Welcome to Latvia! BYOTP!

No that isn't a word in Latvian or Russian... it is Bring your own Toilet Paper! That is if you go to any of the toilets in shopping areas or stations because you pay your 15 or 20 sentimes (Latvian cents) and then the lady points to a roll from which you have to decide ahead of time how much paper you will need and then you get to go into a stall. Luckily I always carry tissues with me and now I am stocking up with more!

So now I am in Riga, Latvia. The look and feel of this city is so different from Tallinn.





People don't smile so much and look like they have had a harder life.



And there is graffiti EVERYWHERE!





You cannot look in any direction at any building and not see some graffiti.



Reminds me Prague away from old town. Tallinn in Estonia had a fair amount of graffiti but Riga just amazes me. I haven't spent time in Old Town yet and am just exploring away from the tourist areas first so it may be different where there is more tourist money.

Today I spent a little time at the HUGE Central Market complex -- each of these rounded buildings houses a different product -- one for meats, one for cheeses, etc.



The fruit and veggies are mostly outside.



I actually didn't get a lot of photographs today and will go back for more in the next few days. I mostly wanted to walk around and get a feel for this new City.

Toto, we are NOT in Kansas anymore!

The home of Skype...

How different one airport is from another. I am at the rather small Tallinn airport awaiting my flight to Latvia and not only is the WHOLE airport wired for free WiFi courtesy of Skype, there is a cute Skype pod to use in the waiting area. It was invented here in Estonia after all! I am waiting for the person who is using it to finish then I will try it. It looks like something out of Sleeper or 2001, very cute!

So I have a little while to reflect on the Tallinn leg of the trip while I wait. I still have hundreds of photographs of course which need to get uploaded to Flickr. But what is most in my mind is how friendly the people are here. I hear that the further south one goes in the Baltics there is less outward show of friendliness. And maybe I had some unique experiences (like meeting the teacher and having a tour of her school, or getting to be part of the birthday fun with the young women at the Tallinn hotel reception) but I have always thought that you make your own experiences. You have to be open to what happens and then let yourself take the time to enjoy it.

In a few hours I will be in a different country, trying to wrap my head around another new language and no doubt falling back on my meager Russian... learning new foods (or similar versions of what I have seen so far) and spending my time seeing the sights and seeing how people live in Latvia. I really liked Tallinn and the Estonian people and someday would like to get way out into the countryside and into smaller villages away from the capital. Perhaps I will come back when I plan my trip into Russia in a few years. All in all it was a fun part of the trip and I am so glad I made it part of my vacation.

Market day and faded glory...

Yesterday was the day to go to the Sunday market held a few tram stops away from Old Town Tallinn.



You can see some of the block-style apartment buildings in the background. I was told those were mostly built when Estonia was part of the USSR as cheap (or free) housing for workers. Utilitarian then. Today (according to the young woman at my hotel) most Estonians want to leave them and go to other (nicer) housing and so mostly Russian families and older people live in them now.



It was probably not a whole lot different than it has been for the last 40 years.





Mostly Russians, a lot of old people, and not too many people happy with a tourist taking photos! I was told not very nicely not to take pictures inside the meat/cheese/deli hall (which was the most interesting).





So I focused on outside and marveled at aside from hearing Russian everywhere and items per kilogram in Euros it really didn't feel that different from our Sunday Farmer's Market at home.



Here is your dill Andy!



So after that I wandered around some of the back streets away from the tourist area and found the "other side" of Tallinn.



The faded glory of urban decay and reminders of Soviet building booms -- all the huge block apartments and buildings now falling apart.





Past gas stations (wow gas is 25 Euro cents cheaper here than in London or Dublin where I saw up to 1.60 Euro -- PER LITER!). You do the math (makes our $4 a gallon look cheap in comparison!)...



And finally back towards Old Town and stopped into a cafe for a latte.

Busman's holiday and the Estonian Open Air Museum...

Yesterday as I was walking from the trolley stop at Rocca al Mare shopping plaza to get to the Estonian Open Air Museum, I walked past what looked like a school.



A few kids were leaving then I saw a woman coming down the path near me so I asked her if it was a school. She said yes, and that she was an English teacher. I told her I was a teacher in the States and it turns out she also taught the equivalent of 7th grade. Then she told me it was just starting to be their summer vacation, that school ended about an hour ago but would I like to see the school? Sure, why not! It looked beautiful!



So she showed me around and we met up with another teacher who happened to be one of the science teachers. He led us up to the science rooms, and even though most things were put away for summer it was still a very nice thing to see.



Then we met up with a few other teachers (all English also -- why is it they are the last to leave school anywhere? LOL). She is the English teacher and he is the science teacher.



So then they wanted to take a picture of me... oh the skeleton is wearing the school tie that all the kids have to wear for their uniform.



I thought it was very kind of her to take the time to show me around when she was leaving for vacation. This school is a private school that has every age from 7 to high school, around 900 students in all.

Then I continued my walk to the Open Air Museum and went in.



It houses a lot of farms and homesteads from the last couple hundred years all laid out in a coastal forest near Tallinn.





Not only do I like doors, I also like fences:



Lilacs were crazy blooming everywhere:



And a few more photos of the place (more on Flickr)...







The whole area is so beautiful and I managed to get around it before all the tour buses arrived!

I have definitely done more walking here than anywhere so far.

I like doors...

And tend to photograph them a lot when I travel. Here are a few from Tallinn, Estonia.

Bear meat anyone?

Well they happened to be out of it the other day when I went, but I was curious... apparently Estonian and Russian cuisine does include bear meat, as well as elk, wild boar and other game meats. I have had elk and wild boar (both yummy, but then I am a major carnivore)... yet to try bear. I had the first one on the pelmeni menu -- these are Russian dumplings that we actually eat often at home (get them frozen from any Russian food store, many varieties now -- my favorite is the pork/beef combo). For the bear, check out the 4th listing.



It was a cute serving. Came in a ceramic jug with 3 different sauces (sour cream/dill, garlic sour cream, and a mustard sauce that I didn't care for with the pelmeni - would have been better with corned beef!).



This is what they are if you don't know -- a sort of dumpling/ravioli in a chicken broth. The broth didn't have much flavor but I usually don't get them with it when I have them in a restaurant in San Francisco. Always with the sour cream and dill however! Yummy!!



This was the restaurant.



They also have a webpage with all their mouth watering dishes (click the English button at the top).

I actually have some photos of sights too -- I am not really just eating my way through the Baltics although you would not know that by my postings! More soon!

We're having a heat wave...

OMG it is hot here! Got to something like 33C today (around 90) which for a day in a nice AC room (which I do not have) wouldn't be bad but it wasn't so great for sightseeing. Thank goodness for sunscreen and lots of it!

So my hotel breakfast here in Tallinn turns out to be almost not worth going into the room for (flimsy white bread and ham sandwich and warm yogurt and not very good coffee... thanks but no thanks). So I went out and got some provisions and ended up with a nice little feast...luckily I have a little fridge to put it into!





So my morning snack was a piece of great brown bread, soft goat cheese, smoked salmon:



And later I found one of the medieval eating establishments open for early coffee (9 am is early here... not many places open for what we would consider breakfast) and I got a savory meat pie (like a turnover) and coffee.



I need to get another one tomorrow and get a better picture of it -- the one I took did not turn out at all.

So I spent a lot of the morning walking around the old medieval part of Tallinn. I have to get my photos onto Flickr so here are just a few until I upload more.

The gate into old town:



And right across the street:



And one of the places I had wanted to see, the Katarina's Gild Bookbinder and leather works shop:





I am so glad I have good walking shoes! The cobblestones are rough walking otherwise!









I only heard American English one other time today. Heard some British English, a lot of German, some Spanish, Estonian and and a LOT of Russian. Turns out people, even young people still speak a lot of Russian here. I would have thought only old people would speak Russian but also the young ones do too. Of course there were other visitors from Finland and Scandinavian countries, and only a couple of Chinese that I heard. No Japanese today. Anyway I am having a ball with all the languages and sights and food! My kind of holiday!! More soon...