![]() There was more trepidation than I would care to admit getting back on an airplane, let alone flying to a country I never visited. I thought with it being basically three months since my arrival in Poland any hesitation would be out the window. My previous excuses for not traveling the last two plus years have been due to Covid. Wouldn’t you know it but the end of September took care of that with a healthy dose of bed rest and extra portions of Magnum ice cream bars. Going to Latvia and Estonia were bucket list countries, ones that I had intended to visit for over six years (Latvia) and twenty-eight for Estonia. I wish I could report back and tell you both countries were exactly how I imagined with planned return trips on the horizon, but the universe has a funny way of shifting focus. To begin, I had the highest of hopes for both spots. I even looked at potential airfares to return during my Christmas vacation. There were different activities from an old Soviet Union plane museum, to an Orthodox church on the water, to the Riga Zoo, that I knew I could fit in on a future trip. This trip would be one for getting acclimated and learning how to get around without stressing myself out. Now I’ll be the first to say I’m not some city slicker. If I have a choice, it’s more rural or a smaller city at best. If you look at any of my travels the last six weeks, aside from a trip to Warsaw to visit a park that is long past its prime, I have traveled mainly to cities with less than fifty thousand people, save the day trip to Katowice to chase a spaceship. The point being, I underestimated how congested Riga would feel as the largest city in the Baltic states. I should have known immediately upon getting on the bus from the airport to the city center, that for a more introverted personality who did his best to keep his distance during the majority of the pandemic, that this was not going to work out well. Let’s be clear, I could have been ripped off and taken a taxi for twenty-five dollars as opposed to the two dollars it cost to do my best sardine imitation with a hundred strangers who had the same idea to save a buck. Wanting to get a real local experience, I paid for this awful Disney wannabee trip where at best I stood against a pole with six inches between me and the exit door. Several yahoos, who would be my traveling companions, enjoyed the thrill of adjusting ourselves at every stop as more idiots tried to see how many people could be crammed into our little section. At one point we just laughed at the onlookers who tried to join us, with one guy actually telling him, “Yeah right.” There was no space, save the schmuck and his two traveling companions glued to their phones that elected to throw their bags on top of the lone free seat in the entire bus. I might have made a break for the area, simply to see if it was possible to call this fellow traveler out for his callousness, but I had other problems. Between the exit door doing its best guillotine impression of my hands and feet at every stop, I had a little girl who insisted on pushing me closer to my doom. Even when she wasn’t pushing me, the little girl who was coughing up a lung didn’t help matters much. Her mother had no concept of germs and deemed her hand the appropriate barrier to protect the rest of us from whatever infection or ailment her daughter carried. After twenty-five minutes of this road show, I saw that we had managed to get to the Latvian National Library. A beautiful structure with over four million books, I would have jumped to walk through their halls, but had to settle for getting off the bus once we crossed the bridge. I knew there were still several more stops until the expected departure, but short of screaming, I had to get off when I did. True to every other place, the college population paid closer attention to their screens than walking through the underpasses and the sidewalks. I felt like I was in a 3d version of Frogger which entailed me almost getting run over by a 1950s style tram whose track conveniently came out from a blind spot on the corner of a derelict building. In my infinite wisdom to get a real Latvian experience I didn’t book a hotel room in the old town. That was for Instagram tourists, love birds, or British stag parties who needed better proximity to the many bars and establishments that enjoyed taking easy money. Maybe the extra fifteen minutes of walking was worth the added price. I wouldn’t know the difference because instead I sought out the most direct route to my living quarters, a route that opened my eyes yet again to city living and the contrasts of those residing within the limits. Not since Warsaw in 2017 have I seen any homeless people camped out in underpasses or at bus stops. Granted currently living in Krakow, I’ve seen my share of public intoxication (by college students in the early morning hours), but nothing during the afternoon in the middle of the week. Within a few minutes in this section of Riga, I saw both. I managed to figure out where the central market was, the largest in the Baltics with oversized German Zeppelin hangars as the covered portion of this shopping bazaar. I might have taken longer to admire the flower district with numerous booths and stands of varied colors and designs, but I was still reeling. The blasted underpass I was forced to walk through, a tunnel of shady proportions, was unsettling at best. This sorry bastard pissed himself after a duo of college aged girls passed his woefully obvious bathroom spot. Granted, they weren’t lucky from their vantage point either. Who thinks someone is going to drop their drawers next to a busy road at the entrance of a heavily frequented sidewalk? I sure didn’t. To see this inebriated man chase after the girls after he soiled himself didn’t help matters. Even with them yelling at him to let them be, he followed them all the way to the market, probably asking for some change or a date to make up for them ruining his precious relief moment. I couldn’t believe this was my introduction to the city. Lines of people waited for buses not even fifty feet from this exchange, and there I was wondering what I had gotten myself into. I wish I could say the rest of the trip was easy after those initial awkward moments, but I think it was the beginning of the end for me. Even before the pandemic I was always careful about my traveling. I wanted to make sure it was as flexible as possible and that I wasn’t adding anything to cause unnecessary stress. Being around people, let alone crazy drunk people wasn’t on my to do list for vacation. I would love to have a conversation about how Riga was a city of contrasts from newer buildings, remodeled ones, and completely derelict ones all on the same street. The same was true of the sidewalks, the shops, and from what I could gather the people as well. As a lover of Art Nouveau, aside from an early morning run, I didn’t get a chance to compare Riga to Prague or other hot spots of this style. This city famed for this architectural style wisely hid these beautiful structures far enough away from the real city and close enough to the tourists, or those more financially endowed to paint a completely different picture. Of course there is always more to the story, but the short version is I wasn’t ready for Riga. She might have been ready for me, but it was too much stimulation, too much varied energy, and as a lone traveler I needed to be somewhere more low key where I could feel grounded and renewed. I did find some moments of brevity and release, from my walk to the opera house, seeing what remained of the largest synagogue, and finding a half decent restaurant in the old town. Still, I had planned to be in Riga for two nights. I was already on a bus to Estonia after one.
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Sixteen plus years as a published author, Jonathan has been independent the last eleven. With readers across forty-seven countries and six continents, he has readers around the world. Writing across genres, he loves good dialogue and flawed characters. Archives
February 2023
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