I got up at 9:00, I think I heard people coming back from the bar at 8:00. After some bread and meat for breakfast I was out the door and on the road. I wanted to check out as much of the town as I could in my full day in Riga. My first stop was the market.
The Riga market was an interesting place. Tons of people had stalls set up selling second hand clothes, second hand underwear, food and flowers. I almost bought some wool socks but I went to check out the bus depot first. I read that the Baltic Sea was the place to be, it sounded like it was for me so I went to see if there was a bus that would take me there. My guide book said that Liepāja was a “beautiful coastal town,” this sounded like a nice place to visit so I asked, in my best Latvian aka pointing at the word on a piece of paper, if there was a bus that went there. Turns out there was and 6 Lat ($13.57) later I was on it. The bus was an early 90’s model Mercedes Benz Sprinter with, as I would later figure out, no shock absorbers.
I was all pumped to go and the Russian pop music playing on the radio egged me on. I had the same feeling that a ten year old has on Christmas Eve, unfettered anticipation. Then I saw the sign, 200km to Liepāja. This was further then I thought. Turns out that I was on a bus to the other side of Latvia. Hmmmmm. I thought I would make the most of it and before I knew it I had striked up a conversation with the Ukrainian guy next to me, overflowed a coffee machine at a Latvian gas station and made it to Liepāja.
Queue Soviet national anthem. This was what I was looking for. Soviet apartment blocks with siding that nobody but Mike Wang would be proud of, Russian writing on the manhole covers, and a general Soviet vibe emanated from the place. I first went to the market. This market was a lot more rural then the one in Riga. I saw some amber that I liked and bartered the old amber dealer down to 5 Lat for a big piece and 2 Lat for a smaller one. Amber washes up on the shore of the Baltic Sea and is one of the world’s major amber sources.
I then went and got some food from a small restaurant. It was buffet style so I piled some stuffed pastries onto my plate followed by this chicken mushroom breaded concoction and some lemonade. All the signs were in Latvian so I was sort of guessing as to the contents of the pastries. I sat down to two guys drinking small (250ml) glasses of water that I slowly realized were vodka not water. These guys drank three MASSIVE glasses of vodka each in the time I was eating my lunch. The food at this place was quite good and inexpensive too.
After lunch I checked out the churches, the fisherman’s wharf, the fish market and the former Soviet navel base. Everything was just as my Eastern European fantasies portrayed. After getting hassled by some locals for some beer money I thought that it was time to head home while it was still light out, back to the company of my international buddies at the hostel. I caught the 5:45pm bus back into Riga. 2 ¾ hours later I was back in Riga. I took some sweet pictures of the bridge and I was back in time to catch up with people before they headed out for the night.
I spent several hours talking to people from all over the globe, in English and bad German. The Spainards had apparently closed down the club, at 6am, last night and decided that they wanted some more so came back to the 24hour bar at the hostel and stayed up until 8am drinking away. These Europeans amaze me. Finally the call came for tonight’s pub crawl and I thought that I may as well go. I made it to the first bar and at 1:45 the homing instinct took hold and I was asleep in the hostel in no time.
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