Riga, Latvia

When I tell people I’ve just been to Latvia, they tend to get this funny startled look, as if Latvia isn’t really the first place they would’ve picked for a holiday. I’d honestly never given it much thought either until circumstances arranged themselves into an arrow sign pointed to Riga. It turned out to be an incredible place for a tourist. I couldn’t get enough of it, with the forest, the culture, the architecture, the food, and, obviously, the company.

After meeting up with our Melbournian-Latvian host, Antra, Alice and I dumped our stuff and headed out for a night on the town. What a fantastic introduction to Riga. The first place we went to was this wine bar featuring a live Latvian band – I’m talking violin, piano, mandolin and tuba. Amazing. They played a great set of Latvian and Russian songs, and even made room for a random cover of ‘Always Look On the Bright Side of Life’. Monty Python in Latvia: why not? Next stop was another bar down the street for our first taste of Latvian beer, where I notably tripped and fell flat on my face.

This was not the last time that the three of us would make public disgraces of ourselves in Riga – oh no.

We spent Thursday wandering through the Old Town of Riga, all beautifully ornate Latvian architecture and cobbled streets and cat statues on spires. Visual feast is accurate. There were several market stalls scattered through the streets, one of which had the best babushkas I’ve ever seen. Look closely.

There was no way we were going to miss Antra’s art exhibition in a local café, so we dropped in and admired her fantastic silk-screen prints. Check them out, they’re stunning: http://www.etsy.com/shop/MinkaSvarcs?ref=pr_shop_more

After a Latvian-style lunch of ham and beans and rice and veggies, we continued walking through the streets and soon bumped into a camera crew. Obviously attracted by our puffy jackets and crocheted scarves, the director begged us for a contribution to his documentary on Riga’s awesomeness. We almost but not quite managed to give them a passable ‘We… Love… Latvia!’ and there was embarrassment all around. And now we’re probably famous.

That night we headed up a pub called Chomskeys only twenty metres down the road from Antra’s apartment. It was there that we first met Antra’s Swedish medical student friends and collectively came up with the concept of a moose-kangaroo crossbreed that could swim, attack tourists and dent cars. It was a great night.

Friday only got better when we took the bus out to the National Memorial and the local forest. There was a really moving memorial service. Despite being warned by the Australian Travel Advisory website about ticks in Latvian forests, we then headed out to a forested area and had a fantastic time discussing determinism and compatibalism and throwing bunches of leaves into the air. No ticks spotted so far.

It turned out that Friday night marked the lacplesa diena festival in Riga, which pretty much meant that the entire town turned out to light candles, stick them in the castle walls, and light massive bonfires which they then set loose down the river. There was a stage with live music and everything. It’s lucky there were bonfires, actually, because by this stage, I was basically more icicle than human. Alice and Antra engulfed me in their puffy jackets, hence saving my life.

After watching the bonfire float away downstream, we went out and got some amazing and cheap-as Russian dumplings at a fastfood restaurant that should definitely be exported to Melbourne. Next we popped into the local Irish pub – felt like I’d gone back a week in time – and watched Antra’s friend sing a set of classic hits. After that, we headed over to the Swedish medical students’ apartment. Quizzes, Business Time, and a boxful of organs: that’s how I’ll remember those people.

We woke up extremely late on Saturday, which was a bit of an issue as the sun had taken to setting by 3pm. Making the most of the remaining daylight, Antra took us on a tour of some incredible burnt-out buildings in the area. Feeling reasonably certain that the staircase would collapse, I wimped out early.

Afterwards we went and located some delicious Latvian pancakes – almost but not quite as spectacular as Latvian bread. We then went to a great little bar called Leningrad, which had all you could ask for in honey beer and clientele drunkenly sexy-dancing on tables. Alice was the victim of an Antra attack.

The night progressed to some clubbing with Swedes, and eventually, to a fake snow fight in the middle of the city. Antra and Alice disgraced themselves. It was great fun. We got home much too late and scarfed some leftover Latvian borsch that Antra had made earlier.

Woke even later next morning and hurried out to walk through a different part of town, where the Soviet influence was clear as concrete. The best part of the day was our visit to a gallery showing interactive art. All three of us took it in turns to be strapped down to a white hammock that looked nothing less than homicidal. You whacked on a set of headphones and listened to music reflecting sound vibrations onto your skin. I think.

There was also this plant that made sounds when you touched its leaves, and a set of atlases that showed the geographical distribution of internet connection, multi-million dollar companies and all this other sociological stuff. Fascinating. I was pretty taken by a toaster-building project one design student had embarked on, constructing a functioning toaster from organic materials at an exorbitant cost. He did this to show how little understanding we have of modern technology and ecological consequences, and how we generally fail to think about how our kitchen appliances came to be.

And he quoted Douglas Adams. Nice.

We left that night, full of wonderful Latvian food and language. (Like lapsa. That means fox.) Paldies, Antra!