It's a very interesting time here in Riga, as the Riga City Festival 2012 kicks off! In the last week I started noticing announcements around the city, with various events that would take place this weekend. Yesterday (August 17th), I saw that large stages were being assembled around Old City, in all of the squares. Technically the Riga City Festival started yesterday, but it was FAR more crowded today, on Saturday.
Back to last night, when I was lucky enough to see Christine (writer of Friend in Riga) one last time before her big trip around Europe. We walked through the Old Town and near the Daugava River. She showed me a rooftop bar and terrace near the river, which had the history of Riga in drawings. Riga has a very rich history, over many hundreds of years. Christine joked that it seemed every country had a war in Riga!
Although it was starting to get busy last night with the festival starting, we had a nice, peaceful time sitting at the Golden Coffee terrace and drinking tea. Wow, that was exactly what I envisioned doing in Europe. Sitting at a serene terrace with wonderful architecture in the background (St. Peter's Church!) and drinking tea with a friend while having some good conversation. How can it get any better?
Today I woke up late as usual (3:30pm) and headed to Old Town. However, the trams were PACKED. Public transportation is free around the city during the Riga City Festival, and everyone is clearly taking advantage. I saw huge lines at some tram stations that looked downright ridiculous. I was happy that my stations weren't so bad! One thing I've learned in Riga is that you have to be fairly aggressive in lines. Leave one inch of space and people will jump right in front of you. This is certainly not a "hold the door open" and be polite kind of place. At the same time I kind of like it.. It's a no bullshit system. Sometimes in the United States it gets ridiculous with people holding open doors or being polite in lines.. To the point where nobody is going anywhere!
As I arrived in Old Town on Saturday, the crowd was HUGE. Easily the biggest crowd I've seen in Old Town since arriving in Riga several weeks ago. The restaurants were crammed, bands and acts were playing on the stages, and vendors were selling crafted souvenirs in the various squares. The crowd was a diverse mixture of tourists and locals. The locals really seemed to like the event and even looked a bit happier than usual.
My favorite event was an archery contest. For a little money you could shoot arrows at a target. I watched with great amusement as a woman with giant high heels awkwardly attempted to shoot an arrow at the target, and instead almost shot the arrow over the safety wall and into the next square! Oops! Luckily in Riga pedestrians are so used to dodging cars that I don't believe an arrow would present much of a challenge..
The street performers were raking in more cash than Wall Street, and even the Opera Singing Man was beaming while singing his Latvian folk music. Best of all, the crowds were so large that that taxi carts could barely move from their "home bases". I certainly wasn't complaining.. For once I didn't have to look back to see if a taxi cart was about to hit me in the face! Amazingly, I haven't been pestered by even one beggar the last two days! Christine told me yesterday that beggars were recently banned from Old Town. She said it was a very new law, so perhaps it's just now taking effect? Or maybe there are just far more tourists around, so I am not as big of a target?
I wandered around Old Town and checked out the various events. A 24-hour long basketball tournament was taking place near the National Opera. Apparently it consists of local players from both sides of the river playing against each other. They play for an entire day straight, and both teams have won once in the last two years. This was taking place on a large stage, with music and a DJ.
At the Town Hall Square, I wasn't sure what the heck was going on. It looked like some kind of cultural play. A man who resembled a pilgrim was on the stage yelling for quite a while. I was around the Town Hall Square for a long time, since I decided to visit CanCan Pizza. This is a great pizza place that I decided to try several days ago. They have excellent deals on pizzas, as well as reasonable prices for drinks (including Coke!) This is one of the few restaurants I have found that serves fountain Coke and in larger quantities than 250ml! That's right, you can get a 500ml Coke for 1 lat! I also managed to run into an incredibly friendly waitress there who's half Russian and half Latvian. The friendly people are hard to find in Riga, but they are here. It makes me smile every time I see a friendly person here, because they're so rare.
CanCan Pizza had such a busy day that they ran out of pizza ingredients, and were only serving drinks for several hours. I arrived during this period and asked for my favorite waitress, Katya. She explained the situation to me, so I decided to get a Coke and an ice cream sundae. The sundae was just OK. After an hour pizzas were again available, and I ordered a large pizza with beef, tomato, sweet chili sauce, cheese, and pizza sauce. Yummy. The total cost of a Coke, sundae, and large pizza at CanCan pizza was only 5 lats. As I was leaving, poor Katya suddenly had a large crowd to serve and was running all over the place. Again I was impressed at the excellent work ethic of the Latvians. If I was running a business and needed hard workers, I would not hesitate to hire people from this country, that's for sure.
I wandered around the Freedom Monument, which was well protected as usual. Police frequently patrol this area, as well as Latvian soldiers from time to time. They stand at attention in front of the statue. This is also the busiest pedestrian area around, from near Freedom Monument to the entrance of Old Town. The McDonalds on the corner there does a LOT of business. Today the "walk through" was a line going all the way to the street! Most fast food restaurants in Old Town had lines going to at least the front door.
Although I find the large crowds interesting, they also drain my energy quickly, so I decided at 9pm to head back to my hotel. I'm sure the festival became even more interesting after dark. I have found that if I have company, I like to stay out later. If I'm alone, I want to go back to the hotel and relax.
