Exiting Estonia and Lazing in Latvia…

The Lillekula Hotel, great value for money, in a quiet neighbourhood with safe parking to boot...!!

After my visit to Tallinn’s old town, I decided to do a little preventative maintenance on the Big Fella…

Getting down to some overdue maintenance in Tallinn...

I topped up the oil, and re-glued the stone guard that he had broken in Addis Ababa with that silly maneuver into the wall…

I also tightened up the screws holding the wind deflector onto the windshield and the windshield onto the console frame. They had begun rattling after a few sessions on the cobblestones of the European villages and towns we had ridden through…

I then checked the tyre pressures and found that I had lost almost 20% of the pressure I usually kept them pumped to, and got the compressor out of the pannier to pump them back up to where they needed to be…

I puttered around for another half hour or so, pretending to know what I was doing, and ignoring the Big Fella’s sniggers every time I reached for another spanner to tighten up a bolt or nut…

Speak about “ye of little faith”…!! We will see who has the last laugh when he starts losing bits along the way…!!

I spent the evening planning my route down to Istanbul in Turkey, where I would be completing the European, and third leg of my tour… I emailed the list of countries in the order I wanted to ride them, to my mate Tibor in Budapest to see if he had any info that might be useful to me, before I plugged my route into Gi-Gi’s tiny brain for her to work with…

Tibor replied in a very short space of time, advising that there was no way I could enter Albania from Serbia, as there was a little disagreement between these two countries regarding Kosovo and their claims to independence… More political clap-trap…!! I would now have to enter Albania through Montenegro…!!

Tibor also agreed that my planned route looked like that of a “drunken snake”…!! I might have to “straighten it up a bit” as time goes on, depending on the time it is taking me to get to Istanbul, and how much I am “enjoying” the weather on the way down… The long term forecast along my route has convinced me to keep my rain suit handy…!!

One of the places I wanted to see was Bucharest in Romania… I quite like “Budapest to Bucharest” as a title for a post… It has a pleasant ring to it, don’t you think…?? I might have to replace it though, with something like “Bugger Bucharest”, if I am running out of time…!!

My planned route through Central and Eastern Europe...

My Japanese friend, Yasuo Naruse, was most impressed with the Big Fella...

Just as I was leaving the Lillekula Hotel, a Japanese businessman who was also staying there came over to chat, and we spent a pleasant half hour discussing my journey, as well as one that he had undertaken many years ago…

He had hitchhikes from Tokyo, through Russian and into Europe, to satisfy his own “wanderlust”… We laughed and joked about the difficulties we had experienced and before I left, I took a snap of him with the Big Fella… Nice meeting and talking to you Yasuo… Domo arigato…!!

A short day in the offing... Riga, capital of Latvia, is spelt differently in Estonian, and had me guessing for a minute...

Often when I am leaving a major city, I spend more than just a few minutes taking an unplanned tour of the area before finding my way onto the correct road leading to my next destination… Leaving Tannin in Estonia was different…

I managed to find my way onto the correct road leaving the city, and despite having to travel across the complete width of Tallinn in order to get onto the E4, I managed to catch every traffic light on green and motored out of town without stopping once…!!

We skirted Lake Ulemiste, and then headed southwest to Kanama before boring south to Parnu, on the Gulf of Riga, which forms part of the Baltic Sea…

Parnu was exactly halfway on my route between Tallinn and Riga in Latvia, and we rode through a flat and fairly featureless landscape for most of the way… Agriculture forms the backbone of the Estonian economy, and maize, potatoes, linseed; or flax as it is known here, and vegetables, seemed to be the main crops… Small herds of dairy cattle also grazed contentedly in the green fields bordering the highway…

This old abandoned barn and farmhouse, was one of many I saw along the road to the Latvian border...

But It's my first visit...!!

Much of Estonia is forested, and although none of it looked as if it was properly planted, pruned or thinned, I did see a number of small bush-mill operations, cutting and sorting logs that were too small for lumber, and probably bound for a pulp or paper mill somewhere…

Parnu is supposedly the “tourist capital” of Estonia during the summer months, and while it looked like a nice place to visit, I did not see enough of it to convince me to ever spend more than a day or two there…

Ever since arriving in the “Baltic States”, I have looked for signs of the old Soviet influence, and found some of it on the way to Parnu, as well as in the lesser visited parts of the town…

What was I doing in these “lesser visited” areas…? Getting temporarily lost, of course…!!

From time to time, Gi-Gi attempts to prove her worth, by giving me the silent treatment, and “forgetting” to activate the speakers in her system… She usually chooses to do this, when I am riding slowly enough to hear her “advice”…

Like when we are cruising through the busy streets of a town or city, and I am doing all I can to avoid cars, trams, buses and pedestrians…!! Trying to remain upright and avoid an unplanned for collision in all of this, is difficult enough without having to still peer at her screen in order to figure out when the next turn is coming up…

A split second is all it takes for face to meet cobblestone…!!

In Parnu she decided to go “all quiet” on me again, and I took a “wrong” turn while trying to avoid a date with an undertaker… I found myself in a tree-lined back street and there came across some very old buildings that most certainly date back to the old Soviet Era…

This old wooden apartment building and another next to it, was in need of a bit of TLC...

Wooden apartment buildings in much need of a lick of paint and a sack of nails to keep the boards from being blown off their walls; small engineering and motor “workshops”, operating out of concrete bunker-like structures without any doors or windows… Piles of rubble and other rubbish littered the area, and metal wrecks stood silent in empty lots, weeds growing through their frames… This was an area that had been forgotten by those intent on developing the country into something resembling what we were used to in Western Europe…

But having said that, huge progress has, and is being made… The main streets in the town have been transformed into modern replicas of any you will find in Europe… Boutiques, banks, restaurants and stores… They’re all here… And these streets are as clean as any I saw in Scandinavia, which was for me one of the most litter-free areas I have ever ridden in or seen…!!

Cozy little pub on the main road leading out of Parnu...

I had crossed the Parnu River on my way into town, riding over an old metal bridge, from where I saw a number of large barges and fishing trawlers, all moored in the harbour on the river, which leads out into the Baltic Sea… Judging by the rust that enveloped most of these boats, the fishing hasn’t been that good lately…!!

Entrance to the Alevi Kalmistu, the large cemetery in Parnu that also houses the Independence Monument...

Although Latvia is a member of the European Union, it has not as yet adopted the Euro as an official currency, and many of its citizens think it should stay that way...!!

The E4 ran south, alongside the Baltic, although I hardly ever caught a glimpse of it through the stands of Aspen, Pine and Birch trees that grew right down to the water’s edge…

After looking at my map, I had hoped to be riding along the seashore, enjoying sweeping vistas of where the water met land, but I was to be disappointed in this regard… The road bore away from the coast and continued through farmland all the way to the Latvian border and beyond…

The border with Latvia is marked by the little village on Ikla, and a huge open area where trucks were lined up waiting for inspection by a group of Custom’s officers…

Normal traffic bypasses all this and but for the prescribed slowing down (and a little jink to avoid one of the officers who stepped into the road), I was in Latvia…

A name like that deserves to have a line drawn through it...

The E4 became the A1, and if anything was in better condition that its predecessor… We picked up the pace, crossing the Salaca River which splits the town of Salacgriva in two, and then the Guaja River, before running between two big lakes that empty into the Daugava River, on whose banks the capital city of Riga is located due south for Riga…

The first establishment I stopped at was Frank’s Hostel, but the climb up to the third floor on a narrow winding staircase already had me dead against the place before I discovered that there was no place to park the Big Fella besides out in the busy street where I had left him…

Just behind the hotel, I could see the tall spires of a church or Cathedral, and judging by some of the rooftops of the building surrounding it I knew I was close to the old part of the city… I rode into an area whose cobblestones were as rough as a badgers bum, causing me to stand up on the pegs to avoid cracking my teeth and having a my rear spring inserted into an orifice that was not made for that sort of thing…!!

Clearly the road builders of Riga had not been properly supervised in “olden times”…!! It was the “Road to Dodoma” in Tanzania all over again…!!

Parked outside the Centra Hotel in Riga, Latvia...

The entire area has been converted into pedestrian walkways, and cars are only allowed into the area to drop off passengers and luggage and then are chivvied back out of it by police officers, who patrol the area in pairs, dressed in fluorescent green jackets… After a few blocks of teeth-rattling, sphincter clenching riding, down narrow roads and even narrower alleys, I came out onto a little square and in front of me, beheld the Centra Hotel…

That would do for me…!! After all the ducking and diving I had been doing to avoid hordes of tourists in the last ten minutes, I had had enough of the cobblestones and wanted the ride to come to an end, even though the hotel’s glass fronted interior and the minimalist furnishings in the reception area, spoke of a price that I probably would not enjoy…!!

Latvia has a very strong currency, which I discovered when the receptionist quoted me a price of 48 Lats for a night…

“How much is that in Euro…?” I asked, thinking that the price in Lats seemed very reasonable for this modern and up market-looking hotel…

“That is €66.00 per night, sir…!” she said sweetly, ignoring the pained expression that had crossed my face… “We have only two rooms available and if you want a room now, I suggest you take it, as we are certain to be fully-booked in a few hours time…!” she continued…

Just then a guy walked through the glass doors, dragging a massive suitcase behind him…

“Good afternoon sir!” the receptionist greeted him, “Do you have a reservation…?”

“Er… No…” answered the guy, and before he could say another word, I heard myself saying, “I’ll take it, I’ll take it…!!” There would be no negotiating today…!! That much was for certain…!!

The parking area where the Big Fella spent a night being closely guarded... At R135.00, I should hope so...!!

Once I had lugged my kit to my room, I was advised to ride the Big Fella down the road to where the “safe” parking was located… It was barely a block away, and on the site where a building had recently been demolished to make way for a new hotel that would be completed in a few years time.

This much was explained to me in a mixture of English and Russian, by the guy who used an old caravan as an office, and swore blind that this was the safest place to park in the city…

He asked me to step into the caravan to see for myself, and there, I found no less than six small TV monitors, all hooked up to cameras which showed every inch of the parking lot…

“You see..!!” he proudly said, hands on hips… “And for you a special price of just 10 Lats for the 18 hours you want to park here…!!”

“That’s R135.00 !!” I squealed…

“I do not know vot is zis “Rand” you are talking about, but to park here, you vill need 10 Lats…!!”

And that was the end of those negotiations as well…!! I paid the money over, at least secure in the knowledge that my Russian friend would be keeping a close eye on the bike, and walked back to the hotel to shower before going out for a stroll around the old town…

Riga is known as the capital of Art-Nouveau Architecture, and the differing shades of colour that these buildings are painted in are something to see… Every shade of pastel is represented here, and I discovered that many people come to Riga for this specific reason…

Many of the buildings are of the Art Nouveau style of architecture....

On every street corner, crowds were gathered with their guides, camera lenses pointing up at the buildings that were being described… My interest piqued, I tagged along with one group who had an English speaking guide, and got a 20 minute education on Art-Nouveau Architecture, for free…!!

.... and painted in a wide range of pastel colours...!!

Art Nouveau buildings are almost always asymmetrically designed with archways and curved surfaces. Statuettes are mounted in alcoves and every other nook and cranny. Most of the facades of the buildings we took in, had interesting bits of history attached to their origins, and if this type of architecture is your scene, then Riga is the place to visit…!!

The Riga Cathedral, built in 1211, with it's belltower that I used as a landmark to avoid getting lost in the narrow streets of Riga's "old town"...

The main entrance to the Cathedral... I think the City Fathers need to start budgeting for a little renovation of this beautiful Cathedral...

Two blocks from the hotel, stands the Riga Cathedral, one of the most recognizable landmarks in all of Latvia.

It was built in 1211, and modified and expanded upon over the next few centuries… It is also known as the Dome Cathedral, although it has no dome to speak of…

This name comes from the German word for Cathedral, Dom… Once again, the narrow street prevented me from getting a full picture of this magnificent, (but crumbling in places…!!) old Cathedral…

It drizzled for most of the evening, and a cold wind blew off the Baltic, making my time out on the cobblestones not as pleasant as I had hoped it would be…

It was however, a very interesting time I had, and in better weather conditions, I would have spent more time exploring the area… Close to the hotel were a few pubs with interesting names, and judging by the amount of people who entered them, very popular with locals and tourists alike…

Who knows what goes down after dark in Riga...!!

On closer inspection, I was surprised to discover that this was not a pet shop specialising in cats...!!

I wasn't sure if the guy in the sign had been shot, or hadn't enjoyed the ones he had...!!

Some of the bars had names that had me blushing...!!

Apparently mushrooms are the favorite item on the menu here...!!

Clever advertising for an Italian Restaurant...

Looks expensive, huh...?? And that's exactly what it was...!! A chicken breast stuffed with mozzarella cheese, and a large ball of rice...!! Washed down with a Stella... All came to an eye-watering R 175.00 !! And, I was still hungry afterward...!! Lucky I have that stash of Snicker Bars, eh...!!

I ate at a little Belgian restaurant around the corner from the hotel, where a patio had been extended out over the pavement and into the street… The waitresses tried to convince me to sit inside, probably because they were too cold in their skimpy uniforms, to venture out onto the patio…

Inside the restaurant, a large flat-screen TV was showing a football match, and I did not want this interfering with my experience of the old town, so I insisted on sitting outside in the cold and the wet, to enjoy my meal…

An American couple joined me outside for the self-same reason, mumbling about the TV spoiling their dinner…

The meal was delicious, albeit a bit on the small side, and afterward I left the waitress a decent tip for the trouble she had gone to, to make me as comfortable as possible, including brings me an extra cushion to sit on, and a blanket to wrap around my legs…

Yeah, it was that cold…!!

Down the road from the hotel was a multi-storeyed shopping mall, which was abuzz with the trendy folk of Riga… Seems this is where all the yuppies hang out before taking to the bars and clubs in the area… The bank in this centre stays open until 9.00pm, and I took the opportunity to change all the foreign currency I had in my wallet, into Lats…

I have been carrying Sterling, Krone from three different countries; Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and Kroon from Estonia around in my wallet, and was now finally shot of all of it…

Riga’s town centre is crawling with security guards… In every corridor a pair of them stand together, watching the crowds intently, occasionally speaking into their hand held radios… Surveillance cameras operate on every floor, throughout the building…

I have no idea what the crime situation is here in Latvia… I certainly did not for a second feel unsafe walking through the darkened streets back to my hotel, but I guess they have a reason for the very visible security presence…

Or perhaps in Riga, some things haven’t changed…

Sign says it all...!!!

GBWT 2010