After my grand tour, I headed back to the hostel. It was Saturday the 12^th and my birthday was fast approaching. I had no grand plans so on my way home I stopped and took myself to a movie (Hancock – which lost its way half-way through) then the supermarket to pick up dinner fixins then back to the Hostel.

I get in, fully expecting to have a nice, quiet night, maybe write up a blog or two and generally be chill.

Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.

Me and Indie

I run into Indie, the guy from my top bunk. He’s met up with Liber (a Canadian from Montreal) and Marlei (a Ph.D in ecological simulations from Brazil) in the common room of the hostel and they’re all planning on going out. I mention it’s my birthday the next day and now Indie won’t take no for an answer. I’m going out, too!

We all head back out to Old Town, meeting up with Anna, Indie’s friend who is a Latvian belly dancer at the Freedom Statue along the way. We wander for a bit, passing a hen night group selling various things to make the money to buy their

Our take from the Bachelerotte party

friend’s wedding dress (it’s a hen night thing). We end up buying a banana, a couple of mentos, a rose and a condom (and are now ready for “Let’s Make a Deal”). I should digress for moment here to say that the bane of Eastern Europe right now is the Stag/Hen dos coming from England. With cheap airfare, groups of bachelors and bachelorettes are flying over for drunken weekends and generally being obnoxious and giving their countrymen a bad name and worse reputation.

Anyway, we continue on and end up in a French bar. A little place in a basement covered in pictures from Baz Luhrman’s “Moulin Rouge” and paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec (Bailey…tell me who he is). We each have a beer, have conversations amongst ourselves and with drunk

All of us at the French place

Latvians and when it gets too stuffy and packed, we move on, ending up in a place descriptively called The Cuban Café.

We’re there when the clock strikes midnight and the gang of four sing happy birthday and Indie orders a round of Tequila shots. So, if you’ve been paying attention (this is going to sound like a logic puzzle) – the American (me), Brit (Indie), Brazilian, Canadian and Latvian and doing shots of Mexican alcohol in a Cuban bar. As Faye pointed out, this is either the start of a joke or a United Colors of Benneton ad.

A couple more rounds and dancing ensues. Not by me, mind you, at least not on my feet. I chair dance with

The girls, dancing the night away

the best of them but I’m not getting up…okay, I get up. I dance a little bit. Of course, dinner (which I had so thoughtfully purchased ahead of time) was still sitting in the fridge back at the hostel and while we tried to eat bar food, it wasn’t enough. At 3:30am or so, we all trouped out (well, minus Liber who had called it a night, twice, by 2:30) to find a late night eatery. This isn’t as easy as it might sound, mind you. At first we thought our only choice was going to be McDonald’s but thankfully, we found a Cili Pica open which served pizza. When we finally made our way back to the Hostel, it was near 5am and I had been toasted and roasted

Indie, Anna, and Liber

pretty well for my birthday.

The next morning, we all got up pretty late. My clothes, which had been washed, had not dried so they were getting tumbled and Indie and decided to have a mellow day of wandering. We had a long conversation about the Americanization of Europe which included a lot of talk of Mackers (stemming in part from our late night food choices) which put us both in a mood for fast food goodness. We went in and immediately I noticed a guy sleeping in his burger. Literally. It was like he had taken two bites and then just collapsed. His hand was still wrapped on the bun and his head was using it as a pillow. We ordered our food and as we made our way to the table I checked to make sure the guy was breathing. He was. A few minutes later, I told the manager. A few minutes after that, security arrived. Indie and I wondered about the quickness of their response, if this McDonald’s had a contract with them since they were so close to the train and bus stations and what have you. We finished our burgers but couldn’t leave. We kinda had to stay and see how this all played out. I explained to Indie this is the kind of thing I see all the time. Somehow I find these situations and notice them, or maybe I’m just open to them happening. Either way, from yesterday’s “excursion” with my new friend to a clearly drugged out man in Mickey D’s, life is never dull.

By the time it was over, the police had been called and the guy half dragged away to a waiting police wagon. Obviously, we don’t know what he was on, but it was something, since he quite literally couldn’t wake up. He would open his eyes then immediately fall back asleep. As soon as he was safely in the paddywagon, We figured it was safe for us to leave as well, so we went and had a bit of a wander around town, finding a weird art school graduation exhibit of applied, practical design and a great chat in an English Sports bar (where Cricket was on the TV, so there was nothing exciting to distract us).

By this point, it was getting close to time for me to catch my bus, so back to the hostel, pack my bag with my now dry clothes, say goodbye and off I go. I get there as the bus pulls up, take my seat and start to write blogs. Then I stop. The bus ride is way to bumpy and I am way to tired so before I get too carsick I stop and promptly fall asleep.

Upon waking, I start up a conversation with my neighbor, a very nice girl called Piret, from Tallinn (where we’re heading) who was returning from a night visiting her Latvian boyfriend. We stop for 5 minutes and she buys me a chocolate bar (I have no Estonian currency) and then, as we’re eating back on the bus, I remember it is still my birthday so I tell her and she thinks it is now double appropriate she got me some chocolate. We start talking about backpacking, how it works, what hostels are like, and all that, when she asks me where my hostel is. Turns out it’s down the street from a shop she owned until Friday and where she had to go when she got off the bus. She offered to let me share her cab, then took me to the hostel, and out for a birthday drink. We’re going to get together for lunch on Tuesday.

And now, it’s Monday the 14^th. I’m in a bookstore in Tallinn, listening to Estonian versions of “Lady Madonna” and “Memories,” waiting for the rain to let up so I can explore some more. The schedule coming up has ferries to Helsinki, buses to Vassa and more ferries to Stockholm. I think. The way things are going, I’m trying not to make plans too far in advance. The adventures are finding me, and I’m going to keep on letting them.

Riga started off pleasant enough. I met my upperbunkmate when I woke up, had a jam sandwich or two for breakfast and then headed off into old town to check things out. Again, I’m thinking to get a self-guided tour and show myself the sites.

Everything starts off just fine. I make it into the old town, find the tourist information center (although Riga is like San Francisco for me, I get all turned around thinking east is west and north is south) and head out, guidebook in hand, to learn about the capitol of Latvia.

I don’t get very far.

I’m on stop 8 or 9 (out of 45 or so) when I get approached by a guy dressed in slacks and a sport coat, but

My Tour Guide

not the kind you’d wear to a meeting. No, he was dressed the way you’d dress if you didn’t want someone to think you were homeless or crazy, you know, almost too careful but shabby. Like a drunk trying to walk a straight line. Even if he can do it, you can tell he’s been drinking. So anyway, this guy comes up and asks if I speak English. I cautiously nod my head and he proceeds to tell me about the buildings I’m looking at – the three brothers. Exactly what it says in my guidebook. Okay, so that’s fine, no big deal. Then he says “do you have a moment? Two moments? Come with me I show you.” Now, as you all know, I’m very fond of saying it’s all about the story. I had no idea what this guy was going to show me, but I knew that I could always come back to my guidebook if I needed to. In the

The Black Magic Bar where they serve a drink called Balsam

meantime, I might as well take a “moment” and see what he wanted to show me. These are the moments which make experiences which make stories so I put my guide in my pocket and followed.

He took me into a church and showed me the first women’s cloister in Riga. Then we kept walking. All the while, he was leading me with “one…two moments. First moment here” and he would point out something, a church or a house or the original stone foundation upon which the newer buildings were constructed. And we kept on. At one point, we ended up in a church where a wedding was taking place and we walked down the side of the building (he was Catholic and so

Synagogue under renovation

genuflected and used holy water in every sanctified place) to look at the art on the walls. Then we stopped to observe the wedding. When I looked over, my new friend was crying. There were tears running down his face as he watched the bride and groom. It was amazing. We left there and the tour continued. This was his “small excursion” he told me. He’d been in Riga for 47 years (all his life) and sometimes he did small excursions and sometimes big ones (which lasted all day). He showed me the things which moved him and the things he thought were wrong. He told me about renovations (like the synagogue) and the river. At one point, after we’d been going for an hour and a half or so, I offered to buy him a beer of he was thirsty. So we stopped

Me and Uris having a beer

and had a beer and I finally found out his name was Uris (or Yuris, I’m not sure of the spelling – he wasn’t wearing a name tag or a cowboy belt). Now remember, he had yet to ask me for any money. He did ask me what I liked and if I was enjoying myself and if I wanted to see more, but at no point did he ask for money. Which is why I bought him the beer.

Then he took me to the Tourist Information office (same one where I’d gotten my walking tour guide) and said he was going to get me information. He went through every bit of free materials and grabbed it all. Different languages, multiple copies, didn’t matter. He just handed it all to me with a grin on his face that could have lit

my haul from Tourist Information

a small medieval village. He was so excited to be helping me out. So we’re walking along, seeing more stuff, and it starts to rain. We happen to be across from the Latvian version of Starbucks and I offer to get us some coffee. He says he doesn’t drink coffee but tea and he would love some, but not from that place, from the next place. So with the rain coming down in buckets and the lightning and thunder crashing around us, we make a break for “the next place.” It turns out he leads us to a little coffee stand where we both have some Earl Gray tea and decide to wait

pigeon in the rain

out the storm. While I’m talking pictures of the rain, he purchases a couple of cookies and brings them over to me. “Traditional Latvian cookies,” he explains. “For you from me. Eat!” So I ate. And they were good, tasty. “You like?” he asked. I told him I did and I finished the six or so he had purchased. Then he bought a bag of them and gave then to me as a present, to “take home to your friends, from me.”

Have I mentioned he still hasn’t asked me for money?

the coffee shop from above

So I’m having a blast, I’m certainly getting a story’s worth of adventure out of the day, but I still don’t completely trust him. I make eye contact when we pass the police. I don’t go into anyplace dark first, I try to be on my guard the whole time, I transfer money so it’s not all in one pocket, but my fears are completely unfounded. As the rain lightens up (not finished yet, though, he starts our tour again. We end up in the park looking at statues and another bridge with locks. For the last half hour or so he keeps telling me “one more moment and then finished” but there were at least ten moments there. At one point we get accosted by a

another bridge with locks, like in Vilnius

pan handler and my new best friend Uris shoos him away telling me not to give money to that kind of person. We finally end up at the St. Peter Cathedral, which has an elevator to a second balcony observation deck. Uris helps me buy my ticket then can’t resist showing me just one more thing. All told, we were together about three and a half hours and I ended up giving him 10 Lats, making sure that was okay. He seemed pretty happy with it, we shook hands and he went on his way while I went up and looked at the mist enshrouded city.