Travel Report: Riga, Pearl of the Baltics

INTRODUCTION

Leaving Cologne hurt a little bit .. mostly due to two reasons: (1) the raging hangover from the house party I should never have attended and (2) because the weather was so awesome. Sunshine, 12°C, no wind, not quite what I'm used to from Cologne. If the weather is great in Cologne, it must also be great where I'm going. Right?

this guy is about to travel halfway across the world (and yes, that is my whole luggage)

I have never been so wrong in my life (OK, maybe sometimes). Landing in Riga, I was welcomed by darkness, cold and a snowstorm. The bus to the inner city also was supposed to exist, but I must have just missed it. When it finally arrived ("bus" referring to a slightly larger car that can hold about 10 people), I had already become about as mobile as Han Solo in Star Wars when he is put into carbonite, written my bachelor's thesis and found a cure for cancer. 

After around 30 minutes and a quick stop at the supermarket I checked into my apartment, which was everything but spectacular, but cheap, in a great location and warm. I had food and cold beers, and my friends were waiting in the wings. Yet first of all .. what is this mysterious city all about?

my neat and spacey apartment

WHAT RIGA IS ABOUT

Riga is the capital of Latvia and the largest city in the Baltics with 640k inhabitants. With a total population of roughly 6.1 million people in three different Baltic countries, Riga is home to more of 10% of people living in those countries. More people live in the Madrid metropolitan area than in all of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. 

Nevertheless, Riga feels like a legitimate city. First recorded in 1201 (although apparently ever since 200 people have been hanging out there), it has been occupied by the Polish, the Swedish, those Germans that are everywhere and until 1990 by the Soviet Union. This influence is also greatly visible compared to the other Baltic capitals, as many people look and speak Russian, the houses in the suburbs look like you would expect them to in Siberia and there even is a district called "New Moscow" which basically takes you back 100 years just by crossing the street. The old town itself is beautiful and also part of the UNESCO World Heritage, with the influence of the Hanseatic League being highly visible. 

Nowadays, Riga and Latvia use the Euro and are mostly westernized. Public transportation works well (although the bus system has some highly chaotic, Sao Paulo like traits - more on that in my reports about social work in Brazil). The Big Mac Index is 4.15 € for a menu, supermarket prices are roughly 10% higher than in Germany and a pint of beer in a bar (Lacplesis or Mezpils most of the time) costs between 2 and 2.50 €. 

WHY I LIKE RIGA

Oh, didn't I already mention that? A pint of beer in a bar costs between 2 and 2.50 €. Jokes aside, there is more to it than just that. The city gives you a glimpse at the Soviet Union while retaining very Western features. It satisfies both my needs for a rich history as well as for an exciting nightlife. The girls are beautiful, the drinks are cheap, and I have a few good friends there. What other reasons do you need to go somewhere?

This time I kept it rather quiet, as I realized I am starting to get sick and would much rather not have a fever on my trip to the US. I am writing this from the Oslo Airport feeling pretty well, so I suppose my plan worked. 

On the first night, I went out with my Latvian friends. We hopped from bar to bar until we ended up in a place that most of the time serves one drink called "Surprise me, Bartender!". It is what you think it is. The bartender (who definitely isn't sober) makes you a drink according to his gusto - mine was red, sweet and strong. Good and bad idea at the same time, would probably do it again. 

The next day I walked around for a bit, but spent most of the day in bed recovering. The day after I felt a bit better, went to the old town and the central market (which is AWESOME). There, you can buy a wide selection of fruit (mostly local) for cheap money as well as tons of meat, cheese (biezpiens or cottage cheese being one of the Latvian favorites), fish (especially smoked) and pastries. You can also buy basically anything else in the vicinity, but the food market is the most exciting. 

Latvia's freedom monument

Speaking of the freedom monument: when I had just arrived in Riga for the first time, I decided to take a short walk around the city before checking into my hostel. And well, clearly the pictures you could take if you climbed onto that monument would be awesome, right?

Well, Latvians are very particular about their freedom and independence. After all, they have only been independent for a combined 48 years (1918-1940 and 1990-today). Therefore, they definitely do not think it's cool when you climb onto their monuments. This was explained to me under the threat of a 100 € fee by three not so charming police officers, who were all taller and bigger than me. I somehow escaped the arrest by admitting my mistake, one that I probably will not make again.

one of Riga's main squares with the Doms on the left

The Doms from the inside .. rather unspectacular

Today, I left my apartment at 6:15am to catch a plane to Oslo. Luckily, I caught this sight right in front of my apartment door:

Barona Iela, one of Rigas main streets, still in silence

HOW YOU CAN GET THE MOST OUT OF RIGA

Riga is a good city for a weekend trip. You can cover plenty of ground within two or three days. A few of my personal favorites were:

• The old town (duh): make sure you take the Free Walking Tour which starts every day in front of the Doms - it is totally worth the money you're not even spending on it since it's free (tip-based)
• "New Moscow": from the top of the Academy of Sciences building, you get a great view of Riga and its surroundings. Also make sure to check out the black market (or don't, if you're into safe traveling), where you could technically buy anything. That includes passports and other not so legal things.
• Alberta Iela: A street in the north of the city center that comes straight from a museum. Beautiful architecture in every single building. Incidentally, many embassies are located there.
• Jurmala: Riga is actually not directly at the beach. That's why its people go to Jurmala, which has a beautiful coastline. If you can afford it, you might even have a house there. I'd say it is the Sylt or Nantucket of Latvia. 
• Lido: A Latvian restaurant chain. You help yourself to whatever you'd like to eat, pay surprisingly small amounts of money and get some hearty Latvian food. Example below: 

  

  Chicken casserole, Soljanka (soup) and cabbage salad

More importantly (as in every foreign city): go out and talk to people. You will learn so much about the country and them. 

A FEW THINGS ABOUT LATVIANS

I love my Latvian friends. No doubt about it. However, some things are very different from what I am used to: 

• Latvians seem to be generally pessimistic. Nothing good will happen in the future, and everything looks dire. I encountered some weird looks with my incessant optimistic attitude. 
• Their sense of humour takes some time to get used to. They make jokes by criticizing each other. This sort of dented my confidence until I realized most of those are friendly jokes.  
• Cottage cheese seems to be a huge deal. While in Germany it can be hard to find it at all, there are all sorts and sizes in Latvian supermarkets (or at least in "rimi", the nation's leading chain). 
• Not everybody speaks English, but almost everybody knows some Russian. This is very different from Lithuania and Estonia, where getting by with English was no problem. I attribute this to the long period of Soviet occupation. 

AND NOW?

Currently I am at Oslo Gardemoen, Norway's biggest airport. After a quick pit stop in the homeland (Frankfurt), I will be on my way to the beautiful United States of America. First thing I will do? You guessed it. Get a triple baconator combo with an extra large drink. And possibly a milkshake. 

Flying from Munich to Los Angeles ... with a stay in Riga?

Traveling can be incredibly cheap if done correctly. Consider this a case study on "how to build your flight plan in the cheapest way possible". 

A day before New Year's Eve, my man Kai called me: "Dude, there are flights from Oslo to LA for 350 € round-trip. Let's go?". I had never been to the West Coast before. Considering I absolutely adore the United States and their citizens (well, except for the ones who genuinely think that Trump is the solution for their problems), I didn't hesitate. It was booked, and while booking I discovered that the return flight actually went through Munich. This is what my itinary looked like:

OSL >> FRA >> IAD >> LAX on the way there and LAX >> IAD >> MUC >> OSL (IAD is Washington Dulles in case you were wondering) on the way back. 

Pro tip #1: You can exit at any point of your journey, you just cannot enter at a given point. In my case, that means that I cannot just get aboard in Frankfurt (which would be a lot closer to me than Oslo), but I can leave the plane in Munich without taking the last flight to Munich. Normally, it also isn't a problem to just tell the airline at check-in to just check your luggage to a given destination (Munich in my case). 

Now I simply had to get to Oslo. Easy, right? Well, actually not that easy if you are considering costs - which was why I booked the flight in the first place. I had to be in Oslo by 11am, as my flight to Frankfurt left at 1pm. The only flight from Munich on the same day that would actually get there in time was 300 € one-way, so absolutely out of the question. Should I go there earlier and spend a night in Oslo? Difficult. Oslo is a beautiful city, but also ridiculously expensive. The value for money is a lot better in other places. 

I started looking into places from where it is really cheap to fly to Oslo: Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki and ... Riga. Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki are not equally expensive to Oslo, but still pricey, so I figured I'd catch the 25€ flight from Riga to Oslo. Perfect. From my trip there in the fall of 2015 I already knew a few people there, and accomodation in the Baltics is affordable. Riga it was, and I figured I might as well stay a few days. I found an apartment near the center for around 80€ / 4 nights, which I believe is totally fair

Riga from above

Almost got arrested for this picture .. look forward to that story

.

How do I get to Riga though? From Munich? Again, too expensive. However, we have this awesome airline called "Ryanair" in Europe, and they offer low cost flights from less common airports, among them my hometown Cologne. So I booked another flight for around 40€ and just had to get to Cologne, which was easily achieved by a 19 € train ticket. 

Let's do the math: 350 + 25 + 40 + 19 = 434 € for a round-trip flight to LA with a 4 day stay in Riga and a one day stay in DC. You could do a lot worse. 

Pro tip #2: Be creative when designing your flight path! It may take some time and some thinking outside the box, but when you try a few different days (preferably during the week) and a few different destinations in between you can figure out a good way to travel.

Pro tip #3: Round-trip flights are almost always a lot cheaper than one-way flights. Be creative in how you use return trip! 

As of right now, I am sitting in my parents' house typing these lines. My trip has already started, and I am keen to report the other things that will happen to me along the way. 

Reasons why I am here

Why hello there, audacious reader. Thank you for making it here. You are probably here because somebody recommended this to you, you are a good friend or family member of mine or somehow found me via Google. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from – everybody is welcome!

Recently, I came to the conclusion that I’m not really happy with what I’m doing. Living in Munich has made me complacent: hanging out with the same people over and over again, visiting the same establishments, having the same routines, going to the same university, living in the same apartment. Every day is the same, and that leaves me uninspired.

Now, not everything is as dire as it seems. From an objective point of view, I am actually doing pretty well and have anything but a boring life. However, I have lost the sense of purpose in the things I am doing. No matter how well you’re off objectively, in the end happiness comes from within. It does not matter whether you are rich or poor, black or white, male or female – you are either happy with your life or you aren’t. Plenty of the people I have met on my travels to Africa and South America are incredibly happy – without knowing if they actually have something to eat the next day. Most people I know in developed countries are utterly unhappy and constantly complaining about everything.

I believe this paradoxon stems from two reasons:

1. Social confirmation. Most things that we do nowadays aren’t the things that we REALLY want to do – they are the things that society tells us to do. I am no exception to this. Did I really want to study management? I had no idea back then, and why I am rather content with my decision, I made the decision based upon what my friends would say. My other choices would have been nutritional sciences (“you’re never gonna make money with THAT”), geography (“certainly interesting, but only something for people who aren’t smart enough to do other things”) or psychology (“not a real science, you’re just going to be one of those who know everything better but actually are not contributing anything”). Those statements do not reflect my personal opinion, but are some that I have heard several times along the way. Nobody had anything to say against management, so I went with that.
2. It is human nature to adapt to others. That’s how our species survived for so long. All my friends get married so I should get married. All my friends work as consultants so I should become a consultant. All my friends are investing in real estate, so I should invest in real estate. I’m sure you see a pattern is. The question I asked myself – and that I also want YOU to ask YOURSELF: all my friends are doing it, but is it the right thing to do for me? Do not be afraid to do the things YOU want.
3.  The more you have, the more can go wrong. I like to call this “the iPhone paradoxon”. You certainly had this experience at one point in your life: you’re happy with your iPhone and have gotten so used to it that you started taking it for granted. All the sudden, you drop it and the screen breaks. Boy, will you be frustrated. On the other hand, if you had never had an iPhone in the first place, you would have never faced this frustrating event – thus being happier. You can apply this to basically anything in the world. During my stay in Rwanda, the location that we worked in didn’t have proper “toilets” in a European sense, but simply holes in the ground. I was concerned. Taking a dump in a hole every day for the next four weeks? Horrifying. So I went ahead and asked one of the locals if they had any “normal” toilets. He looked at me confused: “Sir, those are normal toilets. What else could a toilet look like?” Knowing that I could do better made me unhappy, whereas the local, who didn’t know better, was perfectly fine with the situation.

My unhappiness mostly came from Reason #1. I was (and still am) doing what most of my peers do. Apply for internships. Work hard for a volunteer organization. Study hard to I can get grades so I can get good internships so I can get good jobs. Nobody ever asked ME what I wanted to do. Eventually one of my friends did. That got me thinking. What have I always enjoyed in my life? What are the things that I would do 100% of the time with 100% of the effort? What are the things that I think about: HELL YEAH THIS IS AWESOME? The list is rather short (in no particular order):

• Competing hard on the lacrosse field
• Achieving personal success, however measured
• Long, deep conversations with good friends
• Traveling, meeting new people and getting to know new cultures
• Inspiring and teaching people
• Great sex with beautiful women
• Having a beer or seven with people I enjoy being around
• And finally … writing.  

I had done all these more or less in the past, except for one: writing. Which is why I am typing these lines right now. Knowing the way I work, writing will not just become a habit. You cannot adopt habits, you have to earn them. That is what I am trying to do throughout the next weeks. And this is where YOU come into play:

If you notice that I have not posted anything within the past three days, but you want to read more: LET ME KNOW. Write me an email. Text me. Call me. I don’t care, but I want your feedback. If you think all this is bullshit and I just wasted 15 minutes of your precious time – LET ME KNOW. If you are actually enjoying this – LET ME KNOW.

I will keep posting. At the very least, I will have a platform for myself to write.

Thanks for being here. I appreciate it!