Tack Tack Pus Pus Strike Again - Pirates in Latvia

Before I left for Latvia, I posted a status update on Facebook:

"  On a rusty pirate ship heading for RIGA filled with 2000 students!!! Hope this won't be my last.boat.tripever! :S  "

Well, good news is that I survived the International Student Cruise - and it should be most likely my last cruise whilst here on exchange. We definitely ended with a bang! The cruise was a lot of fun and Latvia was a really fun place to be. I have some very fond memories from this trip and I would love to go back again. It's a very charming city, with lots of colourful old buildings and really well kept gardens and parks. It was also dirt cheap! I really liked that part haha. I guess you are maybe wondering what is happening in that photo up top... perhaps why we are wearing hand drawn t-shirts, perhaps maybe wondering about the title of my blog? Or maybe even curious as to why I have a black eye in that photograph. Ah well, all in good time. We certainly did get up to some crazy shenanigans whilst on the boat.

As my friends and I stepped onto the boat, we were amazed by how many students there were. It was actually quite a sight to see pretty much only young people on the cruise. The reason is that usually these Baltic Sea cruises are what the Swedish people who are pretty much similar to our version of "bogans" go on as their big holiday because it is very cheap. So you get a lot of oldish, middle class, "white trash" (not my words...) and lots of old seedy men on the boat who do seem a little creepy. This time round, however, walking down the hallways, every cabin door was open - filled to the brim with students partying it up in their rooms. There were people sitting in all the hallways and everyone was super friendly and chatty because they knew that everyone else was an international student. All in all, a pretty great atmosphere. There was a "pool party" on the boat too (which we didn't hit up as most of us forgot our swimmers) and so lots of people were walking around dripping wet, or looking like they were about to head to the beach.

Our cabin was, as per usual, a 4 bed room. We were also joined by some other Uppsala friends who were in 2 bed dorms which were something like the size of a cupboard, and as such, they hung around with us in our room. We were fortunate or perhaps (un) fortunate enough to have a room right in the center of all the partying which meant there were always lots of people coming into our room for a chat and hang out, but when we wanted to sleep, the party continued outside our door with people knocking on our door all the time trying to get us to come out and party!

Here is our group of friends in our room looking ever so excited!

So after a not so restful sleep on the boat and much partying and meeting people, we arrived in Latvia and the first thing on everyone's mind was: 'FOOD!' Knowing that many people's tendency when travelling is to eat something like Maccas - I immediately begged, "Can we please go somewhere nice?!" I mean, we were in Latvia, and none of us knew what to expect from the prices or quality of food but I wanted to experience that! Everyone agreed that we should definitely find somewhere "nice" for brunch and so as we left the ship terminal, we picked a direction and began to walk. We had some maps on us, but it was quite windy - and far out, trying to read a giant map (filled with ads so it is huge) is so impossible. On the way to the more "main area" of Riga, we saw some pretty awesome graffiti!

Walking down a nice street in Latvia, we managed to find us a really fancy little cosy restaurant which was offering a "Business Lunch" for something like $5 Australian! Heck Yes! That was inclusive of a Cabbage Soup, a main of chicken, grilled vegies and cheese sauce and a drink. Don't mind if I do! It was so delicious and the décor, ambience and music in the place was really quite comfortable. Great beginning to our day in Riga, I say!

After we had eaten our fill, we explored the city, stopping to try and rent us some Segways (OMG! but they were closed), and pretty much just going where ever we wanted. The people who had organised the Boat Trip had offered us an optional walking tour for some moneys but we had refused because from experience, they are usually a little dull, and it is always so hard to hear the guide as the groups are usually quite big. We were fairly happy to be left to our own devices!

I love the typography in both Latvia and Estonia...

Why must the walls in Latvia be so interesting?

Cute sign! All the shops in Latvia have doors like this - HOW CUTE IS IT

Moped! What a cute street. I'd totally live here...

Could spend all day just looking down alleyways

Love the decay and texture of the walls

We ended up coming across what was the main city square I guess, which was super cute with colourful buildings, even a sorta castle-looking thing (on the right of the photo right under this) and there were lots of cute restaurants and stuff! We felt it quite necessary to get a group photo here... it was so cute!

Not sure if I ever ended up blogging about my trip to Sigtuna (the oldest town in Sweden) but when I was there, I saw a very cute cat. Here, in Riga - I also saw a cat! I dunno about cuteness, but it was kinda fat!

So all in all, I'd say the day was going quite well. We were on a semi-mission to try and find Pirate costumes as the boat ride home that night, there was a Pirate Theme and we were going to be taking part in a team competition which would require it. A couple people were also looking to find a Bottle-O as it is apparently very cheap to buy in Latvia. It was at this point, that the day took a rather unexpected turn! One of the girls from the Scanbalt Team approached us while we were exploring the city and asked us again if we wanted to take the Walking Tour. She explained that as most of the students on the cruise were hung-over, most of them never rocked up and as such, they had some tour guides available. We kindly declined the offer as we had things to be doing and with only about 3 hours left of free time in the city, we really didn't think a walking tour was going to be helpful in finding a Pirate costume.

The girl seemed quite desperate however, and it occurred to us that actually, it was quite embarrassing for them to have hired all these tour guides and have no-one interested. As I had just drunk a coffee, and was a little hyper - I asked: "When you say tour guide, do you mean a tour guide who will make us go to every single touristic place and talk for ages about it, or do you mean a tour guide who we can tell what to do so they take us where we actually want to go?!" Daring I know.... and I kinda can't believe I asked that - it was quite rude! But actually... it worked out well for us! The girl thought about it and said, well, having a tour guide with you won't hurt - she is just a local who knows everything. I'm sure she'd be happy to help you out! So the girl went and got the tour guide who was a really nice and enthusiastic Latvian lady. She was quite a bit alarmed though when she asked what we wanted to do and we said: .. we want to find Pirate Costumes. At first she didn't believe us! Ha. Hilarious. Here we are as we started out new, customised, "walking tour."

In the end, she suggested that she take us to the shopping centre to find the costumes and on the way, she would show us some sights and talk about it. Fair exchange I think. She told us all about the history of Latvia, about the fortress wall, and about how it used to be owned by Russia. More hilariously, she seriously did take us to a shopping centre (a modern shopping centre) and continued (in a joking manner) to be a tour guide, telling us about the stores inside, helping us to pick out t-shirts and permanent markers for our pirate outfit, and even taking us to the supermarket so we could buy rations for dinner on the boat and booze.

The tour guide and Manon in the shopping centre

Best tour guide ever! What a champ. After we were done, we gave the reins back to Dita (our tour guide) who took us on a more conventional walking tour which was surprisingly more enjoyable than we anticipated.

Little Latvian girls feeding Maccas to birds in the park

Peace Memorial - very inspiration talk by the tour guide

There are always soldier guards at the bottom who symbolically guard peace - we are soldiers too!

Cute boat coming out of a archway! yay

Padlock Bridge where newly weds declare their love

The first Mcdonalds in the Eastern Europe apparently and it was meant to have been so popular and thought to be classy when it first opened as it was the first "Westernised" place - people went there on dates...but now they hate is just as much as the rest of us... a love hate relationship

After a big walk around the city, and hearing about lots of things, we climbed the steps up to a little lookout where we all had a bit of a rest and the sun came out just in time - sunbaking!

Other highlights of the day were some interesting discussions about Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z. There may have been a point where we were re-enacting scenes in public... quite hilarious! (for some... I can't believe Kelsey never watched these cartoons!) Anyway, after a long  but really quite perfect day in the city - it was time to head back to the boat and bid goodbye to our wonderful tour guide! She told us it was the most interesting tour she had ever conducted, she had never taken people shopping and was now considering being a shopping tour guide. Ha.

Back on the boat, it was time to turn ourselves into Pirates. Of course, the name of our team was obvious - Tack Tack Pus Pus - the name of our champion winning team at Stockholm Nation (refer to this blog). Here are some pictures of us getting our shirts together. I did a lot of the drawing, people seem to think I know how to draw skulls. I don't. I also drew the Riga Cat! I don't believe I talked about that - but it's a big deal here in Latvia. Mina decided she would like to do my makeup, and gave me a black eye - isn't she kind?

Lol this photo was totally spontaneous if you can believe it!

Team Tack Tack Pus Pus!

The Pirate Challenge involved travelling around the boat to various stations where we did things such as play "Suck and Blow", Throwing hoops onto pegs, Bouncing coins into cups, Twister and a relay where you had to do lots of spinning around and running so you were all dizzy. We did pretty well in all the tasks but not any better, I thought, than any other team. But for some reason, at the end of the night at midnight, all the students crowded in the big show area and our team was called up as the winners! OH MY GOSH!!!! Actually, a different team, "The Sparrows" won. But they never rocked up to collect the prize so technically we won by default. It was ironic because we found out that we had actually been hanging out with The Sparrows for most of the night, and later when we found them again, they told us that they had been banned from going to the award ceremony by the security! Interesting.

So when we were announced as winners, we ran on stage super stoked! And we were told we would now need to do a Mexican Standoff with the winner winning a holiday! Oh my. So Mina and I went first...each taking a sorta "Nerf Gun" thing and walking away from each other until someone said GO and then we had to turn and shoot each other. I ended up getting shot straight away which sucked. And in the end, our friend Bal won! Bear in mind, all of this was happening with all of the students on the boat watching and cheering us on! What a surreal moment! After Bal won, we were given a bunch of t-shirts and 2 bottles of champagne and so we spent most of the night up running around the boat celebrating! So all in all, the trip to Latvia was really quite PERFECT - especially the last day. The new Best friend/Tour Guide and the winning of the Pirate Challenge really made the trip!