A few years ago, I visited the same friend that I met in Munich. He had moved to Latvia to start a travel company, and I went there to check it out and just to visit him.
I first flew into Riga and then spent a couple days there with him checking out the city.
The Bremer Stadtmusikanten, a tale from the Brothers Grimm
The first night there, my friend and I went to some bars in the city. We had met another lady, and the three of us were hanging out. As the night progressed and more alcohol was consumed, my friend ended up getting into a minor scuffle with one of the bouncers at a bar. I think the bouncer thought we were too drunk (which we admittedly were), and the police actually ended up showing up and escorting my friend to the station.
The other lady and I weren’t sure what to do, so we just kind of hung out all night until sunrise while chatting on a park bench. My friend was then let out after he sobered up, and he called me, so we met up again. We were all exhausted, so we went to the hostel and slept most of the day away after that.
My friend and I then went to where he was building a vacation retreat near the city of Daugavpils. He’s got a pretty nice place in the woods, and it has quite a few amenities. We didn’t spend too much time there, though; rather, we rented a raft and sailed down the Daugava River for a couple days.
I didn’t really take a picture of the whole raft, but in the following 2 photos, you can see the different ends of the raft, complete with a table, shaded area, and a grill.
The river was tranquil, and we had a lot of fun just lazing around on the boat as we floated down the river. We also played a lot of games of Risk on my friend’s phone.
Camping on the side of the river. The mosquitoes were intense!
We got out sometimes and explored what was next to the river. Here was an abandoned housing complex from the communist era.
Some side creek we pulled over at
At the creek, we found some clay and decided to make some pottery and fire them up in our grill. My friend’s ashtray in the very back worked out. After my bowl, which is right in front of the ashtray, was stepped on and then baked, it exploded. One of the shot glasses exploded, and both the dice I made exploded in the grill. The other 2 shot glasses worked for a while, but then we decided to bake them a little longer and then 1 blew up. In the end we were left with 1 ashtray and 1 shot glass.
We stayed in this cabin for a night or two. Without too much else on the agenda other than relaxing, we played some drinking games with vodka and I got quite drunk. The next day was rough…
Just a random, crumbling house that caught my eye
Latvian forest
Afterward, we just hung out for a few days before going back to Riga, where I then caught my flight back to Germany.
It was fun visiting my friend in Latvia, and he runs a pretty cool operation. If you want to look into it and maybe check out Latvia, his website is http://www.latvia-outdoor.eu/.