and now we are three…
Thursday, September 18th, 2008As I mentioned in my last post the rain had started on the way to Riga, Latvia’s capital and was set in to stay when me and Joe arrived in the late afternoon. We pulled up our hoods and set off to find our hostel, a big place run by Australians..they are everywhere…like a plague.
I just made some pasta for dinner after a quick walk around the old town which was nice…but an old town is an old town. I hung out in the bar for a bit getting trapped into a conversation with a stoned English guy who tried to psycho-analyze me with first year psych knowledge. Also there was a group of 70 German high school students staying getting trashed and generally being everywhere. I escaped to my room and hung out with the guys in there, including a kiwi guy from Christchurch. I successfully avoided the crazy English guy and the bulk of the Germans and got a relatively early night.
(Another old town…)
Finally it was the 9th of September, the arrival day of Tom and Rdoc, both flying in at 2.45pm. I had a bit of time to kill before heading to the airport so walked around the old town again and did some internet stuff. I woke up feeling a bit sick with a stuffy nose and a bit of an ear ache which was a bit average, so I made sure to get some fruit and orange juice for lunch. I headed out to the airport to pick up the boys who arrived with gifts of chocolate and vegemite from home and my down jacket which couldn’t have arrived at a better time. Finally something warm! It was great to see them and have a little team together for the next however long we would last. Rdoc had been in Germany for a few days so was adjusted to the time difference but Tom had come straight from NZ and was pretty spaced out. We managed to make it back to the hostel and head out for a bit of a walk around then had dinner had the famous but not so exciting Lido restaurant. We did some grocery shopping and headed back to the hostel bar for some drinks and hung out for a bit, Tom was in bed pretty early and we didn’t stick around for that much longer before bed time.
Our first full day together and really my first day for seeing stuff we did the mega walk thing. First across the river away from the old town to this giant soviet victory memorial to celebrate the soviets winning something, not exactly loved by Latvians I imagine but it was massive, like massive massive with a huge tower thing in the middle then a massive lady on one side and a giant group of soldiers on the other.
We played around with getting photos for a bit-nice to have other people to take photos for once as I get over it. Rdoc has some fancy lens for his camera that does wide angle shots and makes things look very cool. Then we saw some cool looking onion domes across somewhere and went out in search of those through a random neighborhood to a not actually very exciting church. Back into town via a mega bridge to the occupation museum, a highly depressing explanation of Latvia being screwed over by Germans and Russians….again, it sucks for Eastern Europe and like Poland these countries are in strategically important places so routinely got bought, sold and invaded by more powerful countries.
We grabbed some Russian dumplings for lunch and continued walking around to a Russian market with a run down but I am sure once impressive Soviet style building. Markets in Eastern Europe are always a bit depressing, stuff isn’t that cheap and it wasn’t that great. Outside of the old town and away from the shiny shopping malls the reality for a lot of these countries is that people are still very poor and stuff still sucks for a lot of the population. That night it was the football, Latvia playing Greece and of course now being with boys we decided to go, tickets weren’t that expensive so we walked across to the stadium to pick up some cheap tickets for the evenings game. Back to the hostel via the supermarket and had a long rest after a mega day of walking everywhere. Surprise, surprise we cooked pasta for tea then walked to the game with Joe the aussie and the crazy English guy from the night before who is entertaining at least. They had more expensive tickets than us so we caught back up with them after the game. I don’t really know much about football so can’t really write to much about what happened, other than Latvia lost, the Greece supporters were pumped the whole game and Tom was so tired he was asleep for most of the second half.
On the way back via the hostel we all stopped at the very fancy sky bar on top of a big hotel, one of the only high buildings in the city. It was a nice place, drinks weren’t that expensive and an amazing view. The English guy was truly crazy, hard to describe, just odd and hilariously entertaining, although not really sure what he was talking about half the time….anyway after we stayed for as long as possibly without ordering more drinks we headed back to the hostel were we headed to bed.
Although we keep saying how we will go out, it gets late and cold and things are a lot more expensive here, and cover charges on bars and clubs are lame. Also Tom is still super jet lagged, despite denying it and we had planned to catch the bus to Tallinn at 8.30am the next day.
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