Hospitality city

My journey to Riga started with a bang because I realised when I was packing that I had left one of my bags at a mates house. I managed to get the bag and get on my plane without any major dramas, all with a little help from my friends (thank you Joe Cocker). When I was on the plane, I was surrounded by stupid people with hideous acne which almost made me want to vomit, but I managed to get some sleep and the flight went without hassle. When I landed in Riga it was a different story however. I get to the passport control and I look up to the signs that say "EU" or "all passports". All of the signs displayed EU passports only so I just lined up in the hope that they would serve me anyway. So I get to the front of the line and they say "go to the other line". Once I explained to them that there was no other line for non-EU passports, they changed one of the signs and I had to line up again. When I got to the front I was barraged by questions coming from a stout and stern looking Latvian woman. Questions such as "how long are you staying" "What is your purpose here" "where are you staying" "who do you know in Latvia" came at me without gaps in between for answers. I did not have information about where I was sleeping because I had arranged my place via hospitalityclub.org and all the info was on the internet. Besides, my host was picking me up at the terminal. So I had to go back into country-limbo and walk around the duty-free area until I found a computer where I could look up her phone number. When I had all the information that the passport control needed, I was free to go through...

From the inside of the car after de-snowing

I spent my first day with this girl who had come to pick me up from the airport, but she was not to be my host. We met with her friend who was so excited to meet an Australian it was embarrassing! She would tell me a joke then hit me on the arm, laugh exaggeratedly loud and then spin round in a circle waving her arms about. In the hour that I spent with these girls, this process was repeated about 20 times. As it was my first contact with the Latvian public, I assumed that this would be the norm - I was pleasantly surprised when I found out this wasn't true...My host that we met, Zane, was really cool and she took me straight back to her place during her lunch break from work. I was really surprised by the standard of the city outside the centre. All the roads were cracked, there were potholes, we had to cross the tracks with no bridge and the road where her house was wasn't even surfaced! It was simply a clay road that had been flattened and hardened over time by cars and feet. The house was fine after all and I had a massive room to myself.

Me making my first snow angel!

So my first adventure into the city of Riga started with me going to a bar that was attached to a hostel. It had been recommended to me by many hospitalityclub members and was a meeting place for people in the club. The hostel was managed by a dude called Adam, also from Perth - for those of you not counting, that is the second hostel manager that I know of in Europe that is from Perth, Australia. When I got there I met these strange people - perhaps the strangest of them all was a bloke called Ben from Queensland - he brought out the best and worst in me, Australia-wise haha. We ended up partying that night with some randoms which tallied up to:

Random street in Riga

one Russian

two Australians

two American

one Englishman

The English bloke and the Russian chick actually ended up hooking up in the end despite not understanding a single word of each others languages - they were conversing via an American girl who is living in Moscow on study exchange. During this night of party, it started to snow for the first time since last winter and no one was expecting it - it was a nice change and we all decided to slip around a bit. While the snow was pleasant and bareable, it soon changed to sleet and we made our escape into a bar where we spent the remainder of the night. It was there that we had our first fruit bread, cottage cheese and pastrami sandwich. Not to be mistaken for fruit cake!!

Some pretty building

It turned out that Zane's aunty was a tour guide for Latvians in greater Europe and also a guide for foreigners in Riga. This made her extremely knowledgeable and interesting to talk to. On top of this, she was an excellent baker of this apple thing that she couldn't name in English - I couldn't name it either and to save her further embarrassment of not being able to explain it to other people, I did her the favour of 'concealing' the evidence of it in my mouth and stomach. No one will ever shame her! I took one for the team, but this hospitalityclub is a give and take thing :) We talked for a long time about Latvia and the occupation and life today, their attitudes towards Russians and Germans and everything else you could imagine. My shoes had decided to die while in the cold the sole had come apart from the leather, letting cold snow and water in. Zane's aunty took me to the shoe repairman and he suggested that I just get new shoes: my Blundstones had until then been through thick and thin for the last four years, but now they had sadly passed away...We went shopping for new shoes, but found nothing suitable and until today, I am still wearing these dead shoes, just walking very carefully!

The finished product

Something that I didn't know about Latvia was everything. No one teaches us Australians about these Baltic states and I was so shocked by the suffering that these people had been through. I went to the Museum of Occupation which documents the occupation of Latvia by various oppressors, mainly the NAZIs and the Soviets. The country was in a shit sandwich for the last 100 years and they have only recently got themselves out of it and they are now finally free! I hope it lasts forever. There were apparently over 200,000 Latvian refugees from the second world war that came to Australia. For a country that now has only two million people, that is a significant amount!

Something that I learned about shocked and amazed me - even more than shock and awe! It was the chain of people that went from Vilnius (capital of Lithiania), through Riga (capital of Latvia) to Tallinn (capital of Estonia). A human chain of over five million people from all three countries linked arms over the 600km in a statement to the world of their desire to be free. I just wish people in Australia could be so passionate about anything.

The show on the tram rails

I haven't said anything about the actual city yet, so now I will tell you about it...The old town is the attraction for tourists who come here and it resembles the old town of Bruges a lot. Unfortunately it doesn't stand up to Bruges, but it was still a pleasant place to be. Riga is also a Unesco city, but is in danger of losing its protected status because of all the development that is happening - I think the development is a good thing because it shows that Riga is a real city and not like Bruges: a fake facade. In Riga you have brand new glass buildings neighbouring buildings centuries old. One of the new places is this chain restaurant called CiliPica which is pronounced "chili pizza" in English. A prize goes to the first person who can guess what food is made there. The old town is relatively small, but has a lot to see. By now I am sick of walking into churches and saying 'wow', so I simply looked from the outside and watched people. FYI there is a bar in Riga called the Belgian Beer Cafe that is identical to the one in Perth - I never knew it was a worldwide franchise. Whoever made it is a genius.