Saturday, April 08, 2006
A Latvian Experience
Trying to catch up on sleep still from the weekend so I'm spending this Friday night at the Internet Cafe so I can have a reasonably early night.
As you all know I spent last weekend in Latvia. It was awesome. Was only there 2 nights but saw so much. In my earlier email I described the place as third world, well in certain parts this is true, but when I spent the last day walking every square inch of the city I realised it's a pretty nice place, and I can imagine how nice it would be in Summer. The city has all these nice gardens and rivers throughout, and the buildings are more developed than the residential ones I saw on the way to our hostel. The country was only freed from the Soviets control in 1991 so you can understand why it's so under-developed across majority of the country.
The nightlife is crazy. Nothing gets started till 1am, we drank in the 24hr bar at the hostel, and went out as a big group each night. Got to bed around 7:30am both mornings and intentionally set my alarm at 10am so I didn't waste the days. I felt ok both days except the last day, woke up fine, thinking I've got through a mad weekend with not a bad hangover, but as the day went on I got worse, it was a delayed hangover or a really bad batch of Maccas that I ate cos at 8pm, 12 hours after drinking, at the airport I had a chunder! Louse had one the night before so I felt it only necessary to join him. Got some good shots of some clubs we went to I'll forward when I get the chance.
Highlight was shooting. We paid 33 Lats to be taken down into this soviet bunker and got to fire 6 rounds of a 9mm handgun, shotgun and an AK-47. I never realised just how powerful these things were, and how heavy they were. Was great fun, got a video clip of me shooting the AK, stay tuned. We got to keep our targets, I had a few on line, we also tried to keep a selection of shells, but customs wouldn't let us take them. Luckily for me, when unpacking my bag on Tuesday I found an AK shell down the bottom, so I'll have to post it home cos I won't get it through customs over here.
Anyway, better be going, thanks for all your emails, keep them coming, I love keeping up to date with everything that's going on. I read every word you all write.
As you all know I spent last weekend in Latvia. It was awesome. Was only there 2 nights but saw so much. In my earlier email I described the place as third world, well in certain parts this is true, but when I spent the last day walking every square inch of the city I realised it's a pretty nice place, and I can imagine how nice it would be in Summer. The city has all these nice gardens and rivers throughout, and the buildings are more developed than the residential ones I saw on the way to our hostel. The country was only freed from the Soviets control in 1991 so you can understand why it's so under-developed across majority of the country.
The nightlife is crazy. Nothing gets started till 1am, we drank in the 24hr bar at the hostel, and went out as a big group each night. Got to bed around 7:30am both mornings and intentionally set my alarm at 10am so I didn't waste the days. I felt ok both days except the last day, woke up fine, thinking I've got through a mad weekend with not a bad hangover, but as the day went on I got worse, it was a delayed hangover or a really bad batch of Maccas that I ate cos at 8pm, 12 hours after drinking, at the airport I had a chunder! Louse had one the night before so I felt it only necessary to join him. Got some good shots of some clubs we went to I'll forward when I get the chance.
Highlight was shooting. We paid 33 Lats to be taken down into this soviet bunker and got to fire 6 rounds of a 9mm handgun, shotgun and an AK-47. I never realised just how powerful these things were, and how heavy they were. Was great fun, got a video clip of me shooting the AK, stay tuned. We got to keep our targets, I had a few on line, we also tried to keep a selection of shells, but customs wouldn't let us take them. Luckily for me, when unpacking my bag on Tuesday I found an AK shell down the bottom, so I'll have to post it home cos I won't get it through customs over here.
This week me and Kate booked trips to Paris leaving 29th April, Prague leaving 20th May, Dublin leaving 2nd Sep, and we are off to Belgium and Amsterdam for 4 days over Easter.
Anyway, better be going, thanks for all your emails, keep them coming, I love keeping up to date with everything that's going on. I read every word you all write.
# posted by Barb @ 5:30 pm 
