The main language is Latvian, but you will find that most receptionists in hotels and hostels and other establishments will have a basic understanding of English. It is a fascinating city, which can be compared to other European places such as Prague. I found that…Read More

The main language is Latvian, but you will find that most receptionists in hotels and hostels and other establishments will have a basic understanding of English. It is a fascinating city, which can be compared to other European places such as Prague. I found that the place was slightly more comprehensive compared to Sofia in Bulgaria, and on a par compared to other European destinations such as Cologne, Prague, Brno. I also find that the value of the restaurants in Riga is not as good value compared to Sofia which I have learned from my limited travel experience.

The currency is latvian lats, and when I visited I bought the currency from foreign exchange sites in London, and received a rate of 0.79 latvian lats for every £1 that I exchanged. The exchange rate was not good like it was around 2 years ago, where 1 latvian lat was equal to £1, then again life changes fast.

All of the hostels, restaurants were non smoking places and we had to smoke in designated areas, or in the streets far from buildings. Drinking alcohol is not allowed from what I saw, so this was restricted to drinking sociably in alcoholic premises and restaurants. The city in the centre has a fabulous old town area, which has lovely town houses, it has a really nice park especially where the National opera house and there is also a nice hotel there as well. There are a few suspension bridges that are interesting to look at which has a reasonably big river. The city centre also has fine looking churches, museums, town houses. The art nouveau area of Riga was very interesting to look at.

I was told by a regular visitor to Riga, that there are plenty of things to be aware of, including pickpockets which represent the slightly miserable picture of the city. I did not carry too much cash and also tended to travel light and nearly always was wary of people asking me things in Russian and also in English.

Hostels from experience are very cheap in terms of price, the facilities from what I saw are basic, which would be expected. If I return to Riga, I suppose the best option would be in selecting a good hotel, or a serviced apartment.

I was also informed not to accept invitations from strangers posing as introducers to pubs and nightclubs, as often they will try to entice you to a pub in central Riga, and will raise the price of the drink to extortionate levels. I also was told to go to good clubs including the Four White shirts Latvian club as they played good music and the prices of drinks were reasonable, and this was one of the places to go during the evenings. For drinking Paddy Whelans pub in the old town is interesting, but the type of crowds this place draws in, is somewhat off putting, as there are many loud people who sometimes act in a funny way. Paddy Whelans pub is worth visiting at least for one drink, but the price of Guinness here is 2.90 latvian lats, which is a premium compared to other pubs and restaurants.

For cigarettes people from the United Kingdom are allowed to bring just one carton of cigarettes, but the prices of these in Latvia are very cheap indeed.

Another aspect of my visit, was that I learned and saw programs broadcasting ice hockey, and the Latvian people in general tend to watch this sport regularly and with a lot of interest. This is perhaps their most popular sport.

Regarding the transport to the city centre from the airport, use the bus number 22 priced at 0.70 sentimes around £1, or use the faster and easier Airport express van which charges 3 latvian lats, but this will save you around 10 or 20 minutes as the number 22 bus uses a more scenic route and stops at a few bus stops on the way to Central Riga.Close

"If you only have time to visit one provincial town in Latvia then it really ought to be Kuldiga," advises my Rough Guide to the Baltic States. With no train link, bumpy roads and buses from Riga taking anything up to three and…Read More

"If you only have time to visit one provincial town in Latvia then it really ought to be Kuldiga," advises my Rough Guide to the Baltic States. With no train link, bumpy roads and buses from Riga taking anything up to three and a half hours to make the journey, you'd need to have plenty of time on your hands to make the trip worthwhile.

With a population of just over 13,000 you can easily navigate your way around all of Kuldiga's sights in a half day trip. From the bus station, a kilometre south of the town centre, follow Skrundas and Jegavas ielas until you see the whitewashed spire of the Holy Trinity Church, built in the 16th century like most of the buildings that survived the Great Northern War between Russia and Sweden. Between here and Kuldiga's pedestrianized main street, Liepajas iela, are a jumble of two-storey, half-timbered yellow and beige buildings including the oldest surviving wooden building in the town, first built in 1632. Liepajas iela itself doesn't have much of interest except for cashpoints and the wooden Stender's restaurant, which has outdoor seating, a reasonable selection of food and Cesu beer on tap for only ninety santimes a half-litre. Unless you're hungry, however, you're better off continuing straight on along Baznicas iela in the direction of St Catherine's Church and Kuldiga District Museum.

Currently undergoing external reconstruction, Kuldiga's small museum is housed in a pavilion first built as the Russian exhibition in the Paris Exposition Universelle. Although there isn't much to see inside, it's worth taking the short walk through the park, built on the spot where Kuldiga's castle once stood, to reach it, if only for the view of the river Venta from the observation point next door.

Flowing into the Baltic at Ventspils, the river forms what is thought to be Europe's widest waterfall in Kuldiga, 270-metres across (but only one and a half metres high) from rock face to rock face. You can easily walk across the rocks into the middle of the river, though the best views are over the bridge on the other side. Just don't expect anything spectacular.

Once you've seen the waterfall and the few streets that make up the town centre, you've seen pretty much all there is to Kuldiga. Although it's a relaxing place to break a journey between Riga and Ventspils or Liepaja (both of which are just over an hour away by bus), if you really want to see the Latvian countryside on a daytrip from the capital then Sigulda and the Gauja National Park make much more interesting options.Close

At three and a half hours each way, Latvia's third biggest city is just out of reach of a daytrip from the capital. This is a good thing. On the Baltic coast, with a good collection of hostels and one of the country's…Read More

At three and a half hours each way, Latvia's third biggest city is just out of reach of a daytrip from the capital. This is a good thing. On the Baltic coast, with a good collection of hostels and one of the country's best stretches of white-sand beach, Liepaja is a place that deserves a more leisurely look.

For short-term visitors the city can be split into three sections: the beach and seaside park, the compact Old Town a few hundred metres inland, and Karosta, a run-down suburb four kilometres north that was once a self-contained naval base. The train and bus stations are right next to each other in the direction of Karosta, eight hundred metres north of the Old Town. Follow the tram lines down Rigas iela to the centre, crossing over the old military shipyards, now converted to house the Fontaine Hotel, the city's busiest nightclub and a 24-hour takeaway restaurant.

Musical notes in the pavement guide you around the centre's main sights, though there's not much in the way of must-see places to visit: a wooden building where Peter the Great once stayed, some red-brick churches and Latvia's biggest guitar, mounted on a plinth in front of the First Rock Cafe. You can walk around most of them in half an hour. Slightly more interesting is the Liepaja Museum, on Kurmajas prospekts halfway to the beach, which is free to get into and has an eclectic collection of sculptures in its grounds. South of the centre, the Liepaja During the Occupation Museum is even smaller than the one in Riga, and only worth seeing if you've got time on your hands.

Liepaja's beach is almost worth the bus ride on its own, a long, quartz-white strip of flat sand backed with dunes and the occasional wind turbine. It's been awarded an EU blue flag for cleanliness for each of the past eight years, though you'd have to be hardy to fancy a dip in the sea even at the height of summer.

But it's Karosta that really makes Liepaja unique. Built on the orders of Tsar Nicholas and used by the Latvian navy, the Nazis and the Soviets, it's a bleak open-sore of a place, a peek into life behind the Iron Curtain. Empty apartment buildings line the roadside, old men sit on bus stop benches, speaking Russian as if the Empire had never fallen. St Nicholas's Maritime Cathedral towers above a dusty wasteground. Nearby, Karosta Prison is the one thing in Liepaja that you really must see.

It's a quiet place, Liepaja, lacking the nightlife of Riga, the natural beauty of Sigulda or the traveller friendly vibe of Ventspils. But it'd be a shame to miss it.Close

The westernmost town in Jurmala, Kemeri is an hour from Riga by electric train. After its interwar heyday as a spa resort and later use as a Soviet sanatorium, the town has been neglected since Latvia regained independence and now has a forlorn, abandoned…Read More

The westernmost town in Jurmala, Kemeri is an hour from Riga by electric train. After its interwar heyday as a spa resort and later use as a Soviet sanatorium, the town has been neglected since Latvia regained independence and now has a forlorn, abandoned air. The remains of the spa are a fifteen-minute walk from Kemeri station along Tukuma iela, although nowadays the prime tourist attraction is the 6,000 hectare Kemeri National Park, to the north and south of the town centre.

When I think back to Kemeri, it'll be the sound of barking dogs that I hear first, as loud and constant as car horns in Beijing. What little traffic there was moved too quickly on the narrow roads. Church bells rang from invisible spires. Everywhere was the foul, rotten-eggy smell of sulphur.

I walked aimlessly for the first half an hour, finding nothing but dust, before stumbling across what's left of the spa park. Two men in wheelchairs were arguing by a weatherbeaten statue, turned black by the angle of the sun. Paint peeled from walls, metal rusted, the lovers' island had tarpaulin over the roof and the only visible sign of restoration was a scribbled line drawn through the graffiti. Through the trees I could just make out of the Colgate-white shell of the Kemeri Hotel, slowly being restored. To the right, an old woman filled a plastic water bottle from a concrete spring.

A signed path started on the far side of the hotel, finishing at Kemeri National Park Visitors' Centre where a boardwalk, raised half a metre out of the boggy Black Alder swamp, winds around the woodland like a toy railway. It's currently the only path open to visitors, the longer walks south of the station closed for repair. The temperature was up to twenty degrees. I sat on the spongy grass reading, waiting for my train. Close

It's half past twelve and the Lielvarde train sits idling on platform six. Hawkers stand by the door speaking quickly in Russian then moving down the carriage, selling nothing. The sun beats through the dirty window, passengers step languidly across the glinting metal tracks, over…Read More

It's half past twelve and the Lielvarde train sits idling on platform six. Hawkers stand by the door speaking quickly in Russian then moving down the carriage, selling nothing. The sun beats through the dirty window, passengers step languidly across the glinting metal tracks, over the tannoy the announcer draws her vowels out until each new station begins to sound like a list of complaints.

It's an hour later when we finally get to Lielvarde and the end of the line. The guidebook describes it as "the first town upstream from Riga worth spending some time in," which doesn't say much for the places I passed on the way. There were neither maps nor signposts at the station so I started walking in the general direction of the Daugava, Latvia's longest river, turning left along the street behind the station building until I hit the junction with Lāčplēsa iela, named after the mythical Latvian bear-slayer created by the 19th century poet Andrejs Pumpurs, who grew up in the town.

There are only two things to see in Lielvarde and both are on Lāčplēsa iela. Turn right at the crossroads and continue five minutes past the Elvi supermarket for Udevena pils, a reconstruction of a 12th century Liv wooden stockade which looks like an adventure playground situated in a scrapyard. Open Wednesday to Sunday from April to November it didn't look worth the two lats entrance fee so I contented myself with a walk round the walls and the views of the nearby river, evidently a popular backdrop for wedding photographers.

At the other end of town, twenty mintutes the other side of the Maxima supermarket, the Andrejs Pumpurs Museum fills what once was Rembate Manor. The museum itself is located in the old gardener's house but what's outside is much more interesting: a whitewashed Lutheran church built in the 1930s, wooden totem pole sculptures of characters from Pumpurs's epic poem, and the ruins of Lielvarde Castle, built on the site of a conquered wooden fort by the crusading Knights of the Sword in 1205 and destroyed in turn itself three hundred years later.

I'm not sure why anyone would ever end up in Lielvarde unless, like me, you've spent long enough living in Riga to want a break from the city. If you ever do though, there's enough here to keep you occupied for a couple of hours.Close

In 1890, fearful of the threat from German naval power, the Tsarist authorities began construction of a planned military suburb four kilometres north of central Liepaja. Called the Port of Alexander III, it was a fully autonomous community with its own electricity power plant,…Read More

In 1890, fearful of the threat from German naval power, the Tsarist authorities began construction of a planned military suburb four kilometres north of central Liepaja. Called the Port of Alexander III, it was a fully autonomous community with its own electricity power plant, sewage system, cathedral and schools and was home to Russia's Baltic fleet. A line of fortifications was built to protect the port from attack and a swing bridge, based on drawings made by Gustav Eiffel, was constructed to link the suburb with Liepaja.

Abandoned at the outbreak of WW1, when blockships were sunk at the port entrance, the area was taken over by the independent Latvian state and was renamed Karosta, a contraction of kara osta, or naval port. During the Soviet Occupation it housed a submarine fleet and was off-limits to foreigners. When the Soviet military finally left in 1994 the Russian civilian population stayed behind. Nowadays Karosta is showing its age. Bleak and dilapidated, it's an open-air museum to the end of monarchy and fifty years of totalitarian rule.

Bus numbers 3,7 or 8 run from central Liepaja to General Baloza iela, passing a red-brick tower built in 1905 to provide drinking water to the military population. At the junction with Pulkveza Brieza iela you'll see the unmistakeable gold onion domes of St Nicholas Orthodox Maritime Cathedral towering above wasteground and empty-shell apartment blocks. One of the largest Orthodox churches in Latvia, it's consecration was attended by Tsar Nicholas himself. Used for Lutheran services during the inter-war Latvian republic, the Soviets turned it into a cinema and sports hall, bricking up the cupola in the process. In 1994 it was re-consecrated and is now used for Orthodox services.

A few minutes walk away is Karosta Cietums, the only military prison in Europe to be open to visitors. Guided tours can be booked year round and are highly recommended. The same organisation runs torchlit tours of the labyrinth of tunnels that make up the North Forts at the far end of the suburb.

The area around the cathedral is run-down, decaying grey apartment buildings with gaping holes where windows once were, and red-brick ruins of old naval buildings. The remaining population is mostly Russian, civilians left high and dry when the Soviet military were forced to leave and the Latvian navy decamped to the city centre three years later. Take away the big cars and you could be back in the 1980s, old women chatting on bus stop benches and men wandering dead-eyed and aimlessly with beer and empty shopping bags.

Whatever else you do in Liepaja, Karosta's a place you really shouldn't miss.Close

A little under two hours east of Riga on the last trainline to Estonia, Cesis is easily manageable as a daytrip from the capital. Well-preserved and quiet, it's touted as one of the most authentically Latvian towns left after half a century of Soviet…Read More

A little under two hours east of Riga on the last trainline to Estonia, Cesis is easily manageable as a daytrip from the capital. Well-preserved and quiet, it's touted as one of the most authentically Latvian towns left after half a century of Soviet occupation, "so homely and cosy that a visit here seems like a holiday to a kind Latvian granny," if you believe Cesis's official tourist guide.

No matter whether you arrive by bus or by train, you'll end up half a kilometre east of the main square, Vienības laukums (Union Square), where you'll find the town's Victory Monument, a concrete obelisk in the middle of two roads. Celebrating the 1919 Battle of Cesis, in which a combined Estonian and Latvian force defeated the remnants of the Baltic German army, it was demolished by the Soviets in the 1950s and only reconstructed after independence.

The monument marks the centre of Cesis. Behind, the Kolonna Hotel has a basement restaurant (the entrance is down a flight of steps on the side of the building) with point-and-order Latvian food, pizzas and pints of the local Cesu beer on tap. Turn left and you'll enter Rigas iela, which has been Cesis's busiest street for the past eight hundred years. Halfway down, Rigas opens out into a square dominated by the 13th-century church of St John's (50 santimes entrance), which contains the tombs of several Knights of the Sword, the crusading German knights who first conquered pagan Latvia. Below St John's, the cobbled streets and one-storey wooden buildings of the old town are worth a few minutes of exploration.

Cesis's premier sight, however, is the remains of its 13th century castle. Left in a ruinous state after the Russians took it in 1703, a combined ticket for the castle and the adjoining Museum of History and Art costs 3 lats. Both are interesting enough, though nothing spectacular. If you don't want to pay, follow the monumental staircase down into Castle Park where you can scramble up the banks to the castle walls and have a peek over the top for free.

On its own, you can see all there is to see in Cesis in two or three hours. The only reason to stay overnight is that along with Sigulda - thirty kilometres back towards Riga - it makes the best base for exploring the Gauja Valley, Latvia's hiking, rafting and skiing capital. In winter one of the country's best ski slopes is located just three kilometres outside Cesis itself; in summer there are a multitude of forest and riverside hiking trails. Close

Although it's less than an hour from Riga by spruced-up electric train (padded seats, flowers daubed on the windows and EU stars above the doors), there aren't many reasons to spend time in Jelgava. Smashed about in both world wars, scrapped over by…Read More

Although it's less than an hour from Riga by spruced-up electric train (padded seats, flowers daubed on the windows and EU stars above the doors), there aren't many reasons to spend time in Jelgava. Smashed about in both world wars, scrapped over by Baltic Germans and bombed by the Soviets, it's now little more than a commuter town for Riga, the kind of place that guidebooks dismiss in half a paragraph or less.

Arriving by train, it's a ten-minute walk to the little town centre and the bus station (straight ahead out of the station and take a left at the Orthodox Cathedral). There isn't much to see: the red-brick Church of the Holy Trinity, a statue of inter-war Latvia's first president and a mildly diverting Museum of History and Art occupying the spaces between supermarkets and an indoor shopping mall with half a floor of shoe shops.

Across the road from the bus station, and directly opposite the shopping mall on Driskas iela, Silvu is a point-and-order restaurant with basic food and cheap beer on tap. The tourist information office is right around the corner, diagonally across from the bus station, though for some reason it's closed at weekends.

Jelgava's biggest attraction is the 300-room baroque palace built on the banks of the River Lielupe by Rastrelli, architect of St Petersburg's Winter Palace and the Mariynsky Palace in Kiev, ceremonial home to the Ukrainian president. It looks pretty forlorn nowadays, stuck by the side of a main road and used as lecture halls for students at Latvia's Agricultural University. If the main gate's open, there's a small museum and a crypt inside the courtyard, which could be enough to justify a couple of hours if you desperately need a change of scenery from Riga. Otherwise, these days Jelgava's best left to the commuters.

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From the moment you step down from the train, Daugavpils feels very much like the back end of nowhere, one of those dour, end-of-the-world places still endemic in the old Eastern Bloc. The last jumping-off point before the Belarusian border, the station building's stab at…Read More

From the moment you step down from the train, Daugavpils feels very much like the back end of nowhere, one of those dour, end-of-the-world places still endemic in the old Eastern Bloc. The last jumping-off point before the Belarusian border, the station building's stab at monumentalism is neutered by a departures board listing four trains a day, half of which were returning to the capital. It's Latvia's second city, though the lingua franca on the slush-bound streets was Russian (Latvian speakers make up just 17% of the population, only slightly ahead of Poles).

Straight across from the station, Rigas iela begins. The town's pedestrianized main street, it has lots of attractive early-20th century architecture like the inter-war House of Unity and, at the far end, a small History and Art Museum featuring reproductions of work by the locally born Mark Rothko. Other than that, there wasn't a great deal else to see beyond the 19th-century fortress, a grid of decaying Soviet Aviation barrack buildings inside red-brick walls built to repel Napoleon (they worked, for a while). Our 20 santimes were taken by a man in jeans and a leather jacket with a half-smoked cigarette wedged between his teeth. Over his shoulder, a rusted playground looked as forlorn as the city centre sign saying Work in UK. Hanging above a locked-up office, it wasn't apparent whether it was an advertisement or a cry for help.

Before leaving we ate at Gubernators, a posh cellar-pub on a corner opposite the city's university. Meat and chips cost under 3 lats; half-litres of beer were just 80 santimes. It's not as pretty as Riga, but Daugavpils is a whole lot cheaper.

Train rides from Riga take around four hours. Return tickets are just under 10 lats.Close

The proud Baltic city of Riga has fought many battles in their struggle for independence. First it was the invading red army of the Soviet Union. Next came the Nazi’s, followed again by the Russians. Many perished in these struggles and the damage caused is…Read More

The proud Baltic city of Riga has fought many battles in their struggle for independence. First it was the invading red army of the Soviet Union. Next came the Nazi’s, followed again by the Russians. Many perished in these struggles and the damage caused is still evident, especially in the harsh stone faced looks of Communism that many still inherit. Sadly it seems another conflict is quickly engulfing this historic urban centre, taking it further into the gutter than ever before. This threat isn’t from old enemies. Instead a new crisis, just as potent, is looming its ugly head; English drunkards.

You could say these morons have already taken a few giant steps towards victory, most notably by stopping the cities Independence Day celebrations in 2006 when one intoxicated Englishman decided that the Freedom Monument, the centrepiece of celebrations and a symbol of the nations past tortures, was the perfect place to relieve himself in front of watching publicans and TV cameras alike.

Stag and hen parties now fill the streets of the city’s old town, a UNESCO World Heritage site, with many locals retreating to the quieter bars on the outskirts, away from scenes that I can only describe as an utter embarrassment to the country of my birth. The only natives left seem to be stunning prostitutes cashing in on intoxicated lusts of love, and skinhead members of the Latvian mafia who seem intent on eradicating unsociable and unacceptable foreign behaviour by all means violent. I can’t really blame them to be honest. If I was the Latvian cultural minister, a ‘slaughter of the stag’ initiative would be the first thing on my agenda.

After arriving at Riga International Airport, catching a bus into the city centre and checking into my hostel (Argonaut Backpackers, http://www.argonauthostel.com/) I picked the closest traditional restaurant for my evening meal. Upon entering I sheepishly edged my way to the bar and in my best Latvian asked the bartender if he spoke English. Upon finishing this innocent little question the whole bar erupted in the kind of laughter only savoured for idiots who state the obvious. When you watch other ‘holiday makers’ ask for food and drinks in thick northern English accents without any hint of trying to learn the host language, you realise what a dumb question I asked.

As I sat back and enjoyed the live snooker being shown on the large screen plasma TV, I was faced with the surreal notion that this could be a restaurant anywhere in England. Even my traditional Latvian fair of sausage and mashed potatoes seemed vaguely familiar. Conversation was free and fast -flowing amongst fellow guests, and I certainly felt like rejoicing when overhearing a boasting Bolton lad proclaiming in a loud brash accent of his randy exploits with a hooker the previous night. As he continued in a shrieking pitch, his friends, open mouthed and listening intently, nodded and clapped like excitable school children at every lurid detail that left his foul mouth.

With a long days travel already behind me I decided an early return to my hostel was needed. If I was expecting an early night I was gravely mistaken and certainly wasn’t ready for antics I never envisaged when booking into accommodation voted eighth best in the world by Hostel World.

Although the hostel clearly states no stag parties are allowed, birthday parties were deemed perfectly acceptable and I found myself opposite eight strapping young gentleman from the Dublin vicinity. I remember admiring their camaraderie spirit at managing to squeeze into a room supposedly sleeping four. I’m not normally one to moan but being kept awake until 7.30am by these birthday perpetrators obviously believing in the well known urban myth that sleeping is indeed cheating was not one of my expectations. After hours of endless spook knocks, naked corridor runs, and listening to the harassing of female guests with the highly original chat-up line of ”I’m in the IRA”, I really thought things couldn’t get much worse. It did, with the ingenious idea of a waste basket placed outside the bedroom door as a makeshift toilet. Walking an extra ten metres to a selection of real lavatories was certainly out of the question for their spaghetti legs and blurred vision.

Bloodshot eyes and a room smelling of vomit and cider was something I hoped would disappear quickly, as I left the hostel, watching the cleaners puzzled face to what the liquid substance sprayed against the wall and over the waste basket could possibly have been, and which was now dripping down her apron from a hole in the bag. Like Jekyll and Hyde, Riga is a stark contrast by day. With the majority of tourists left nursing hangovers, the early morning streets seem eerily silent with only a handful of hardened locals willing to brave the freezing temperatures.

Riga is a very stylish and affluent city, even if venturing outside the touristy old town area. European fashions of scantily clad hot-panted women walk hand in hand with the old Communist icons of head scarves and aged fur coats. It’s not hard to fit most of Riga’s beauty within a single days worth of walking, exploring the narrow cobbled streets of the old town. The central market housed in and around the Centraltirgus, four huge Zeppelin hangars and one Europe’s largest markets for me was the highlight, getting the chance to see the local variety of foods on offer. These included fresh live eels, salmon caviar and a wide array of wild cranberries, mushrooms and animal furs for sale.

It’s quite easy to get bored with the various churches, architecture, Noveau artwork, and religious buildings on offer, with St. Peters and the Dome Cathedral being the best. Scaling the heights of St. Peters Tower allows immense views over the old town of Riga and well beyond towards the shipyards and forests surrounding the city. After taking in other historical sights of interest such as Swedish Gate, where condemned men walked through on the way to execution, the House of the Blackheads, Three Brothers and of course the Freedom monument, it doesn’t leave that much more to be seen. If there is still time, a trip to the Latvian Museum of Occupation is certainly worthwhile and probably the best museum in the city.

After a full days worth of activities, another Latvian feast was needed to revive flagging energy levels from the lack of sleep of the previous night. After debating whether to order a whole pigs leg I decided on the cheaper dishes of grey peas, fried rye bread with garlic, sauerkraut soup and raw herring. This was all swallowed down by the horrendous tasting local Black Balsam liquor, a taste similar to that of soy sauce mixed with vodka. In hindsight, I think a single pig leg would have been a tad tastier.

With a free Saturday and not interested in paying for any sexual exploits I decided upon a trip to Latvia’s only English pub, the only place in the city where the Rugby World Cup Final could be enjoyed. I understand it’s hard to believe something can be called a World Cup when only a handful of countries actually play the sport, but when you consider the American world series of baseball, then I think it’s justified.

The game started with a tense atmosphere. This seemed to bring out the emotions in some of the watching public. A guy sitting next to me blabbed about his Riga experience of being head butted and punched by random Latvians in the 24 hours since arriving. After listening to his woes and as a sign of gratitude he bought the rest of my beer for the evening. English fans certainly don’t take losing very well (strange considering how often it happens), which could explain the barrage of abuse directed towards a Latvian TV crew who had come to film the vocal support of a peculiar sport. After failing to make a single clip they were forced out the door with an ear lashing of choice expletives.

As England lost to a far more powerful South African team, an obnoxious gloating South African asked my girlfriend if she would prefer to go with him or stay with a loser like me. I thought this was over stepping the mark in good natured banter but I was more than happy when my girlfriend answered, ‘I’d rather stay with the loser!’ Being called a loser has never felt so rewarding. Like the rest of the English in Riga that night, I walked back to my hostel to think what could have been. Unlike the rest of my fellow countrymen I was probably the only one that was tucked up in bed before midnight without paying for a pair of naked breasts to be thrust into my face. Sometimes it’s good to be different.Close