I wish I knew how to quit you Peebs - Balt-back Mountain

(Originally Emailed: Jun 1, 2006 2:03 PM)

Just wanted to get that puerile gay joke out of the way once and for all before the review of last week's sojourn to the Baltics. Now thats out of the way ...

Bish's precis:

- I went to Estonia and Latvia

- I found our homeland, my SEG brother

- The museums were awesome

- All the cities were picturesque

- The nightlife was great, and the ladies are gorgeous

- Stairs are shizer

- There's not much that's scarier than a wild-eyed Eastern European fast bowling insomniac

- Peebs passed out in the middle of a private dance and was slapped awake by the stripper

- Go there

To the rest of you, after writing this, I've realised its incredibly long. The reason for that is the sheer number of awesome memories I have from last week! Below is an "Executive summary" of the whole spiel. Well done to anyone who gets to the end of the whole thing. I promise I'll make them shorter in the future!

Also - all the links here are to pics on my Bebo site. If you're not a member you may not be able to view all of them.

Highlights:

Nightlife: Nobody writes to the Colonel - an awesome joint for a drink open from 10pm (i.e. sunset) to about 4am. Just a great place with a great vibe; and Atlantis - nightclub in Tartu, jaw-droppingly good

Food: Wild Boar in Old Hansa in Tallinn Old Town; Soup - recovery entree of champions! Everything was pretty reasonable (mainly below Perth prices, except fruit juice)

Drink: A couple of exceptional beers - Saku Kuld and A. Le Coq (both Estonia) and Cesu (Latvia), and in Sigulda we found a french wine called Chateau Les Justices!

Sights: Museum of Occupation, Riga; Toompea, Tallinn; Raekoja Plats (Town Hall Square), Tallinn; St Peter's, Riga; Changing of the guard, Freedom Monument, Riga; Cablecar over the Gauja River, Sigulda

Tips: Find a Latvian on a Bender; Go to Tartu; Get "In Your Pocket" Magazines - they are awesome; See the old towns in the capitals and see regional towns.

There once was a man named Enis...

I touched down in Riga late in the afternoon on Sunday. After surviving the Ryan Air experience, the early signs were good. The taxi into town cost exactly 6.90 Lats. I found Peebs, we put down our luggage at the Argonaut Hostel and went out to discover Old Town (particularly the bars therein). By this time it was 8:30 or so, and we went to the bar on the ground floor of the hostel. mall place, a couple of people at the bar, we ordered a couple of pints and they cost about AU$5. We thought that was pretty reasonable, and then a leggy lady who was at the bar got up and started dancing. On a pole. We'd walked into a pole dancing bar - the signs were getting better! We had a chat with the lovely lady whose name was Enis. We got out and it was raining. Its difficult to find your way around Old Town Riga if you don't know it, and obviously even more difficult if it is raining and there's nowhere to shelter!

Anyway, we made our way to Orange Bar which was supposed to be pretty good. There were about four people in there when we got there. As I sidled up to the bar a bloke asked me if I was English. I said no, I'm Australian. He immediately purchased me a traditional Latvian drink, "Black Balsam." The drink is pretty hard to describe except to say that its seen as a bit of a touristy joke among locals. He mentioned his name was Marcus or Mark or something, but we immediately referred to him as Latvian Freddie Flintoff. We got chatting and he was celebrating the arrival of his second son ("My first son is the light of my life, but I don't want this one"). We chatted for a while there and as he was about to leave we invited him to our table.

Next thing we know we're back at the pole dancing joint we went to first, and smashing several more beers. While the ladies were all over us, we were having none of it and retired to our hostel, where I immediately regretted not having any dinner. We hit the hay at about 1.30am. Hey, Sundays are quiet in Riga.

Vai Tev Patik Skaistas Pilsetas Mers?

On Monday we arose fairly early, and did a quick run around old town Riga taking a couple of pics before getting on a bus to head to a town called Sigulda. Its an hour from Riga and contains a cablecar, Latvia's highest cave and largest grotto (sans Playboy bunnies, but with a busker doing a Beatles medley on accordian), a couple of old castles, and a bobsled track. It's a little town of about 10,000. We saw all the sights (and were looking forward to riding the bobsled track, but it was closed even though it usually opens in summer), and of course took pics. During the day we came across two remarkable discoveries at a cafe called the Black Cat. The first was our waitress who looked like a blonde version of Nat Hepburn and was thereafter known as Lat Hepburn (wish we'd got a photo). The second was on the wine list - Peebs' new favourite wine.

The only lowlight was the trip to the cave/grotto which consisted of about 400 stairs (and it was all upstairs on the way back).

That night we made our first visit to an awesome joint called " Nobody Writes to the Colonel." Bloke knows about this joint - definitely a highlight of the trip, its a late night bar with a very laidback attitude ( i.e. unlike nightclubs). We were a little surprised when we found Latvian Freddie there not long after we arrived - he came up to us and said "You said you were coming here tonight - I haven't slept since I saw you last night." There's not much that's scarier than a wild-eyed Eastern European fast bowler insomniac. Shortly after chatting with us, he declared "I'm going to find you some women." Sounded good - although the three girls he rustled up had a combined age of 55 or so ( i.e. 18, 18 and 19 - at best) - the six of us had a good night (they taught me how to say "Are you the mayor of Tidy Town?" in Latvian - the title for Monday's activities). My personal highlight was " When the Saints go marching in" being played by the DJ - it conveniently cleared the floor so I could strutt my stuff solo.

We followed that up with a trip back to the hostel, preceded by a trip downstairs. But Peebs was feeling sleepy (he passed out in the middle of a private dance and was slapped awake by the stripper) and we headed upstairs at 4:30 or so, ready for our 6:45 bus trip to Tallinn.

Tallinn... what a boar

I was looking good on about 75 minutes sleep, and the trip did not afford me much sleep (Peebs had all of the back seat though), so I hit Tallinn more than a little bleary-eyed. But we both toughened up and walked most of Tallinn's beautiful old town and the hilltop ( Toompea), both of which are largely pre-17th century. Its a pretty awesome city. We retired for a siesta before heading out that night. We went to a medieval joint called Old Hansa's where we had ... Wild Boar. It was genius, although the whole meal, which inluded juniper berries, onion jam, and all sorts of other medieval gear, was pretty rich. A good experience though (unlike the cinnamon beer we ordered and didnt finish).

After the events of the previous night, and with Club Hollywood the following night, we were quiet on Tuesday night and turned in at about 1.30am once more.

Stairways to Heaven

Wednesday morning and we woke up to find we'd seen almost all of the streets of Tallinn old town. So we headed to the Tallinn City Museum, which covered from about 1100AD to the present, and a amazingly diverse history, mainly of occupation of the city. I found the Soviet era section and the "Singing Revolution" particularly interesting.

Then stairs came back to haunt us. I will have nightmares about them when I dream of the Baltics. St Olaf's tower was the tallest building in the world in the late 16th and early 17th century, and there ain't no lift to the top of the spire either. The spire is now about 120m high and we were slightly below that, maybe about 90m or 100m up, and its one big spiral staircase the whole way. Difficult. Luckily Peebs and I are at the peak of our fitness. That said, the view from the top is pretty awesome, and we took a few pics while there.

We walked around a little more, ate some awesome steak overlooking the Town Hall square and got a photo of me knocking on the door of the world's only Gothic town hall (looking for the mayor - thereby trivialising it into a prop for my comedic benefit). We then headed to Kiek in de Kok - a tower/museum that is part of the old city walls (and more stairs!). Funny name, funny model of Cher (sitting on the canon), and some good older stuff about the city's defences there, and a nice view.

Another siesta, more in anticipation of Ladies Night at Club Hollywood and the bus trip to Tartu the next day rather than anything else, and then right into it. Club Hollywood, was, to put it simply, jaw-droppingly beautiful. Baltic women are famed for their looks, and they get dressed up for this place, so you do the maths. Kudos to Collo and JY for suggesting this. The only criticism was that its getting a bit too well known now, and there were a couple of pommy stag nights there, including the drunkest man in the joint, who we called Mr Bo-shambles.

One night in Tartu makes the hard man humble

We got in at about 4:30am, and caught an 8am bus to Tartu , Estonia's university town and cultural heart. Its a city of about 100000, of which about 20% are students. We looked around the city (the long way, thanks to some creative navigating by Peebs), including looking at an old KGB jail, which was awesome. Check out a solitary confinement cell which is 0.8m by 0.8m and you're fed once every three days. Happy days.

Also, a production of Chess was on its way to Tartu, hence the title. Another needed siesta and then it was off to a couple of pubs (at one of the Oscar Wilde came on to me... poof) and then Atlantis, a club right on the river. No cameras were allowed inside, so its as difficult to describe as a near-death experience, assuming you're going to heaven! It actually out-did Club Hollywood, although the music was shizer in one bar. An awesome night though.

Peebs and the Pole

In the days preceding Friday we'd been researching travel from Tartu to Riga. Turns out there were two buses. One at 6:45am and one at ... 6:15am! It was always gonna be tough with the nightclub closing at 4am. In the end, after knocking on the mayor's door in Tartu, Peebs got some kip and I stayed up until the bus came. We got the last bus, and got in to Riga at 10am with minimal sleep as the roads were too rough. We went straight to sightseeing again, and the highlights were the Museum of Occupation (from WW2 to 1991 - on the right in this pic) and St Peter's spire , which oversees the old town. I took a panoramic series of pics from the viewing deck. The other highlight was that the spire was acessed by a lift!

It was time for a lengthy siesta and then for us to become a menage a trois - with the addition of Dan Barnao. We got some food at John Lemon (as we had on Monday night) and then over the road to the Colonel. We headed from these to a club called Club Essential. It was three storeys and about ten bars of mediocrity, and at the top we found ourselves in a fairly small two-level bar which showed heaps of 80's music videos and was quite call but a bit expensive. But there was an undoubted Russian Mafia element there. So we only stayed about four hours, leaving at 5am. And why would we go home then? We headed to a casino and lost a total of about 200 Lats in an hour (of which Barnao lost about 150). And why head home then? We headed to another pole dancing joint where the quality was so bad that Peebs decided to unbutton his fly and show the girls how its done on the pole. We finally hit the hay at about 7am. An awesome night all-in-all (if only for our own amusement).

The Colonel - always finger lickin' good!

So after a late start and a final look around the old town (and a trip to the markets which showed some imaginative ways to cut up a pig), it was time to fire up one last time, at the Colonel again. Once again the nightlife was rockin, and we somehow managed to avoid the stag parties but not the locals (the poms on the weekend there are out of control on stag parties). Another great night at the Colonel, and we rocked home at 4am, allowing me three hours sleep before getting up and heading home.

So all in all an awesome trip! Apologies again for the length of the email. Well done to anyone who made it to the end. I promise I'll make them shorter in the future... much shorter!

Cheers, hope you're all well

Rosco