So last Tuesday night, equipped with a packed dinner of kasha (Russian dinner-time porridge/gruel??) and some tvorog (translated as curd cheese, but it isn’t, it’s sweet??) juice and a pillow I headed off to Riga on the bus. It was to take 13 hours, and it did indeed take that long, but because of the pillow, I was absolutely fine. The policeman at the Russian border tried to give me hassle, but I talked my way out of it and flashed him a smile! So woke up in Riga the next morning and couldn’t contain my excitement to be out of Russia and into this lovely looking Germanic place with charming cobbled streets and dappled sunlight!
When I got the hostel in the morning, the dorm wasn’t ready yet, so I helped myself to a cup of tea, dropped off my bags and went for a wander. It is just a lovely city, it isn’t big at all, but it is just lovely to walk around and get lost in all the small meandering streets. I had seen in the hostel that Swan Lake was on that evening at the National Opera House, so I checked how much tickets would be, and to my surprise they were only about £4! So I bought myself a ticket for that evening! I was glad to get back to back to the hostel though, Riga was a lot chillier than St Pete and I wasn’t dressed for it! After showering and putting warmer clothes on, I went for lunch in a cafeteria style place and had pretty much a plate full of boiled potatoes and some lovely meaty sauce, I wasn’t complaining, it was cheap and filled me right up! I then went to the central market, which is apparently a must see for any tourist in Riga. (I found this out from my Russian guidebook, which was a bit rubbish, but invaluable in the end as it had a map, I got myself lost all the time!) So, back to the market, I was shocked to find that everyone there was speaking Russian. I just assumed that everyone would be talking Latvian. I will come back to this though. So I then bought my return bus ticket, which was apparently going to be a ‘lux’ version of what I had came on, but in fact was pretty much the same, maybe a bit less lux if anything! But anyway, it was a steal at only about £18, so again, I wasn’t complaining! I then walked through a lovely park to the other side of the city to visit the State Art Museum. I got there a bit too late though, so was told that as it was only open for another 20 mins, it would probably be a better idea to come back the next day. So I left and then went across another park (Riga is big on parks!) and went into a Russian orthodox church, which to be honest was hideous! It had neon lights especially for Easter, and they were especially tacky! After basking in the sun for a wee bit, I went in search of some food and found this amazing pelmeni (small dumplings, quite like ravioli) shop, which was incredibly cheap and you could get all different sorts of pelmeni. Mmm, so good! Then after downing a red bull, as I was pretty knackered, I went to the ballet. It wasn’t a stitch on the Swan Lake I saw in Moscow, but still it was pretty good, and I still got that giddy excited feeling when all the music starts each time. There were just far too many intervals and each time a piece would finish, there would be a pause for applause and it just went on a bit too long.
On Thursday, I made the most of the free breakfast and even made myself a cheeky packed lunch too! It was a lovely crisp morning, and I knew the sun would come out later, so after a wander around town, I visited the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. It was a fantastic museum; I spent about two hours in there. It was all just so interesting, and even though I didn’t know anything about it before, it was still very good and informative. I sat in the sun and ate my packed lunch after the museum and then went up to the top of St Peters Cathedral. It was pretty cool; I only then managed to get my bearings properly though. I saw a nice looking square from the tower and decided to go and sit there with my book. So that is exactly what I did. There were lots of little cafe’s, so I went into one and bought the most delicious little berry muffin and a cup of tea and occupied one of the tables outside for about two hours. It was just so lovely to sit there basking in the sun with my book. I had been handed a flyer in the street about some Latvian fashion event that was happening, so I went back to the internet to check it out, but it was an evening event and didn’t really appeal. So instead, I went to both the film museum and the museum of photography (they were both very small museums!). The film museum though had an exhibition on Eisenstein, one of the great Russian directors, so that was good and then in the photography museum, as I was the only person there I kind of got a little tour which was nice. There were some fantastic photos on exhibition, mainly of Latvian fishermen. In the evening I met up with a Russian girl who is a friend of my new housemate. Anyway, so I met up with this girl and we indulged in some cocktails! I picked her brains about the Latvian Russian divide and she was telling me that the whole city is pretty much divided in two. She is Russian, but has lived her whole life in Latvia and she speaks Russian and has Russian friends and knows Latvian, but is very reluctant to speak it. So there is some hostility there, but they just seem to get on with it. Wherever I went, I would speak in Russian and never experienced anything hostile. When I asked at the station whether they spoke English, she said no, but Russian was fine. Anyway, Daniela and I had a lovely evening, we went for dinner after the cocktails in a very typical Latvian place, which was yummy, and then wandered around town. We went to one of the cinemas to see what was on and managed to stumble into a concert of an American Cajun/country and western band! It was pretty random, and there were even some women at the back line-dancing! Very odd, but fun! After some more bars and drinks, I went back to my hostel to bed.
The next day, I had a leisurely breakfast and snuck out some more packed lunch. I headed back to the State Art Museum, which had this bizarre exhibition of these truly awful paintings, but I had a good time chuckling to myself at how dreadful they were! The rest of the museum was also pretty poor, but there was one room with these great little etchings, which I liked a lot. After leaving there, I retraced mine and Daniela’s steps from the night before as I had seen a few shops that looked really nice. Did a bit of window shopping and then ended up in this lovely little tea shop which was a little wooden gazebo with the seating upstairs all on cushions, so you could lounge to your heart’s content! So I sat with my book and then had to go and get some food and retrieve my stuff from the hostel to get the bus. The bus back was pretty uneventful, I was just so shattered that I was asleep for pretty much the whole journey.
After a long lie in when I got home on Saturday morning, I let everyone know that I was still alive, as contact home in Riga was minimal! I got a bit of work done over the weekend and caught up on my schoolwork. On Tuesday, Claire (our new flatmate) Jess and I went to IKEA and had a good laugh sitting in all the showrooms after a beer and meatballs in the cafe! It was a lot of fun, I had forgotten how much fun girls are, and we were just silly all afternoon! Last night, I cleaned the entire flat and washed the floors, so now no crap sticks to our feet all the time!
But mamma and papa, despite the Volcano in bloody Iceland, are coming tomorrow. So I’m very excited!
Anyway, I will report back soon. Lots of love x x x x x
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