Some Solo Travel in Latvia

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I arrive at Riga in the dark and set off in an attempt to orientate myself. I figured I had about 20 minutes of walking ahead of me to get to my hostel, Cinamon Sally, and as this was my first bit of solo travel I felt some pressure to get things right! I took a picture of a map and started walking in a random direction, searching for a street name so I'd know where I was. I couldn't find any, but of course I just kept on walking – I'm a man damnit, I don't need to ask for directions! I refused to take a taxi too, I was going to figure this out. After five minutes of walking I eventually found a street name – and it happened to be precisely where my hostel was! I love being a man.

Unfortunately, just as I was silently congratulating myself on being awesome, I found the hostel to be closed up with the lights turned off. I then saw my name in the window, advising me that due to technical difficulties I had to be moved to another hostel about 10 minutes away! There's a bit of a backstory here that made this more amusing to me at the time too. While there are undoubtedly many hostels in Riga, there were 2 that stood out to me while booking: Cinamon Sally and the Naughty Squirrel. I decided against the Naughty Squirrel due to reviews that alluded to its focus on partying over sleep - something that had become a precious commodity to me at this point. You can guess which hostel I'd been moved to of course! (Fortunately this is not a move that I ended up regretting!) I made it to The Naughty Squirrel without a problem anyway, and after a late dinner & pint and chat with some random noisy Germans, I eventually got to bed and slept like the dead.

Riga, at least the old part of town I was staying in, is certainly a very pretty little town. A little like Gdansk with its cobbled streets and a mixture of old-school architecture, though it also seemed a touch more vibrant and youthful - most likely due to its reputation as a party town, as well as the nearby university. I later went out for a free walking tour accompanied by the lovely Mari, a Finnish girl staying in the same dorm as me (I've never met a Finnish person before, so that was cool). Also on the tour were a bunch of boisterous Italians, a few Londoners, Ozzies, and some girls from Istanbul. We started with the central markets, which was mostly an extensive selection of fresh produce, but also included a “black market” that used to sell stolen goods! (I stopped to get some Latvian “hot chocolate”, which is actually just melted chocolate – awesomeness in a cup!) We passed “Stalin's Birthday Cake”, another reminder of Stalin's influence on the region. Actually the "Latvian Academy of Sciences", it's a towering monstrosity of a building which I'd describe as being wonderfully hideous, and it wouldn't be the last I'd see of this style in the region. Also worthy of mention is a tradition in Latvia for newly-weds to lock an engraved padlock to a bridge, symbolising their eternal love. As a result all the bridges have padlocks stewn about them, with some of the more popular ones completely hidden behind a wall of locks. When it gets too much, the council breaks them all off for people to start again (so much for eternal symbolism!). Because I'm a lazy writer, no doubt for an audience of similarly lazy readers, I'll let the pictures explain the rest of the tour.

Now, I'm not a huge museum fan while travelling, but I went on to explore the Museum of Occupation and can heartily recommend this to anyone visiting Riga. I found out so much about the Soviet (and German) occupation of the region which I didn't know about, and it was all laid out in such a way that I just couldn't stop reading as the story unfolded. A summary? The Baltics got in the middle of a brawl between its bigger brothers Germany and USSR, and were basically screwed. I have a much greater appreciation of the suffering Stalin inflicted on his people now too.

So how was the nightlife, I hear you ask? Brilliant – it was like a social & cultural melting pot. I first went out for dinner with Mari, who brought along her new room-mate – a Haitian New Yorker called Yani. Yani then bumped into a bunch of Londoners she'd met in Morocco, and we all ended up going out together (I had a traditional Latvian dish – Ostrich stew served in an ostrich shell. Ok, maybe not that traditional, but it was tasty!). The lads from London were quite hilarious in my opinion, and we followed them on to a “shot bar”. I've never been to a shot bar personally, so it was new for me. 100 different shots, all cheap enough (NZ$4 or so), and seriously the largest frikking shots I've ever seen. It was more like a triple shot, and at the behest of my new friends I did about 6 of them. I certainly felt great by the time we left!

The next bit of the night involved a lot of walking, as we tried to find our next target while staying upright. Along the way I get a tap on my shoulder: “Clayton!” (in a thick Italian accent). It was the 6 Italians from the walking tour! And all of a sudden we'd become a huge crowd of noisy multicultural tourists. We eventually sent our Italian friends to the shot club and headed back to our hostel for some cheap beer (NZ$2 or so per handle. Seriously!). Here I met up with Rich, another Londoner I'd met earlier that day, as well as Elina and all the other Latvian hostel girls (who all conformed to my expectation of Eastern European women!). After being tempted by a free shot of Latvian “Balzams” – surely the most godawful drink ever conceived by man – we headed off to the clubs, as Elina had missed her last train. Seems like a good way to pass the time. The night gets a little hazier here, but I remember checking out a couple of funky underground type clubs before coming back to the hostel at 4am to get completely whipped at foozeball by Soldza, the hostel checkout girl at the time. This I remember as being quite embarrassing, so we left for some much needed shuteye. Not bad for a Tuesday night really! Apparently weekends in Summer are when it really goes off too.

Another solid 4 hours of sleep later and I was on my way to the airport to head on to Warsaw, Poland.

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Photos

The Naughty Squirrel
Hiding on the left somewhere

A couple of engraved padlocks
with my shadow in the background

A wooden cathedral
Seriously, this thing's been there since like 1500 or something stupid and has been burned down and rebuilt about 4 times.

What's left of a Jewish Monastary
Destroyed during the German occupation

Hand Painted Movie Posters
Apparently these will be the last of a long tradition of hand painted movie posters, now opting instead for the typical mass produced ones.