July 22 - Zug to Riga

For all of you readers out there who don’t know, Riga is the capital of Latvia. Yes, the same Latvia that is considered one of the Baltic states and was part of the Iron Curtain back in the day.

Jez and I had no overwhelming desire to visit Latvia, nor was there any spiritual reason for the detour. Rather, in true backpacker style, it was the cheapest way to get from Zurich to Athens (go figure). We flew Latvia’s national carrier, the ever expanding, BalticAir. BalticAir isn’t up there with Qantas just yet. But the big news according to the inflight magazine was they now fly to 2 Estonian cities. Stop the press!

So, the day started off with Reggie driving us to Zurich and showing us a great view of Zurich from one of its highest points. She then dropped us off at the airport where we got our first BalticAir experience.

We landed in Latvia and found our way to the hostel with no dramas. Once there, we were given a complimentary beer and told all about Riga by Chris, one of the guys working at the hostel. We were made aware of a few things to watch out for. One of them being girls that invite you to clubs. When you get in there abd have a few drinks, the bill is ridiculously expensive (around 1,000 Lats which equates to approximately $AUD2,500) and you have to pay or they wont let you leave. Chris told us the worst he had saw was a bloke getting done for 5,000 Lats! That’s about $AUD12,500!!! A very expensive night on the piss.

That night, Jez and I hit up some traditional Latvian food which was pretty darn good. It was rice which some marinated lamb.

After that we headed back and went on a pub crawl organized by the hostel. The majority of these people were Aussies and Kiwis. This is a crucial bit of information.

So there we all were at the first pub, with the Aussies and Kiwis were talking to these 2 Turkish blokes. After 15 minutes we had convinced the Turkish blokes that I was a minke whale hunter, Jez was a kangaroo shearer, and one of the other guys was a koala bear poacher hunter (koala bear paws are a delicacy, especially when put into a soup). We also had convinced them that there was a forest in the middle of Australia (its called the Simpson Forest, and it very similar to the Amazon), and that drop bears exist (for an educational lesson on drop bears, type in “drop bears Bundaberg rum” into youtube.

After the pub brawl, Jez and I hit a club, realised it was shit and went to bed, ready to have our 2nd BalticAir experience in as many days.

Blog off,

Monty