Elina Jurmala

... stood for like 5 minutes, this dude named Yan completely caught me off gaurd and kinda scared the **** out of me. I was so confused. He was telling me that theres plenty of seats where he is, come, come!!! I kept saying no I was fine but he eventually shoved me through the crowd over to a booth with his friends. The first thing I thought about was a story the Norwegians told me.. how in Latvia, a popular scam is that girls will sit with men and ...

... definitely be doing that. Riga is just a short, twenty minute, train ride from the Baltic Sea so that was our outing for today. We walked down to the train station. Before coming on this trip my mother had emailed me some family photos and given me the addresses of the photographers. One of the streets we walked along to the train station took us past where one of the photographers was 100 or so years ago. A ...

... gaining an hour not losing an hour and the train was scheduled to arrive in Latvia at 10:40am Moscow time which was 9:40am Lativan time. The trained pulled in to Riga Station exactly on time and we disembarked and headed into the station itself. Here we changed 20 Euro into 13.50 Latvian Lats. Lats in hand we got directions to the bus to the airport. The bus arrived and we got on and purchased two tickets for the trip at 0.40 of a Lat each, the bus conductor then realised ...

... was nearly time to go home, but first we had to feed ourselves. Dinner We found a local place and I would love to know who was the person who changed the menu from Latvian to English. They had beauties like steamed green things, pok knuckles and the one that I went for, after celebration special. Raw fish and pickles. It was beeter than the cheese on toast that Lucy had, which we couldn't see the cheese !!! But the winner was ...

... to the top floor. No one was ever going to hear this. Then they started bashing on the windows on the bottom floor to get them to let us in. No one stirred. The guy pulled out a knife and tried to pick the lock on the door. When he pulled out the knife something in my brain should have warned me that he was dodgy, but it didn't. Living in Eastern Europe makes you numb to such minor details. I looked at the door and noticed that it was **** quality. I leaned on ...

... Matt who has an Early train tomorrow. Invited for one last beer by a previous nights acquaintance, I´m not surprised to find it leading to several more as I meet more locals and travelers and I end up watching the latest film incarnation of King Arther with the Aussie barman until 4 in the morning. Day 18 Riga A late start and some picnic in the park action as the day is once again beautifully sunny. After deciding that I´m probably ...

... thief here, but if you do visit use common sense. On a brighter note, movies are really cheap here. We did a clean sweep and went to one a day in the big movie complex. Gabrielle was uber stoked to find a New Zealand movie playing in the theaters over here (the new dark comedy Black Sheep) and we had a riot just relaxing. Best of all, we think we have even figured out a plan for where to go to next! so stay tuned! All our best from Latvia Dan and Gabrielle

... Czech Republic, but then the streets, traffic, busyness reminded me of Budapest. A lot more forward and technilogically advances than I thought it would be. Much the same thoughts I'd had of Budapest. It was raining when we arrived yesterday, and today was only slightly better. Cloudy, but not too cool. Maybe around 6 or 7 degrees. It was great wandering around the markets. Little old grannies everywhere!! Short little old ladies in their boots, long warm ...

... also the city feeling more of that "Old Soviet Union" than other Baltic cities. In Vilnius and Tallinns, taking bus is more like "honor system" (German style I guess):you punch and cancel your tickets when getting on a bus or tram. There may be an inspector but usually you don't run into one. In Riga, there is actually a 'conductor' on almost each bus. They comes to ask for your fare right after you get on the bus. Well, it's good way to offer more job ...

... club/bar 2min from the hostel but we left soon after because we were quite tired and we had to get up early anyways. But we all turned out to be hungry so we went to a pizza place that was open 11pm - 7am...haha! Oh, Riga.. Back at the hostel Rob found out that he had lost his passport that day and having our flight the next day did not help. So bright and early the next morning him and I went to the Canadian embassy, the police station (I swear, something you see in ...