Riga and around

we were couch surfing again in Riga and for the first time ever we didnt have to bum around the town wasting money. Our host Jean-Julien came to pick us up from the bus station! he took us to his flat, which was sick and his flatmate, the one who's flat it actually was (also french, sells pharmaceuticals, company pays for it) was rolling a joint. we smoked, talked, watched soem TV and then he was like, ok u are free now explore the town, get some dinner, the door will be open when u get back, he showed us a good bar to get CHEAP beer and a good club for thursday too. Pierre got some dinner at maccy Ds, I at Hesburger (the delicious baltic fast food chain) and then we headed to 'la belle epoque' or 'the french bar' as we called it. we sunk a couple of 2 quid litres of beer and then the place really got going, a few people came in, mpost of whom i dont remember, pierre started talking to some austrian bird who he later started pulling, after a bit he goes to me, after this one we'll leave so i'm like alrite, then he's taking a long time to finish cos of the bird, so i get another one, eventually he's like 'now that i've pulled a beanie, i don't really feel like clubbing' so i take his ear aside and, very drunkenly, i'm like (this is what he told me not what i remember) 'mate ur being well out of order, u PROMISED me that we would go clubbing, if she was serious, she would go clubbing WITH U, u made me buy another pint...' 'err what are u talking about...' eventually i get him an his beanie to come to the club but low and behold we dont get let in, because for the first time ever they only accept passport or driver's license, and me and teh beanie only have student cards. pierre's like (in the most sarcastic tone ever) THANKS matt THANKS... whatever them two go off, by this time i'm well on clubbing, so i ask teh bouncer what time th club closes, 6am cool that gives me 3 1/2 hours to get my passport and club, i return 20 minutes later and get in to find an emptying dancefloor, there are a few disgustingly beautiful beanies at teh front but i could tell they were cock teases from a mile-off, instead i start dancing with this older looking woman, maybe 25-30 cos she cant take her eyes off me, she's going back and forth between some man, her sensible choice and the young gun, ie myself. in the meantime i'm showing off my russian house dance moves with some fellow experts, and looking at teh screen of our dance floor, but, there is another screen thats full of ppl, after a while i realised its next door and is the RnB room which baltic people seem to love, every club u go, or every person u meet. after a while woman comes and dances with me again, and we get off, much to my disgust she is possibly the worst kisser i have ever got off with which goes against the general trend of older women, on top of that i realised she was probably the 12th, maybe 13th least attractive woman in the club. then the ever present question comes, 'how old are u' '19 but so what' 'i'm 28' blah blah blah ur soooo young blah blah blah.at about quater to five we leave and i'm like what do want to do, and she's like 'sleep', ok which way are u going home, 'this way' ' me too! lets go...' 'er... no i take a cab' her loss.

next day after sleeping on the floor cos pierre took the big section of the sofa, i couldnt fit on the big bit (yes he did get back before me, unsuccessful, she lived far away) we went into town. riga's old town, like tallins is ridiculously small so we did the only thing that interested us and went up a tower in a church to get a better view of the city, the views were nice and after a bit we came down and walked around a bit more but then we were satisfied we got some beers and cotched in the park in the centre for the afternoon. when we got back teh frenchie's were watching teh last french hope of the torunament (Monfils - pierre was going 'come on, my son' - get it?) get knocked out. i made some delicious leek and mushroom pasta sauce then me pierre and JJ went to the french bar for some more drinkies. after a litre or 3 we decided to go to a club, it was friday so we thought that any club would be good in the centre, we were wrong. we went to a club called nauticus (or something sea based) and found it had that annoying feeling of being half-full, we danced for a bit and then pierre decided he had enough and headed for essential but got caught up with soem latvians along teh way and went to another bar, me and JJ stayed on and danced with some latvians before a hen party AND a stag do turned up, after a while we got tired of it and went home.

The next day we woke up late and didnt really leave the house until the early evening, partly because we wanted to watch Anna Ivanovitch win, peng. the first time i went out was to get some felafel at what up until about 6 months ago was the only kebab shop in Riga (there were no turks or even central asians running it) and it was disgusting. the next time we left was to go and see teh kick off of the euros which was a really boring game between the Swiss and the Czechs, before the Portugal game i got some Hesburger and realised that everyone was wearing white! pierre was at MacDo and noticed the same thing. Anyway we watched the first half of the game at the pub where we were before where there was even worse clientèle than at Ryan's on Spurs game days. for teh second half we headed to a Stella pub just around teh corner which had a few more young people, including Julien, JJ's flat mate. portugal triumphed, and while we were there we found out why everyone was dressed so, something called White Sensation, a massive 12 thousand people rave just outside the centre, but tickets were 60 squids and u needed to be wearing all white clothes (the only white peace of clothing i have has a black power symbol on it ironically) of course that night we again headed to the french bar and met the best of the several stag-dos we had met in the Baltic including some ridiculously drunk welsh man with a lisp. he was like #i dont know how they do it in london but in wales we just get among it, you (me) are a hansome fella, and you (pierre) are... decent looking, get among it lads' (meanwile i'm thinking - but theres only like 3, 30-something women here and i'm trying to lower my mean average age...) later on some guy came up to me and was like 'Matt, do u live here or something?!' (i didnt know who he was). when the bar emptied out we evntually went home.

next morning we were awoken by JJ who told us he was off to Jurmala and that we needed to get out of the house because he was going to show us were to get the train to sigulda where we were gonna spend a night. we got the hour train and arrived in latvia's outdoor activity prime location. it has a bobsled track and a couple of pistes, which in itself is quite amazing seeing as it is only about 350m above sea level. we spent the afternnon on the beach in the meander of the river and then went into town for some food and to find a place to watch the footy, we spent the evening in a bowling alley, not bowling but watching telly and saw the two very boring opening games from group b, when we were leaving we saw that everybody had beer or was in teh process of buying beer, so i was like 'beach party please!!' but no, apparently sunday7 is just the night that all the silguldans have house parties, of which we wern't invited/coudn't find/hear. in the morning we went back up the chairlift and i had a go on teh summer bobsleigh which is basically a one man downhill rollercoaster which was pretty fun, especially as i didnt use the brake. we then got the train back to riga.

we needed to go back to riga to collect my card which my dad had sent to JJ at the french embassy because the postbox at his apartment was 'destroyed'. we thought seeing as we were in riga we might as well stay another night (well actually it was because there were no buses getting to liepaja in time for the france game) we checked into Friendly Fun Frank's hostel which had a really high rating on hostelworld and, most importantly, gave you a free beer on arrival! after watching teh france game we returned to find a university 'cricket tour', 48 people, with tour shirts, nicknames and all. "TOUR TOUR TOUR, HOW DO U LIKE IT? HOW DO U LIKE IT?" sounded out through the halls, chav girls with nicknames like 'bumfun' were getting felt up by cunts who had cut off the sleeves of thier tour shirts, while one fat arsenal fan who even pierre didnt like, kept on going 'ah come on lads, u fuckin yiddos, mickey mouse cup' one thing that FFF does is take everyone out to party as Frank told me himself but this meant going with our tour buddies, we went along cos the other other people from our hostel were going but guess what, we ended up at the french bar where we got talikng to some guys who we had met earlier and recommended the french bar to them. later on we went back to the club and i did some african dancing to soem african music which was strange music for a club in riga on a monday night. after half the people in the club had left we went home and the next day got the bus to Liepaja on the west cost.