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Riga - party time
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On friday the 21st, we finally rolled into Riga at the end of our little road trip. Sad to say goodbye to the little red beast (Opal Astra hatch...) that we called home for the past 4 nights. found a car park on the edge of Old Town, filled the meter and headed to Argonaughts Hostel. The Hostel has a really good vibe and friendly staff. We have definately made the connection now betweeen the atmosphere in these places and the day of the week. Its much less fun arriving at these places on a Sunday when everyone can barely raise their heads of the couch, everybody is hungover and the doorm rooms have a distinclively alcoholic / stale smell... Arriving o the Friday, people were getting ready to head out, sipping on a late afternoon beverage and keen to meet new arrivals and the dorms still smelt fresh. By about 8pm we were out having a drink with Mya (an Australian girl), Marco from Vienna and a couple of German girls. turned out to be a cracking night, first at the Cuba Bar and later at one of the local clubs. Riga is a change of speed for us. The pressure is off to run around seeing all the touristy sights that have been on offer through Russia. Riga, whilst beautiful with plenty of its own historical touristy things to see and do, seems to be a place where people just tend to hang out, stroll around a bit, sleep late and party in the evenings. With this in mind we slept till 11 on Saturday morning before having a liesurly brunch. The plan was to head out to Salispills, a small town about 40km from riga. Our last chance to jump in the car and see and do things a bit off the beaten track. Salispils was the site of a Concerntration Camp during WW2. the site itself is out in the middle of a pine forrest. Driving in you would occaisionally see people walking about through the trees with baskets and buckets picking mushrooms. The memorial site is a large grass area with four large stone figures, entitled The Mother, the Humiliated, The Unbroken, and Solidarity. The whole place was not only moving but seemed to be somehow fitting as a monument to what had occured there.
We had to meet the guy from the car company at 4pm, so we headed back to Riga sad at the thought we would be handing back the car, but not so upset about not sleeping in it any more. Personally it was a big relief to hand over the keys knowing that we had travelled through city and country, on the wrong side of the road, guessing at the meaning of road signs accident free! Back at the Hostel we cooked dinner and had a drink with some of the guys we had met the night before. Saturday night kicked off properly at about 11.30pm.... apparently this is a completely reasonable time for people to finally decide that they will be going out and its going to be big. Carlos, one of the managers at the hostel had organised a pub crawl (starting at 11.30pm and in his own words called it the 'death crawl'). this is a big change of pace from generally our travells to date but travelling is all about actively participating in the local culture so out we went (in we came at about 5.30am). a good night was had by all. Needless to say we felt particuly sorry for everyone who arrived on the sunday...
Today is Monday and after 2 and a half days in Riga we have finally been able to enjoy the great weather (much warmer than russia) and do a bit of exploring. Riga Old Town really is beautiful and has a completely different feel from Tallinn. Whilst Tallinn Old town reminded us a little too much of something off a Disney film set, riga still has a beautiful old town but importantly to us it also had enough grittiness to make it real. People still came and went and business existed that do not just cater for the masses of tourists rolling through. The plan is to fly out of riga on Wednesday to Berlin (we got a relatively cheap flight for 60 Euros). From Berlin we will have to make ourway to Munich for Octoberfest. Unfortunately Berlin is still about 800km fr5om Munich but was the only place we could fly into cheaply. Maybe it will be anopther road trip... tonight there is a fresh batch of people at the hostel and a Mexican night is being planned......at least it will make a change from vodka!
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