Riga
This post is stupidly long. Be warned that it is probably best to not read it in one go, and that you’d probably be best off doing it day by day (fnirk).
This weekend saw the traditional annual european boozer hit Latvia, and how fine it was.
I’ll start on Wednesday… and see how much I can remember…
Wednesday
Having fallen short of the amount of work I needed to do to avoid coming into the office, I started the day by getting my stuff ready, and generally being in a state of “Pack”. I had my haircut, and a brief journey into town garnered some new clothes and random items I may or may not need for the trip ahead.
I spent around an hour at work tying up the final loose ends and headed off home to drop off my stuff, and complete my packing.
Amazingly finished by 1830, I decided I did now have time to play hockey, and so went down to Platt Fields for the latest installment of the summer past-time, I can’t remember much about what went on, except getting a whopping great blood blister on my left index finger at some point… ah well!
I rushed back home and met up with Andi & Wayne, who arrived around 915. We popped down to the old house at home for a few warm up pints and then made the dubious decision (Andi’s suggestion?) of popping down to Fuel (which stayed open an hour or so later) and then accross the road to the Candian Charcoal pit for giant hot-dogs and burgers.
We also decided to stay up and watch endless runs of “The Mighty Boosh” when we got home, leading to a 3-4am bedtime and extreme tiredness at 7am when we were woken up by our alarms…
Thursday
Since we were leaving quite early, we all woke up feeling a little bit groggy… Nothing a few cups of tea couldn’t handle (and a quick visit for a McDonalds for their version of breakfast)
And then we were away.
The trip down to Stanstead was uneventful, except for Andi’s fascination with the toll booths method of collecting change (which was fairly cool, tbh) and we got there (well Bishops Stortford FC) with loads of time to spare.
We checked in and met up with all the other lads, whilst catching a few Sri Lankan wickets falling (always a nice site… unless you’re Mahinda) went through passport control and quickly set up shop in the airport bar, watching cricket and meeting bizarre Slovenians (who Andi managed to get the number of).
Flight.
We landed in Riga and were instantly greeted by a force 9 gale (ok strong breeze), comments were made about how we’d travelled in a big circle and re-landed in Manchester. These proved to be more than a little inaccurate, as, whilst the weather was not great all weekend (until Monday, which was fabulous) it was generally “Better than in the UK”.
A quick cab via Big Friendly Franks (BFF’s) meet n’ greet service and we arrived outside a ramshackle old building with a piece of paper in a plastic wallet the only sign that this was, indeed, “Frank’s”.
Up two flights of rickety stairs (how on earth the whole weekend went by without some sort of accident there, I don’t know!) and we were suddenly greeted by a pretty modern hostel entirely staffed by gorgeous women (it later transpired that one of them was an ex-Miss Riga… how odd!). The one exception was Frank himself, who greeted us with a free beer and a talk about a few things to look out for.
Paramount in “The Talk” were the cheap scam and the dear scam… whose details are :
Cheap : Taxi Drivers. Get you in a cab and take you for a ride. Quite literally have a tourist button that can be easily avoided by setting a fare before you leave (just like the unlicensed cabs in London, then). Unfortunately this didn’t account one taxi driver, met by a group of lads from Birmingham. Prior to their entering of the cab, but after having flagged it down, the driver produced a gun and shot it into the air… Naturally they just paid the tourist rate…
The group from Birmingham were quite representative of the majority of blokes there, in fact, more on which later, but first
Dear : Hawkers come up to you and give you a flyer that entitles you to free entry to a strip bar, where you are then also entitled to a free-drink.
Upon ordering the free drink, a nubile young model sidles up next to you and asks if you will buy her a drink… seems only fair since you’re getting one for free… and she is quite pretty…
However, as soon as you say “Yes”, she orders champagne. The barman wonders off and brings back a bottle of the sparkly stuff and quickly tots up 700 notes on the cash register. Perturbed, you then have to pay this or suffer a beating.
Apparently, according to Frank, this occurs around once a fortnight to people staying in his hostel, so it’s certainly a common thing. Judging by the other people in the hostel I can easily see why this is the case.
We were also warned about coppers asking for “Fines”.
None of our group (yes, even Andi!) fell for any of these, thankfully, though having had the warning you’d have been pretty stupid to.
Anyway… back to the action. We headed on out for our first taste of Latvian food and stumbled upon a bar called “Lido”. A Latvian chain bar selling tradional Latvian fare, Mahinda, Theo & I decided to tuck in, whilst the others (Martin, Andi, Wayne & Timm) headed on down to Delacey’s Irish bar to watch the England game against Belarus.
I should point out that whilst Delacey’s is an Irish bar, it is not your typical foreign irish bar (whilst also not being a typical Rigan bar…!) and served absolutely wonderful food and a nice array of Rigan beer. It was filled with tourists for the footie, mind.
Having taken in the 1-2 defeat to Belarus (via a comedy effort by Rob Green, who had apparently ruptured his groin… admitedly that’s not quite so comedic….) we headed back to the hostel.
On the way Wayne took Frank’s advice to heart and started enquiring all hawkers as to “How do you sleep at night?”.
At franks we hastily signed up for the midnight trip to “Club Essential” with just about every other bloke in the hostel.
At this point I should note that we finally realised about the true nature of the standard “British stag visitor” to Riga.
Now, whilst we’re pretty much there to enjoy ourselves through the medium of alcohol (and take in a bit of culture, of course), these guys were most clearly just there for the craic… Not that I’m saying that’s a bad thing in itself - after all we all need to let loose now and again… However these fella’s were - to a man - loud, oafish, twats with no sense of respect for the local traditions or such.
As a result I can certainly see why many of them get into trouble with the Latvian Police, or either or the scams I noted above. I can also see why, in general, the Rigans may not take to Englishmen in general. After this night we tended to stay away from wherever they were. Which worked a treat.
Anyway - we headed out to Club Essential. Which was RUBBISH (ok, Andi & Timm seemed to enjoy it…). It’s some kind of huge club containing rubbish music and plenty of English men. Like the rest of Riga it did contain several extremely attractive women (it was a theme of the weekend) and this was it’s one saving grace. We were only there about an hour, before heading back (Andi met some Russian women on the journey…) and taking in a few pints back at the hostel before retiring to bed as the sky lightened, at around 4AM.
Andi’s shoes were placed outside the door.
The end of a very long, but enjoyable, day
Nayth!
Nayth was supposed to be arriving on the Thursday evening and leaving on Monday. Prior to the trip, however, his airline messed him around a bit and he now had to leave on the Sunday instead.
Worse was to come! Many of us were perturbed when he failed to show up at all on Thursday evening, realising all to late that none of us actually had his number. Noting that there was not much we could do until the morning - we made a few enquiries and then continued out. He’d still not arrived when we got back to the hostel, however. A worrying mystery indeed.
As we all gradually awakened on the Friday morning, and started talking amongst one another, a lone voice suddenly piped up from the corner bunk… And suddenly we noticed there was someone in our room who hadn’t been there at 4am… Nayth!
He’d arrived at 5am, having been delayed for several hours by his, less than impressive airline, and had somehow managed to get himself into the room without waking anyone up. Impressive.
Apparently Nayth also had fun on the way home - but I’m yet to hear that story yet, so I’ll leave it at that for now.
… Back to the action …
Friday
We awaken to Andi’s alarm, which had been accidently left on after our early start yesterday, going off every five minutes… most of us gradually drift back to sleep but were all out and about by around 11am.
Andi’s shoes have been placed back in the room.
We all headed on out and discovered a cheap cafe for breakfast. It was some sort of buffet bar, with sausages, chicken\pork things, lots of potatoes and several other options. It was pretty tasty, and very very cheap.
We then all congregated in the bar next door, eschewing the very british bar of “Dickens” (complete with Boddingtons & Cricket) for the place opposite with Latvian beer and fine, fine waitresses. I drank slowly.
Upon finishing my beer we decided to head on into the old town proper and view some sites.
Included in this was a church with a spectacularly large spire. It cost L2 to enter and go up to the top (in a rickety old lift which shuddered when anyone - particularly Timm - entered it), but the views were worth it.
We were up there for 10 mins or so, and left, viewing some of the artifacts as we made our way out (including a large cockerel!) Photo’s of all of this will appear on here before next weekends out (I hope).
From there we made our way through town to the “Skyline” bar, passing the Liberty monument (protected by stock still latvian armed guards).
The skyline bar occupies the 26th floor of one of Riga’s main hotels. It’s walls (including the toilet!) are made of glass (or some other relevant transparent material) and you get a pretty good sight of the old town (to the south) and the suburbs (to the north), including the Skonto Riga stadium and several russian orthadox churches (we’d actually visited the main one on our way to the Skyline, which was sufficiently grandiose and ostentatious).
Now some of us liked the skyline (including me) and some of us didn’t (including Andi). Therefore Andi became a bit irritated when I took about 3 years to finish my drink… and when Timm ordered more two drinks just as I finished!
Timm also undertook the L14 challenge whilst we were there… It all begun with the ordering of an “Interesting” local cocktail, going by the name of “Local Battery”. I can’t remember all the ingredients but they definitely included Red Bull, Black Balzam and Cream. There was some kind of Peach stuff in there too, and the whole mixture was congealing.
Well Andi suggested that he’d give Timm L2 to down this vile concoction (for the record, I actually thought it wasn’t that bad, but everyone else seemed to hate it) and we all chipped in L2 of our own - making a prize pool of some L14.
Timm took the challenge, and completed it sucessfully, with chants of “Pretend it’s an Owl” and suchlike compering his progress.
Shortly afterwards, Timm disapeared off to the loo. He spent a while and we all assumed he was relieving his stomach of the intense pressure it must now be under. The truth was he’d actually gone to the bar to get two more drinks, those I mentioned earlier, which were drunk shortly before heading off back to the hostel.
On the way back we stopped off at a local bar close to our dorm. It was here we met the Birmingham bunch mentioned in Thursday’s entry, along with a couple of exhibitionist Latvian women. The most expensive beer of the weekend was served (I’ve a feeling some of the group still owe Martin for that one) and the bar was generally rubbish. we didn’t go back there.
We spent a short while at the hostel updating others on our progress, and taking in some of the cricket. We asked the receptionists were they recommended for food and, map in hand, made our way out the door.
At this point we got caught in the only real downpour of the weekend…. soaking wet the map disintigrated and we knew we were in trouble (Mahinda, somewhat unfairly (and due to his Geneva exploits two years ago!), took the blame for this).
Totally unaware of where the resturant we were aiming for was, we spotted a nice looking place and wandered in there.
It was pretty darn good.
We all ate a fantastic feast (including Caviar for Andi, and hemp butter (we asked what it was, and didn’t believe the answer) with bread for the initial starter… I had a beatiful medium rare steak for the main course. Loverly) and paid around L10 each for it (very cheap!, including wine).
Suitably filled with fine fettle, we headed off, via the hostel, to the pupu lounge. A recommendation we’d picked up prior to heading out.
Unfortunately when we arrived we discovered a certain amount of money was required to enter. Quickly summing up our options (and noticing too that it was jam packed) we decided to wander away from the scene and pick somewhere else to go.
We turned the corner to discover a club called Nautilus. Andi, and a few others were extremely keen to go in - whilst the rest of us argued that it’d be better to have a few drinks in a bar and *then* go to the club. Such a comprimise was reached, and we headed back into the old town, passing Linden Tree’s and some nice night-time views on the way (photo’s forthcoming).
We chose to go in the place we’d been in that morning but, they too, were charging entry. We therefore headed across the road to an airy, new, stylish place that still only charged L1.50 per beer.
The club certainly had an ecletic range of music, switching from euro-dance to one of the shine compilations (it was very strange when Menswear cropped up on the playlist!)
Not to everyone’s taste (though I liked it) we all pretty much enjoyed it there, especially Nayth.
Nayth first tried to get a bunch of lasses to come and join us in our corner, unsucessfully, and then chatted up a member of the bar staff for some half an hour or so. We actually had to give him a key as we left, but he joined us outside shortly afterwards, and we headed back to Nautilus.
Nautilus turned out to be a pretty good dance club. Strangely enough we all enjoyed it immensely!
Wayne, Andi and a few others took in John Lemmon in heading back to the Hostel around 4AM.
Everyone danced, and Timm, Nayth and I were there until 530AM. Strangely the beer was priced differently depending on which part of the bar you were in, but the overall effect was that the club was pretty great. I’m pretty sure we all enjoyed it.
The DJ was some kind of Baltic celebrity, and kept everything moving nicely. He was replaced at 5am by a second DJ, who also seemed decent… But this also seemed the cue for most of the crowd to leave - finally leaving just the three of us and two lasses. When they called it a night, we decided we would too so - quite literally the last people on the dancefloor - we headed down to get our coats and stepped outside into BRIGHT sunshine. My eyes hurt.
Arriving back at the hostel around 535 (it was around a 5 minute walk away) and with far too much adrenaline to sleep, I finally persuaded Timm for one final trip to the hostel bar. One further beer amongst the legions of brits (including a group from ,*sigh*, Hull) who were returning from La Rocha (apparently very similar to Essential) and I headed to bed at around 615AM.
Andi’s shoes were placed outside the door.
Another very enjoyable, very long day.
Saturday
Wayne & Martin managed to get up pretty early and went for a wander around town, the rest of us finally making a move around 1pm.
We all went for breakfast at 3pm (Wayne & Martin had an early one at Delacey’s Irish bar) and had cheese (Andi had the amusingly named “Cheese steak”). Nayth was looking more than a little peaky, so retired back to bed when we made it back to the hostel.
The rest of us went to the local market - contained in 5 huge hangar like buildings (4 of which can be seen on some of the photographs) and full of Meat, Honey, Alcohol, Vegetables… Markety type things really!
Mahinda picked up a few round balls of salami and some honey, whilst Andi bought some Apple Vodka… I can’t remember if anyone else bought anything!
We meandered back to the hostel and killed some time by drinking in the bar and playing a quick game of tournament poker. The results were :
1st Martin (L20)
2nd me (L15)
3rd Andi (L5)
with Theo, Mahinda & Wayne also playing. (Timm listened to music, Nayth was still asleep).
We headed on out around 7pm, shortly after enjoying some shots of apple vodka (Nayth had an extra large portion, I seem to recall) and some indoor football, to the pupu bar (which we’d decided not to go in on Friday), fortunately this time it was virtually empty - so we all had a quick drink.
The Pupu bar is a Latvian themed bar - though I won’t mention what the theme was - needless to say the barmaids were very attractive indeed.
They also had an additional part on their menu which included:
L200 to get the barmaids to dance for you.
L5000 to sack one of the staff
L500,000 to destroy the place.
We just had a beer.
We then headed down to a bar called “Salt and Pepper”, which we had passed on our way back from the market earlier.
After we eventually found the entrance we sat ourselves down and ordered some delicious food and beer. It all went down a treat.
We noticed that they had some sort of beer tap buffet thing, where you pay a certain amount and then can get as many beers as you like. We didn’t partake, but the only person at that table was a 6-year-old boy, surrounded by maybe 30 empty glasses. Very odd!
The pepper pot was a small plastic Corona bottle, which spoke of untold class.
We then went to the outdoors bar in the town centre. It was again very nice, and we were there for a while just watching all the people passing by.
Timm left us at this point to go off and join the official hostel excursion to “La Rocha” none of the rest of us fancied that much, so we decided to head down to the Casino which we had noticed on the ground floor of the hotel with the Skyline bar in.
Upon entering, we were all given some free chips. Wayne and I clubbed together to ensure gambling success, whilst Andi & Nayth joined the local degenerates in Blackjack.
After an hour or so a few of us took our winnings and disapeared up to the top floor for some skyline cocktails. Unfortunately they were not quite so impressive this time around, and when the bar closed at 3am we went downstairs to pick up Andi.
A few of us attempted to gain entry to John Lemmon on the way home, but they were closing too, so we went back to the hostel bar where Wayne, Martin & I placed bets on games of table (coin) football. (great fun)
Mahinda decided to turn in at around 530am (guess!) for which we all gave him a verbal berating. However, we all followed five minutes later upon realising that we were all quite tired.
Andi’s shoes were placed outside the door and, with the sun streaming into the room, we called it a night.
Cricket
the second test between England & Sri Lanka took place over this weekend, and we decided to run a kind of sweepstake, usually on the number of runs scored, with the winner drinking for free all night (i.e. they didn’t have to contribute to the kitty).
We caught around 6 hours worth of the match over the weekend, and I even caught Andi casting a sneaky glance up on one of the days. I remember that Martin won on one day, and I won on the Saturday… was probably Nayth on the other day.
It was all fun.
Sunday
We awoke to find that, once again, Andi’s shoes had been placed back within our room… Anyway…
Another day of getting up late, (well we were on holiday), was quickly followed by tucking into the Salt n’ Pepper breakfast buffet.
It was a decent affair, with potatoes, sausages, eggs, cereals, pastrys, bread etc etc… tasty.
I made the schoolboy error of putting my savory and sweet stuff on the same plate, which lead to the inevitable “Ketchup on Danish” situation. Upon asking for a napkin to clean it off, Martin directed me back to the buffet bar. I duly went to collect it, only to be informed of the big bucket of them not 6 inches from my plate, which I’d been completely oblivious too!
We decided it might be a good day to go wondering around some of the other sights of the old town, but first we had the idea to go back to some Pedaloes we’d seen in the old moat, close to the liberty statue.
After a short wait we all boarded for the princly sum of L2 per boat (3 people per boat) and went around the river, getting generally splashed and having a race in which our boat (Me, Andi, Wayne) thrashed one of the other boats (Mahinda, Theo, Timm (or was it Nayth?)) into owing us a pint of beer each.
We then wondered around the old town, as we had earlier decided, and took in some of the old city walls, some old guns and a big round building.
We stopped off at a bar named “I Love You” whose outdoor seating we had to untangle before sitting ourselves down… only to be told we had to go inside anyway.
It was a pretty decent bar, playing Sigur Ros, and we all chilled out until around 4pm when we headed off (via a big church and some other sites) to the Musuem of the Occupation.
The Museum of the Occupation was an interesting place and contained many artifacts from the Nazi occupation during the war, and the Soviet one just before and after.
We all spent a good hour in there before heading out and back to the hostel. There was quite a large police presence as we left the musuem and it later transpired that the head of the russian orthadox church was visiting Riga that weekend - which also explained why the russian orthadox church had been boarded off the night before.
Back in the bar, Andi, Martin, Wayne and I made plans to go to a different casino for a poker tournament that Andi had heard about from one of the dealers the night before.
Upon arrival we quickly wasted our free chip vouchers on some sort of rubbish card game and then wayne accidently lost L5 in one go on video poker (he pressed the “Bet Max” button by accident!)
We all signed up and had a few beers.
The card game started. I made my second schoolboy error of the day forgetting to call raise, and thus had my A-K broken by A-2 after an ace and a 2 hit the flop. Fortunately it was Martin who’d taken advantage and he now sat out the rest of the rebuy section after an earlier double up left him sweetly placed.
Andi and I both struggled to get into the game cardwise, though there was plenty of banter between Andi and the (drunken) Latvian fella next to him - who was playing pretty loosely. The free drinks were pretty impressive, as we could, quite literally, order whatever we wanted. Most surprising, free beer during the tournament is not usual over in England!
Going into the freezeout Wayne called it a night and went off in a taxi to find the others whilst those of us still in played on. I was moved to a table full of people who were rubbish but had somehow managed to get huge stacks (their rebuys must have been ALOT more active that our tables!!!) and couldn’t get myself into a hand.
When I was finally forced to, I lost it and that was me out. Andi followed shortly after and we sat around the bar watching Martin as he went from the last two tables, to the last one table, and into the money.
An impressive performance from the lad made him over 100 Lats and a fourth place finished. Suitably chuffed, we called a cab and made our way into the centre of town to meet up with the others.
Here we made the mistake of not eating. I ended up being very hungry all night as the takeaway had closed by the time we got back to the hostel, but I did have some of Mahindas fine Latvian Honey on bread.
A few pints later and we headed back. Many of us were leaving early tomorrow (Nayth had already gone!) and needed the rest. That’s not to say it wasn’t daylight when we finally went to bed… as it was around 430am ? Andi’s shoes were placed outside the room.
Monday
Everyone left during the drowsy early morning hours, leaving just Martin, Theo, Mahinda and I to enjoy our last day there.
Andi’s shoes had not been placed back in the room, but this was probably due to the fact that he was, by now, flying back to England.
Having booked a much later trip home, we all quickly decided that today was going to be a much more relaxing day - a recovery day if you like - and we certainly were gifted with the weather for it.
Anyway, we awoke and had checked out by one’ish and decided that Delacey’s was the place for breakfast.
I had a fantastic chicken club sandwich after they run out of pork and potato cakes, along with some coffee and fresh orange juice.
Martin and I watched the cricket highlights and mused about Portugal whilst Mahinda & Theo headed into town to buy some last minute stuff.
Around 3pm we all made a move to the local market to buy some more honey, and some vana tallinn, and we then headed out to one of the small café’s lining the streets of the old town.
Monday was easily the best day for the sun. The temperature was in the twenties all day, with a gentle breeze and the couple of pints, with coffee we had outside the café was a fantastic way to unwind after the holiday.
We also talked to some other people on our flight whilst there (briefly!) and the nut girl made another appearance (a 14 year old girl selling nuts on the road, who’s a total extrovert and very funny!) and then we made our way into town for some soup (zup zup - I had some sort of stew, it was great!) and local soft drinks (mine tasted of liquorice) .
We collected our stuff, and left the hostel.
Arrived at the airport with no hitches.
Landed in England to freezing temperatures and a 3 hour trip home (cheers, Mahinda!).
Finally getting to bed around 4am (English time) and the weekend was over. Top notch weekend!
