Depart on your journey. Wherever it might take you.: February 2016

Saturday, January 23rd 2016, 09:40, Berlin-Schönefeld International Airport, 30 minutes prior to departure of Ryanair flight FR2599 to Riga, my roommate and I run into the terminal building, rushing through security as fast as humanly possible, only to arrive at the gate at the very minute they announced boarding for our flight. We took a few quick selfies and boarded the plane. For me it was unbelievable, what had just happened, I boarded the flight to my 30th country. At 18 years old, I have managed to tour the world enough to say that I have been to 30 countries (A map can be found here, and will be updated as my life goes on). It was also an honor to be able to do that with my dear roommate, because traveling in twos is always more fun.

Landing in Riga was pretty special, as we flew over the baltic sea and then approached the mainland where, of course, the runway was located. We got out of the plane, got bus tickets and made our way to downtown. As a little treat, I got us a Junior Suite in the city centre of Riga in a four-star wellness hotel, so we did stay in style, as far as the experience of the city goes. The whole day we spend walking around the city, whilst we spend the evening in the spa of the hotel, heating ourselves after the -10°C maximum temperature that day. Needless to say, the Soviet Winter hit us hard.

What I liked most about Riga is that the historic downtown differs so much from other cities around the globe, as I can't really compare it to Western Europe, because it looks nothing like Prague, Paris, Rome etc. However at the same time, it doesn't look anything like Moscow or Belgrade either, so it's not Eastern European either, which leaves me puzzled. I'd say it's a mix of both, as there are Catholic and Orthodox churches around town, and they're all really beautiful. Also, in the historic centre, you don't really see many scars of Riga's Soviet past, for that you have to take a stroll to the Latvian science academy, which looks like one of the Seven Sisters Skyscrapers in Moscow.

My roommate wanted to get the Soviet look (also we were freezing) so we got ourselves these hats with the fur on top. (In Russian they're called Ушенка) The funny thing though was that we believed that you can buy them in souvenir shops, whilst you can just get them at any random store (H&M, Reserved etc.) in any shopping mall. We completely forgot that what seems so special to us is completely normal to them, so we went ahead and pulled off the Latvian style.

As far as my knowledge of Latvia goes, it's not as Latvian as one would expect, according to statistics, around 45% of people in Latvia are ethnically Russian, almost half. Thus, Russian is widely spoken across the country, which was good for me, but I did get some stares when speaking Russian in Riga. In general, the country seems to be very culturally tied to Russia, despite its independence, just due to the sheer fact that so many Russians live there. Most of the times I'd ask whether a person at a counter was speaking English or Russian, they'd usually tell me both. They would say it in Russian though. Only one woman aggressively answered English, so I concluded that she was Latvian. My stay was unfortunately too short for me to find more about the situation in the region, but I will definitely do my research and my traveling in the future.

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