Reluctantly dragged myself back to civilisation and on a bus to Riga, the capital of Latvia. There was a German guy and his adorable little daughter on the bus and the hours passed remarkably quickly playing card games with her - I learnt more in 2 days with her than 6 months trying to study in Bratislava!!! If you're travelling in these parts though German is pretty helpful as outside youth hostels not too many people speak English.
Whilst standing at the bus stop trying to work out which way to the hostel we were approached by a friendly girl who worked there so we avoided getting lost in the maze of streets and the packs were dumped in short order.
Riga is a funky city. I liked it immediately. The old town is pretty, with lots of lovely old buildings but also some interesting new ones as well, just to spice things up!!! Loads of cafes and restaurants with a mouthwatering array of choices.
Went to the Museum of Occupation to learn some more about life under the Soviets. Over a third of the population was lost by the end of the 1940's. The Museum of Jews in Lativia was also a sobering experience as almost none of them survived.
Latvia is in an interesting situation in that the native Latvian speakers are almost in a minority to the Russians, especially in the big cities. Given that they've only been independent of the former USSR since 1991 I guess it's not that surprising. Causes lots of nationality issues problems though.
Latvian beer (alus), for all their talk about how wonderful it is, is not that great, especially when you see they comparing it to Budweiser!!! Leaves you wtih a hell of a hangover even after one or two (honest that's all I've been having!!!) The Lithuanian beer, Svyturys, on the other hand, is a delicious brew. Highly recommended in my book!!!

From Riga I headed north again to the small town of Sigulda, on the edge of a national park where I have been chilling out again, hiking to some local caves and castles. Met some young American army guys out here to work with the Latvian army rebuilding schools out in the east. The local guys were all Russian speakers so I had my first chance to try out my fledgling Russian (which is basically just all the words I know in Slovak with what I hope is a Russian like accent!!!). I could understand a bit of what they were saying though and with lots of pointing and repeating I managed to learn a bit more. Need to do some serious work before I get there though!!!
Off to Estonia soon.