After writing the last two posts late last night, I crashed and again woke up in the afternoon. I took my lazy time going out, and completely missed room service for the day. Oops.. Now that I had discovered the public transportation system, I wasn't planning to walk the 1.5 miles to Old Town unless I was feeling really energetic. I took the tram instead. The trams here are all operator controlled, and appear to be manually driven. The tram operators stop at red lights just like regular cars, even though they are on tracks. I noticed that the proximity card system had a readout which told you how many trips you had left before the card was exhausted.
It was a cool day at around 65 degrees fahrenheit, which was fine with me! Even then I was still sweating. Riga definitely has some humidity in August. It was partially cloudy, but didn't particularly look like rain. After reaching Old Town I took the underground tunnel which goes beneath the busy road where drivers attempt to play "hit the pedestrians" in their BMWs. Speaking of which, there are a ton of BMWs here. There's no doubt that it's the luxury car of choice in Latvia.
As I walked by the Holocaust Museum, I noticed a cafe called "Tea and Coffee Garden". I decided to try out the coffee there. It was AMAZING! I do believe it's the best espresso/coffee that I've ever had. The cafe was very tastefully decorated and the presentation was top notch. The cream itself looked so silky and smooth that I almost didn't believe it was real. With some sugar cubes and cream I was in heaven with this espresso. I did wonder why it was called coffee instead of espresso. According to one local, coffee is essentially just a bigger portion of espresso here. I also ate a desert pasty, but the espresso was so good I didn't care about anything else.
After enjoying my espresso, I left the cafe and ventured around Riga Old Town for a while. Suddenly it started raining. Unlike yesterday, this time I wasn't so lucky and it almost immediately began pouring. People were running all over the place, trying not to kill themselves by falling on the cobblestone. I searched for cover and found that Lulü pizza was nearby. I decided to get a piece of pizza there and wait out the rain. It's funny but I've almost exclusively eaten pizza since arriving in Riga. Tomorrow I'll have to try something different.
After the rain subsided I resumed my walk and found an indoor mall in the middle of Old Town. It had 4 or 5 floors, with plenty of shops. The mall also had a grocery store on the first floor. I decided to walk through and found many aisles of liqueur, beer, and strangely exotic alcohol drinks. They also have a local favorite called "Riga Black Balsam", which is a herbal liqueur. It sort of smells like couch syrup. The locals put it into everything from juice to meat. It's considered a remedy for many ills. For example it's used as a digestion aid after a large meal. According to the locals you haven't seen Riga until you try Black Balsam. I will definitely try it one of these days!
While I was inside the grocery store, I checked out the prices on many goods. Bread is extremely cheap in Riga. I saw entire loaves of bread for under 50 cents. This is far cheaper than in the United States for sure. I am a little confused at the presence of a grocery store inside Old Town, which is a touristy spot. You'd have to think that the prices are inflated in such a location. However I saw plenty of people who appeared to be locals shopping in the grocery store, so who knows.. The grocery store had security guards posted outside the exits. Like many places in eastern Europe, they don't mess around when it comes to security.
During my walk around Old Town, I ran into Ieva who was hostessing at Pizza Malibu. She cheerfully talked to me for a few minutes, and I learned that she works a 12-hour shift there. That's a very long time to stand around showing people to tables in such a busy spot! Guess who else I saw walking around Old Town? The beggar Natalie from 2 days ago! She was harassing some guy, probably in an effort to get money out of him. I gave my donation for the day to a street performer playing a flute.
I decided to head back to my hotel to relax before an event I wanted to attend. There is a couchsurfing.com group that meets every week in Riga. I was eager to meet some interesting locals and travelers. At around 8pm I headed to the event, which was taking place in Old Town at the "Rigas Skanu Fabrika", or RSF. We were getting a special discount for being part of a large group. After arriving, I promptly tripped and almost fell walking into the bar. Luckily only one person had arrived. I introduced myself and a few more people showed up. They were all Latvian and talked English fluently. At first we thought not many people were going to show up, but within an hour we had over 20 people there! In order to accommodate everyone, they needed to put more tables together until we had what looked like some kind of kings banquet!
It was awkward at first for me, because everyone was speaking 5 different languages, and I only knew English. There were people from all over Europe attending. One Swedish man was extremely talkative and funny, while a Finnish man was quieter but made wisecracks from time to time. They all talked about various topics from the end of the world to weird olympic sports and large animals in Africa. I was having trouble keeping up with all these fascinating conversations, so drinking a giant beer probably wasn't helping me. Most people were either drinking light beer, or cappuccinos.
Throughout the event it was getting colder and a bit windy. Many of the women at the table requested blankets to stay warm. I guess that's a normal request here because the bar gladly provided a bunch of blankets. One girl ordered a black tea to warm up. Two men ordered a hot drink with Black Balsam in it. They wanted a hot alcoholic drink, and weren't thrilled with the idea of drinking Black Balsam. However they ended up finding it tolerable.
The group was very curious about why I decided to come to Riga for so long. They asked how I managed to get so much vacation time from work. I told them that I had left my job and decided to travel to Europe. Some of the people assumed that I was traveling around Europe, not just staying in Riga. Perhaps 25 days is longer than the typical vacation here, but I'm not a typical vacationer! A German named "Stefan" introduced himself and I learned that he had lived in Philadelphia for a few years in the 90s. What a coincidence! Stefan was going to attend a wedding further north in Europe and was planning to take a ferry there. We talked for a while about coffee, Europeans, Americans, and movies. At around 11pm I needed to leave to catch a tram, so I said bye and told the group I would return to the next event.
I found the couchsurfing.com group interesting, although I was having trouble keeping up with a lot of the conversations. Many of them remarked that it was nice to have a group that met every week, since it's hard to meet with friends on various schedules. They could just show up at the event and have some company. I agree, especially as a visitor who has no friends here! Personally, I'm not much of a group person and always prefer one-to-one interactions. You usually just can't get to the deeper, more satisfying conversations with a group. Still I'm glad to have found it.
