Let me preface this by saying that in no way are these meant to be taken 100% seriously. There are some places where I'm obviously having a bit of fun. So if something seems overly ridiculous, chance are it's because I was writing it to be ridiculous. I live here, too, y'know.
Somewhat more extensive than originally intended, here's a list of cannot's and should-not's for Riga/Latvia. The list will be modified/added on to as items are remembered, brought to my attention, or their statuses change.
1. You cannot or should not drink the tap-water, unless you KNOW the place has a filter. Ask to see the filter, or a receipt for purchase/installation of the filter if said filter is not in a clearly visible location. Even if said filter truly exists, you may want to ask for boiled water instead.
2. You should not pay the bus attendant for a single ticket with anything bigger than a 1 lat coin, unless you really really want to get back a handful of copper and the cold shoulder.
3. You cannot get a full night's rest, unless you live somewhere surrounded by NOTHING. The people in the apartment above mine have been hammering on something starting at 8 A.M. every weekday and Sunday, since last September.
4. You cannot sit on the grass in public places. Seriously, there are signs, and you probably have to pay a hefty fine if you are caught doing so. And tourists may wonder why the grass is so pretty. FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY it is permissible to sit, sleep, stand and roll on the grass in the city parks in Riga! This offer is only good for the month of June and is a test to see whether or not the people of Latvia can "handle" the responsibilities that come with being allowed to sit on grass. I don't know...one stray grass stain and some crazy person might snap and try to burn the mother down.
5. You cannot find a decent cup of coffee at a cafe without an all-out search or at least with insider information. Latvia is not a coffee nation. I realise there are cafe's called "Coffee Nation", but other than a pleasing ambiance, free 15-minute WiFi cards and good pecan pie-cake, there really isn't much to it. Insider information: All Capuccino (K. Barona, Centrs, and right next door to Lidojosa varde) has coffee that is, by leaps and bounds, more like coffee should be. Index Cafe not only has cheap and very decent sandwiches, but also serves up a fantastic espresso shot, or anything with espresso in it. They also have a drip-coffee machine, which is, apparently, VERY RARE in Riga. Rare as in, like, it's the only one we've seen.
6. You cannot get from point A to anywhere within two blocks of point A in under 20 minutes if you're (quite literally) trapped in a motor vehicle. Your best options are to walk or bike.
7. You cannot read a single restaurant menu without laughing, especially if you are fluent in the English language and/or have a degree in literature/English/writing.
8. If you listen to the "mainstream" radio stations, you cannot go a single day without hearing music from one of the following artists at least five times and preferably doubling up on at least one of the songs: Mika, Robbie Williams, The Sugababes, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, The Backstreet Boys, Rihanna, Madonna.
9. You cannot and should not start crossing the street without looking both ways several times (that goes for any country), or start crossing the street the moment the little man turns green. Although some cars stop, the general mentality seems to be "If there are 10 or less people on the crosswalk the road's as good as clear".
10. You cannot win with ATMs. If you want one 10 and one 5 to make 15, you will get three 5s. If you want two 10s to make 20, you will get a 20.
11. You cannot commute to work in the morning without smelling alcohol on at least 5 people around you. You cannot go a single week without seeing a person stumbling around completely inebriated at a seemingly abnormal time of the day.
12. You cannot get a bad serving of potatoes. Anywhere.
13. You cannot "finally" get rid of all of your small change (1s and 2s) with a clear conscience because, as Murphy's law would have it, the next time you make a cash purchase you're going to wish you had held on to something.
14. You cannot buy alcohol after 10 P.M.
15. You cannot get home using public transportation after 12 A.M. or before 5 A.M.
16. You should not assume that, even after living in Riga for 6 months, you know how to get to your apartment by car. Because you totally don't. You know how the BUS or the TRAM or the TROLLEY gets to your house, but not how a car might achieve the same thing.
17. Some taxi drivers will, after being told what your destination is, say "Right, so which way should I go?" and then get angry at you for telling them to go the wrong way, which only happened because you thought you knew how to get to your apartment by car. But you don't. (ref. No. 16)
18. You cannot go a single day without running into or seeing someone you know - excluding colleagues. Even if you hide out in your apartment all day, but make a short trip to the store, you'll probably randomly bump into someone who decided to randomly stop at the grocery store tucked away in your labyrinth of a residential community.
19. You cannot be served at the bank (or other similar places) without a numbered ticket. If you took the wrong type of ticket, it's not their problem. If you were given the wrong type of ticket by an actual person, it's still not their problem.
20. You cannot buy letter envelopes by the box. But you can buy them by the "packet". I finally noticed them in a pen/pencil/stationary store I go to now and then. Problem solved.
21. You cannot get soy milk in your coffee at a cafe. If you ask for soy milk, the only response you will get is a blank stare.
22. You should not dry your laundry at a laundromat. It costs around 6 USD for one small load of laundry.
23. You cannot see a play, opera, or ballet in Riga that does not include some kind of random, psychedelic or otherwise awkward-moment dance or scene.
24. You cannot drink in public, as in sitting on a park bench sipping a bottle/can of booze. However, it seems that if said bottle/can is concealed in a paper/plastic bag, regardless of how conspicuous the concealment is or isn't, the act is ignored.
25. You cannot attempt to take care of any bureaucratic documents or business without being sent to X number of offices, given X amount of telephone numbers to call, X amount of forms and applications to fill out. Once you have completed the aforementioned tasks, you cannot attempt to take care of the documents/business without repeating the process.
26. You should not forget to stamp ("compress") your tram or trolley ticket. If ticket-control personnel board the tram or trolley and find that you have not compressed the ticket, you will be fined.
27. You should not cross the train tracks at any point other than the indicated crossings. If you get caught, the fine is probably around 30 lats.
28. You cannot get large, plastic grocery bags for free.
29. You cannot easily recycle plastic or glass. Most of it is just thrown away with the rest of the trash.
30. You should not dispose of still-lit cigarettes directly into metal trash bins. The trash inside WILL start on fire. I regret not having my camera with me, because it's not every day you pass a burning metal bin.
31. If you want to have a quick meal, you should not eat at a restaurant where there is a middle-man, e.g. a server, between you and the food.
32. Even if a car is backing up slowly, you should not assume that the driver is actually looking back, looking in the rear-view mirror, or even aware that his/her vehicle is backing up.
33. You cannot leave work early on a Friday and expect to make it out of the city centre in a timely fashion because everybody else has the same plan.
34. You cannot use public restrooms for free, unless you are in a larger shopping centre where the door is not monitored very carefully.
35. When planning on using a public restroom, you should not assume that there will always be a toilet seat, a rim to the toilet, or even an actual toilet. (Most places now have normal situations, but there are the few exceptions where there's not much to nothing)
36. You cannot buy hand sanitizer. We have yet to see it in stores.
37. You should not, absolutely SHOULD NOT piss on the Freedom Monument. If you do you are unbelievably childish and should have your passport taken away (if you are a tourist) because you obviously are incapable of respecting the culture and history of other nations. If you are a local doing so... what's wrong with you?
38. You cannot touch the guards standing by the Monument. Or maybe it's "you should not". I've never tried or seen anyone try to do so.
39. You cannot buy/find "standard name brand" medications, such as Tylenol, Advil, Pepto-bismol, etc.
40. You cannot cross major streets in logical places because crosswalks are not logically placed along major streets.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Week of Entertainment Pt.2
My week of entertainment PLUS! continued. It stops at Wednesday the 28th, so don't get too excited.
Wednesday the 21st I met up with some people in Livu laukums and saw folklore group Vilkaci perform. Figures our friend Edgars would be in the group - there seem to be very few folklore groups that he's not a member of. It was a laid-back performance for the "grand opening" of Zelta filings, this beer-garden restaurant bar that basically changes its name every few years. The evening consisted of Vilkaci performing a few songs, then the increasingly more inebriated Host talking and then talking about how "if no one else wants to say anything theeeeeen I guess it's back to me!" Vilkaci is the folklore group that's supposedly known for not only singing, but also for gearing up and having old-time one-on-one combat shows. The first two guys fighting had a couple of clean rounds, finished with a truce handshake-hug. The next to guys fought like little monkeys. Swords and shields swinging all over the place, cheap shots to the head and groin. They finally went with the handshake-hug, but not before slamming each other in the helmet with the butt of their swords.
Thursday... Thursday I went and visited the relatives I had stayed with last fall (Agra & Co.), had a nice chat and some tea, then went home. It wasn't so much a night of entertainment, but a night of unwinding with some dog-therapy included (they've still got Doro).
Friday I don't remember what I did. There's nothing written in my calendar, so there's a good chance that Ilze, Julija and I met up like usual and decompressed after another hellish week. By decompressed I mean cocktail hour.
Saturday was Eurovision. This year I have surprisingly little to say, only that I'm a little disappointed that Dima Bilan won, considering his performance was... not really that spectacular. I'm sure the song is wonderful on its own, but how can the guy NOT be reaching for points when he has three-time Olympic figure skating champion Plushenko twirling around next to him? I have to say that Bilan's 2005 Eurovision song was actually better than this one. Maybe next year more than four countries will get themselves in gear and put out an act that they think has a chance at winning. I have to agree with the consensus that this year's contest was pathetic.
Who knows what happened Sunday. I think I did some work and then went to buy dish soap.
Monday nothing happened. Monday night I realised it had been a week since our dog Kimene had died and I spent my final hours awake in a crap mood.
Tuesday I once again headed out to Vienibas gatve and saw the daughter of the relatives with whom I stayed perform in the year-end recital of her music school. Another low-key and heartwarming concert, with free admission to boot :)
Wednesday was the big night for "Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat". I've never seen the performance in any language before, but Julija assured us that it was exactly the same, choreography included, except the words were in Latvian. The musical was enjoyable enough and an interesting change from ballets and operas.
Week of entertainment ovah.
Wednesday the 21st I met up with some people in Livu laukums and saw folklore group Vilkaci perform. Figures our friend Edgars would be in the group - there seem to be very few folklore groups that he's not a member of. It was a laid-back performance for the "grand opening" of Zelta filings, this beer-garden restaurant bar that basically changes its name every few years. The evening consisted of Vilkaci performing a few songs, then the increasingly more inebriated Host talking and then talking about how "if no one else wants to say anything theeeeeen I guess it's back to me!" Vilkaci is the folklore group that's supposedly known for not only singing, but also for gearing up and having old-time one-on-one combat shows. The first two guys fighting had a couple of clean rounds, finished with a truce handshake-hug. The next to guys fought like little monkeys. Swords and shields swinging all over the place, cheap shots to the head and groin. They finally went with the handshake-hug, but not before slamming each other in the helmet with the butt of their swords.
Thursday... Thursday I went and visited the relatives I had stayed with last fall (Agra & Co.), had a nice chat and some tea, then went home. It wasn't so much a night of entertainment, but a night of unwinding with some dog-therapy included (they've still got Doro).
Friday I don't remember what I did. There's nothing written in my calendar, so there's a good chance that Ilze, Julija and I met up like usual and decompressed after another hellish week. By decompressed I mean cocktail hour.
Saturday was Eurovision. This year I have surprisingly little to say, only that I'm a little disappointed that Dima Bilan won, considering his performance was... not really that spectacular. I'm sure the song is wonderful on its own, but how can the guy NOT be reaching for points when he has three-time Olympic figure skating champion Plushenko twirling around next to him? I have to say that Bilan's 2005 Eurovision song was actually better than this one. Maybe next year more than four countries will get themselves in gear and put out an act that they think has a chance at winning. I have to agree with the consensus that this year's contest was pathetic.
Who knows what happened Sunday. I think I did some work and then went to buy dish soap.
Monday nothing happened. Monday night I realised it had been a week since our dog Kimene had died and I spent my final hours awake in a crap mood.
Tuesday I once again headed out to Vienibas gatve and saw the daughter of the relatives with whom I stayed perform in the year-end recital of her music school. Another low-key and heartwarming concert, with free admission to boot :)
Wednesday was the big night for "Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat". I've never seen the performance in any language before, but Julija assured us that it was exactly the same, choreography included, except the words were in Latvian. The musical was enjoyable enough and an interesting change from ballets and operas.
Week of entertainment ovah.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Week of Entertainment
Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to point out about how cool Stockholm is: let's say you're running for the bus but on the way realise a) you don't have enough change or b) you don't have your wallet with you. If you don't have a cell phone, you're completely up creek, but if you do, you can send a quick SMS to the transportation number and buy a ticket that way. Spiff, no?
Okay, on to the week of entertainment. Why week? Because it's an approximate calendar week, leave it be. Entertainment? Weeeeeell, it all started on Saturday morning when I picked up my new computer.
That's right, this post is coming to you from the half-comfort of my own couchbed.
So that's just entertainment on its own - I now have my "land-line" back, my "TV" back, all of it. Saturday was spent hanging around Riga centre in the lovely weather (don't worry, Sunday to today has been either cloudy/rainy/depressing or sunny and cold, by May standards), looking at the photography display (A Day in Latvia, 1987 and 2007) set up in Doma laukums, and then heading home for a quick nap and a bit of tinkering with a project I had gotten for the weekend, before heading back into the centre for Museum Night.
Museum Night! Not all as exciting as I would have thought it would be, but it was definitely interesting seeing how absolutely packed the buildings and streets could be. Museum Night happens once a year in Latvia, where basically every museum in Riga and other major Latvian cities is open until the very wee hours of the morning. I doubt that the museums see that much action (I'm talking huge lines of people waiting to get inside) any other day. I started late, met up with some friends (who were very [Slava!, much??] plastered with round stickers in all kinds of colours, showing which museums they had been to see) and took a quick turn through the National Art Museum and the tiny yet shiny Latvian jewelry museum.
Sunday I did nothing but wash laundry, watch three movies on my computer (entertainment) and take a quick trip with my flatmate to the resident Nelda grocery store (entertainment - I still don't know how to get there and back from our apartment. I rely on my flatmate to steer me through the labyrinth that is our neighbourhood).
Bad choice! Monday I was overly stir crazy, even borderline hysterical. I think I've really learned that, as much as I'd love to and as wonderful as it sounds to just sit and do jack for an entire day, I pay for it dearly with what could be considered an energy hangover. I have too much of it the day following and almost need to cry after sitting at my desk for 8 hours. Anyway, during the day Monday a friend sent me an SMS saying that music artist Imants Daksis was having a CD release concert. For free. So I totally went. The only thing I knew about Imants Daksis was from what I read of a relative's album review of Daksis' last album; the music wasn't necessarily bad, it was just weird.
This was beyond me as the first "set", in which he played songs from his new album, were really good and, despite some of the texts being a bit more than I'm used too, completely normal. The guy sitting in front of us was a normal, long-haired (Daksis ditched the bald head and long beard image, apparently) indie musician. THEN he got into his old stuff, which was, in all sense of the concept, AN AWKWARD TIME. The guitar was still amazing, but I can't say I was feeling the lyrics about "burnt witches" and "massacred Indians", although I thought that the general message of the song was important. There was a message, really.
Tonight I'm heading out to go see Chekov's "The Seagull". It's supposed to be a short play, and I've checked with my grandfather, who approves of it, so I'm expecting a decent evening. Keeping my fingers crossed (or holding my thumbs)!
Addition: The Chekov play wasn't bad, but I didn't really get it. I'll have to read an English version of it to see if it makes sense then. Tomorrow evening we're going to stop by Livu laukums to see Vilkaci perform. At this point, anything to keep my mind off of the new loss of a seriously excellent family member, who was like a figurative sibling to me. R.I.P., Kimene. This is one of the rare times in my rounds of Europe where I regret not being home.
Okay, on to the week of entertainment. Why week? Because it's an approximate calendar week, leave it be. Entertainment? Weeeeeell, it all started on Saturday morning when I picked up my new computer.
That's right, this post is coming to you from the half-comfort of my own couchbed.
So that's just entertainment on its own - I now have my "land-line" back, my "TV" back, all of it. Saturday was spent hanging around Riga centre in the lovely weather (don't worry, Sunday to today has been either cloudy/rainy/depressing or sunny and cold, by May standards), looking at the photography display (A Day in Latvia, 1987 and 2007) set up in Doma laukums, and then heading home for a quick nap and a bit of tinkering with a project I had gotten for the weekend, before heading back into the centre for Museum Night.
Museum Night! Not all as exciting as I would have thought it would be, but it was definitely interesting seeing how absolutely packed the buildings and streets could be. Museum Night happens once a year in Latvia, where basically every museum in Riga and other major Latvian cities is open until the very wee hours of the morning. I doubt that the museums see that much action (I'm talking huge lines of people waiting to get inside) any other day. I started late, met up with some friends (who were very [Slava!, much??] plastered with round stickers in all kinds of colours, showing which museums they had been to see) and took a quick turn through the National Art Museum and the tiny yet shiny Latvian jewelry museum.
Sunday I did nothing but wash laundry, watch three movies on my computer (entertainment) and take a quick trip with my flatmate to the resident Nelda grocery store (entertainment - I still don't know how to get there and back from our apartment. I rely on my flatmate to steer me through the labyrinth that is our neighbourhood).
Bad choice! Monday I was overly stir crazy, even borderline hysterical. I think I've really learned that, as much as I'd love to and as wonderful as it sounds to just sit and do jack for an entire day, I pay for it dearly with what could be considered an energy hangover. I have too much of it the day following and almost need to cry after sitting at my desk for 8 hours. Anyway, during the day Monday a friend sent me an SMS saying that music artist Imants Daksis was having a CD release concert. For free. So I totally went. The only thing I knew about Imants Daksis was from what I read of a relative's album review of Daksis' last album; the music wasn't necessarily bad, it was just weird.
This was beyond me as the first "set", in which he played songs from his new album, were really good and, despite some of the texts being a bit more than I'm used too, completely normal. The guy sitting in front of us was a normal, long-haired (Daksis ditched the bald head and long beard image, apparently) indie musician. THEN he got into his old stuff, which was, in all sense of the concept, AN AWKWARD TIME. The guitar was still amazing, but I can't say I was feeling the lyrics about "burnt witches" and "massacred Indians", although I thought that the general message of the song was important. There was a message, really.
Tonight I'm heading out to go see Chekov's "The Seagull". It's supposed to be a short play, and I've checked with my grandfather, who approves of it, so I'm expecting a decent evening. Keeping my fingers crossed (or holding my thumbs)!
Addition: The Chekov play wasn't bad, but I didn't really get it. I'll have to read an English version of it to see if it makes sense then. Tomorrow evening we're going to stop by Livu laukums to see Vilkaci perform. At this point, anything to keep my mind off of the new loss of a seriously excellent family member, who was like a figurative sibling to me. R.I.P., Kimene. This is one of the rare times in my rounds of Europe where I regret not being home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)