I remembered the term “Old Town” which at least gave us a direction and worst case scenario. I attempted meekly, “Hotel Sauvin on Marketa Street,” which received a response of a grimace, shake of the head and a grunt. The good news was that the International Russian Roaming activated on my cell phone, so for what I am sure must have cost $30-$50 I was able to text Lillian and Eugene. The bad news is that neither Lillian or Gene’s worked at all so I might as well have been texting you guys. Vittorio and I could text all day which would have been slightly more helpful if we weren’t sitting in the back seat of the same cab.
Eventually the cab came to a stop in a pretty safe looking, tourist filled area and the cabbie made indications that it was time for us to get out. I attempted a few more street names ‘ “Marleta” Maektla’ “Markela” and at Markela I received a “OH Markela. Dsgdj sgdhdjkds asfdhjkdkl One two xzxsdsf (hand signal right) hdhjdkfhy xvzcxfsg cdvdsbgd. (Smile)"
Long story short, Markela St was two blocks down and the hotel was found and our friends were confused about why we were late, and we all decided it was lunchtime in Riga and time to find a little cafe.
We wandered out of Old Town to find a more traditional place and the patrons of the smoke filled café we found seemed quite amused at this little collection Chinese, Italians and Americans who looked helplessly at the menu at the wall. But we all enjoyed large plates of things like fried cheese (which we thought was going to be a cheese steak, pork chops with sauce and mushrooms, sodas and coffee, all for about 12 or 13 Lats total, which was quite pleasing. If prices stayed this slow all weekend, I’d have to invent new ways of using this play money for fear of getting stuck with it at the airport. (Alas, prices did not stay so low and money was spent with the kind of recklessness of a woman at a shoe sale.) Plus, the restaurant was nice enough to provide all the cigarette smoke we wanted free of charge.
I don't think Latvians see smoking as a hobby, it's more like breathing. You see Latvians walking down the street taking a breath of fresh air and they grimace like, "There's no tobacco in this air. I must find a pack of smokes." And at .70 Lats a pack, no wonder. The government not only fails to tax these things, it appears to subsidize the whole industry. I don't understand, but this may have been my favorite part of the trip, because these things sell in England for 5.50 a pack. I brought back 2 cartons to sell here, so I can probably net about 55-60 pounds on this thing.
I think now it’s best to let some pictures do some talking, because between the 5 of us we must have snapped 400 photos. I’ll add more as I get them, and spend some time on the headers and such, but this will have to come in good time. Consider this the Latvia appetizer.
Like I said, I didn’t know what to expect – anything from large communist style apartment buildings to 10th century temples would have seemed appropriate. But safe to say, Riga is absolutely charming and attractive in that old European way, and adds a considerable amount of edge to the mix. Later I decided it would be a fineplace if I ever needed to hide. I think I said the same about Scotland, but Riga has that “Russian mafia’ thing about it where the streets are clean, people are friendly and you never know if the guy you are talking to is moving a shipment of AK47’s to Albania.
I’ll get to more posts about Latvian women, Urmalla, food, music and other fun stuff. But homework calls now.
And if you asked most of my friends to put Russia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia on a map, we’d get at least 25% of them right. But I did a little research before leaving and was quite pleased to see that Latvia was on the coast of the Baltic Sea, near Finland and Sweden. Now to me the words Baltic Sea, Scandanavia, Russia, and late October conjure up images of bone biting cold and army troops on skis, so I checked out the weather channel before I left and discovered it would indeed be cold – somewhere between 27 and 40F.
An aside – I think it really is something about this civilization that not only can I fly to Riga today, but I can check the weather report from my desk at home. Just a random note there.
The Liverpool to Riga Express makes two trips back and forth a day, starting at 7:00am. Liverpool is roughly the distance between Seattle and Everett, so we needed to awake at 4:00am for the 5:00am cab to the airport. Security to travel to this former Soviet Bloc country was easier than flying from Seattle – San Francisco, so we had a few minutes to sit in the gate area and watch with astonishment the group of 20 or so English guys, ages 18-48, laughing and enjoying their pints of beer at the airport bar. Yes, you read that right. 6:30 am and these guys are swilling pints. It made my stomach hurt just to watch.
Everything else went off without a hitch and we were Riga Bound.
Now as I mentioned before, I expected it to be chilly. I bought gloves and packed appropriately. I was mentally and physically prepared. But when I stepped out the plane to descend the stairs to the tarmac below, the first thought my brain could manage about this strange land was, “Holy Fargin Christ it’s cold.”
As you can imagine from the fact we deplaned to the Tarmac, the Riga airport isn’t much larger than say, the Pyramid Alehouse. But there is a very distinct thrill when you get into a terminal and see signs in Russian and Latvian (coupled with a small disappointment when they are in English as well.) Then you listen and hear some strange combination of letters that don’t even really exist, forming a language you could not possibly understand. And that’s when the thrill of being in Latvia kicks in.
The fear of being in Latvia kicks in seconds later at Customs where the most stoic and cheeriless figure I have ever encountered stared at me in a drab green uniform and asked for my passport. Of course, he could have been asking for a stick of chewing gum for all I know, but I went with the passport thing. That’s when you get that little shiver – did I take the steak knife out of my bag. Is ibuprofen considered an illegal narcotic? But of course, I went unchecked and I was able to successfully smuggle in 42 pairs of Levi’s jeans.
Vittorio and I shared a cab, while Eugene (the one guy who speaks Russian) took a cab with Lillian and Irene, because while we knew the Chinese girls would be kidnapped eventually, we thought they deserved to at least see a little of the city first.
Before we got into the cab Eugene had gone through a fairly extensive negotiation with the cab driver, and a price of 5 Lats was agreed upon. (Roughly 1 Lat = 1 Pound). This negotiation had gone on quite some time, before Gene left us and the cab started moving toward Riga. So Vittorio and I were quite surprised when the cab driver looked back and asked, “Where go?”
This was the first in a continuing series of humorous moments provided by our Russian speaking tour guide. I cannot even fathom how he was able to go through the whole negotiation without once telling the cab driver the name of the hotel, and then forget to think that might be a piece of information Vittorio or I would find useful. Boggles the imagination, but the more important issue was that we were now driving aimlessly as far as 5 Lats was going to get us, without a way to contact our friends.
I remembered the term “Old Town” which at least gave us a direction and worst case scenario. I attempted meekly, “Hotel Sauvin on Marketa Street,” which received a response of a grimace, shake of the head and a grunt. The good news was that the International Russian Roaming activated on my cell phone, so for what I am sure must have cost $30-$50 I was able to text Lillian and Eugene. The bad news is that neither Lillian or Gene’s worked at all so I might as well have been texting you guys. Vittorio and I could text all day which would have been slightly more helpful if we weren’t sitting in the back seat of the same cab.
Eventually the cab came to a stop in a pretty safe looking, tourist filled area and the cabbie made indications that it was time for us to get out. I attempted a few more street names ‘ “Marleta” Maektla’ “Markela” and at Markela I received a “OH Markela. Dsgdj sgdhdjkds asfdhjkdkl One two xzxsdsf (hand signal right) hdhjdkfhy xvzcxfsg cdvdsbgd. (Smile)"
Long story short, Markela St was two blocks down and the hotel was found and our friends were confused about why we were late, and we all decided it was lunchtime in Riga and time to find a little cafe.
We wandered out of Old Town to find a more traditional place and the patrons of the smoke filled café we found seemed quite amused at this little collection Chinese, Italians and Americans who looked helplessly at the menu at the wall. But we all enjoyed large plates of things like fried cheese (which we thought was going to be a cheese steak, pork chops with sauce and mushrooms, sodas and coffee, all for about 12 or 13 Lats total, which was quite pleasing. If prices stayed this slow all weekend, I’d have to invent new ways of using this play money for fear of getting stuck with it at the airport. (Alas, prices did not stay so low and money was spent with the kind of recklessness of a woman at a shoe sale.) Plus, the restaurant was nice enough to provide all the cigarette smoke we wanted free of charge.
I don't think Latvians see smoking as a hobby, it's more like breathing. You see Latvians walking down the street taking a breath of fresh air and they grimace like, "There's no tobacco in this air. I must find a pack of smokes." And at .70 Lats a pack, no wonder. The government not only fails to tax these things, it appears to subsidize the whole industry. I don't understand, but this may have been my favorite part of the trip, because these things sell in England for 5.50 a pack. I brought back 2 cartons to sell here, so I can probably net about 55-60 pounds on this thing.
I think now it’s best to let some pictures do some talking, because between the 5 of us we must have snapped 400 photos. I’ll add more as I get them, and spend some time on the headers and such, but this will have to come in good time. Consider this the Latvia appetizer.
Like I said, I didn’t know what to expect – anything from large communist style apartment buildings to 10th century temples would have seemed appropriate. But safe to say, Riga is absolutely charming and attractive in that old European way, and adds a considerable amount of edge to the mix. Later I decided it would be a fineplace if I ever needed to hide. I think I said the same about Scotland, but Riga has that “Russian mafia’ thing about it where the streets are clean, people are friendly and you never know if the guy you are talking to is moving a shipment of AK47’s to Albania.
I’ll get to more posts about Latvian women, Urmalla, food, music and other fun stuff. But homework calls now.
posted by ABoyer at
7:24 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home