Latvian Adventure

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  Riga, Latvia
Thursday, February 7, 2008

At about 4:00am Belle and I were woken by a knock on our cabin door, the lights came on and then there was a man with a flashlight asking us something or other in Russian. As it turned out he was a customs officer who was there to check our bagage. We showed him our two suitcases stowed under the sleeper bed and this seem to satisfy him. He checked the other lugagae compartments, all empty, and left without checking to see what we were carrying - exiting Russia by train seems to be the right choice if you are planning smuggle those priceless antiques out of the country! After the luggage inspector we were next visited by a customs officer who checked out passports and then stamped the page with our visas to indicate we had left the country. The whole process of getting into and then out of Russia was remarkably hassle-free. The official Russian travel agent for the Conference had been able to provide us with the necessary invitation to enter Russia, we had sent our invitation, documentation of our flights to and from Europe and our Passports to the Russian consulate in Sydney and about 2 weeks latter (not including the days off over Christmas and New Years) the passports reappeared in the mailbox, visa enclosed. When we got to Russia we both got through customs in a matter of moments - we spent more time waiting in queues, and as I have just described, on the way out our suitcases were sighted briefly and our passports stamped and we were done. The train moved on and about half an hour latter we were disturbed by a Latvian customs officer who came on board with his laptop computer and fancy passport scanner. Once again we were through the customs check in a matter of 5 minutes, we got some nice stamps in our passports, and then it was back to sleep as the train got back under way.

The train was scheduled to arrive in Riga, the capital of Lativa at 9:40am. We first thought that this was 9:40am Moscow time, and, getting confused as to which way our clocks would need to be turned once we enterd the new time zone, we initially thought that we would be arriving in Lativa at 10:40am Latvian. As time ticked on and we showed no sign of arriving we began to panic a little as, if we were right about the time, the train was running alarmingly late and we were going to be cutting it very fine to get to our flight on time. I eventually worked out that as we were traveling west, we were actually 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 that we had two large suitcases with us and informed us that we also had to buy tickets for the suitcases, two tickets for each suitacse in fact. Still, it only cost us 2.40 Lats to get to the airport or about 5 Euro or just over 8 Aussie dollars.

We didn't really see much of Lativa, the countryside we saw from the train was pleasant although the snow that covered everything in Russia was now absent. There were some scattered small patches of snow to be seen and some of the bodies of water did have some ice on the surface but it is seemed to us that it was warmer in Latia than the parts of Russia we had visited. This impression was confirmed when we got off the train as it was really quite warm in comparison to the temperatures we had gotten used to over the last week and a bit. The Latvian International Airport was a typical airport, it had been renovated in the last few years so could have been anywhere. Just about every Latvian we met and spoke to seemed to have quite good English so we had no trouble communicating. It was also good to see the latin alphabet in use again although the absence of the Cyrillic alphabet did mean we were no longer in Russia.

We arrived at the airport in plenty of time and were able to work out which check-in desks were going to become the EasyJet check-in desks and got in the line early. We manage to get group A boarding passes, meaning we would be among the first group to board the plane. Having checked in our bags and with boarding passes in hand we went through the security check - they made me take my shoes of but I paid them back by taking my shoes off. Once through security it was back through Lativan customs meaning that we had stayed in Lativa for all of 8 hours or so. We sent ourselves a post card from Latvia and then set about spending the rest of out Lats! We got lunch, coffee and some Latvian chocolate, which is very nice.

We got in line to board our plane just after it landed and was pulling up to the gate - Martin and Sarah Catchlove had warned us about EasyJet - check-in early and have your elbows at the ready during boarding. Forewarned is forearmed and we were able to secure ourselves a pair of third row seats and be the first ones to load our carry on luggage into the overhead compartment. The plane pushed back from the gate about twenty minutes late and then we were up in the air heading for our third country in less than 12 hours.

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