I have returned from my 48 hour trip to Riga and I have to say my first visit to Eastern Europe, or "Central Europe," as the Easterners like to call it, was incredible. I only brought a small backpack, filled with my camera, a few extra t-shirts, a sleeping bag strapped to the bottom, and my friend's beat up copy of Kerouac's On The Road (I also brought underwear but that doesn't sound as poetic).
We stayed with a really nice couple in their early twenties who live in this run down communist building on the outskirts of the city.
Our first morning there, Sam and I took a 2 hour walk into the city and got to enjoy the decrepit parts most tourists don't have the chance to see. Visiting a second world country is fascinating, some buildings look like they had been bombed the week before, but really they're just leftovers from over 20 years ago.
Some comments on my trip: 
- Latvians are a very proud people. They refer to the Soviet era as the "time of occupation" and still don't like Russians. Consequently, they now strongly associate with Tibet.
- At the Russian Market I put my valuables in my front pocket so I could keep better track of them. Referencing the stereotype that Easterners steal, Sam said he doesn't like intolerance. I said I rather be prejudice and safe, than p.c. and sorry, but he still thought I was a bigot. Later that day his phone got stolen.
- Latvian is the closest modern language to Sanscrit.
- There's a great art nouveau neighborhood that houses all the embassies. Here's Belgium:
- At the mall they had spacey, blue lighting in the bathroom stalls and I thought it was some gross way to hide the dirt; turns out it's so heroin addicts can't find veins to shoot up.
- To get home from a night out in New York, we sometimes take "gypsy cabs" than run illegally. In Riga they have illegal trams that run at night.
UPDATE: Katie told me there were problems with the facebook gallery so I made a new album on Picasa. Here's the mini-slideshow. Click on it to see the pictures bigger and with captions.
UPDATE: Katie told me there were problems with the facebook gallery so I made a new album on Picasa. Here's the mini-slideshow. Click on it to see the pictures bigger and with captions.
3 comments:
Luckyyyyy. I wanna go!
Wow. What a great trip. The link at the bottom of your post only directs us to your last picture and I'd love to see more please.
See you soon!
Thanks for letting me know Katie. I put in a new gallery with slideshow. Something I had wanted to do earlier but was too lazy for.
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