On May 4th, we arrived in
the Baltic States by ferry from Germany knowing next to nothing about
the languages and cultures of these three little countries:
Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. What we found were birch trees,
Soviet apartment building relics, flat and expansive farmland, windy
coasts, and wonderful people. And while we enjoyed all three
countries during the 9 days and ~600 kms. we cycled across them, the
incredibly friendly and helpful people of Latvia left the biggest
lasting impression. A few stories…
In Lithuania, the miles flew by on
flat, well-paved roads with the wind at our backs. When we crossed
the border into southern Latvia around 6pm on May 6th with
a plan to cycle another 30 kilometers or so before camping, we were
surprised to find that nearly all the roads were unpaved with the
exception of the heavily-trafficked highway. So we set off onto the
dusty, washboard-like roads to the town of Auce. By the time we
arrived around 9pm, the sun was setting and we hadn’t seen any good
places to camp. Markus asked some young folks standing outside the
supermarket whether there were any places in town to camp or to stay
and a woman pulled out her phone and started calling around town for
us. After a few minutes, she said “You can sleep where the students
sleep” then hopped on her bike to guide us through town to the
student dorm. The woman who supervised the dorm wasn’t there, so
our new friend told us to wait and bicycled off to find the woman and
bring her back. They got us all settled into our own room with fluffy
pillows, use of the kitchen and showers for just 5 bucks per person.
It was an awesome place to stay after a long day and a great act of
generosity by those 2 women to help us out!
![]() |
Morning in the Auce student dormitory |
Two days later—after cycling past
farms and national parks, camping in a boreal forest, and seeing our
first moose in Europe—we arrived in Riga ready for a little city
time. The best budget accommodation looked to be Riga City Camping,
just a couple kilometers from the old town. When we arrived, there
was no one else there and no one in the reception but the friendly
security guard at the gate (which was a dual entrance for both the
campground and a company) gestured to a grassy area where we could
set up our tent. After discovering that the shower building was
locked we realized the campground was still closed for the season.
But that didn’t matter to our new friend, the old man who guarded
the place. He was there the whole time we were! He watched our bikes
and tent while we were out on the town that evening, thanked us
profusely for the crème brulee we brought him that night, and stuck
his head out of the little security shack when we woke up to wish us
good morning. He spoke no English and we spoke no Latvian, but
communicating in smiles and gestures was enough. What a nice guy!
The third story from Latvia is certainly the most memorable. Markus was the star of this one, using his computer technology skills and ability to charm people he’d just met who didn’t speak his language to help me out one afternoon. Here’s the story from him:
![]() |
Our well-guarded bikes in Riga |
The third story from Latvia is certainly the most memorable. Markus was the star of this one, using his computer technology skills and ability to charm people he’d just met who didn’t speak his language to help me out one afternoon. Here’s the story from him:
Friday, 10th of May – an
important day for Karen since there was a job interview on her schedule. All we needed was an internet connection
and a couple hours for her to talk via Skype. It sounds easy,
especially since we have her Mac with us on our bike trip. However,
the Wifi is kind of broken because the Mac usually tells us that
there is “no airport card installed”. We tried to fix this a
while ago but none of the forum solutions worked. The solution
is a LAN cable connection but the problem is
that in this "WiFi Day of Age" a LAN connection is hard to find.
The plan was to role into a good size
town by early afternoon to leave us enough time to figure out the an
internet solution for the interview at 5pm our time. We arrived in
Salacgriva and went straight to the tourist info to find out about
internet cafes and potential places to stay that have internet. There
was none and the next accommodation was 3 km out of
town and definitely out of our budget price range with no
guarantee we could connect via LAN. However, the local library was
right across the street from the tourist info. The small library
consisted of 2 room with one room having 4 computers which had
internet.
Karen went in first to check if the connection was good, which it was. Then she was watching the bikes and our
gear while I was trying to figure out a solution to our internet
need. First I was asking one of the 2 ladies that were working at the
library if we could rent a room with Internet connection for a couple
hours to do some work. It was tricky since they didn’t speak
English or German but two teenage girls, who were hanging out at the
library, were able to help with their basic English. The answer I got
through the girls was the “Internet was everywhere”, meaning Wifi,
which I tried to explain doesn’t work for us. No luck, so I decided
to make it work with the computers at the libery since us skyping
there was OK (at least that was my impression and understanding ;-).
Parallel to that I tried to set up the MAC so that at the end at
least one computer would work out for the interview.
The library computers had Skype
installed but no camera, speaker, mic or headset and a couple of
Plug-ins that were important for the interview conference software were
missing. On the other hand, the MAC had some issues with the security
certificates. All these pieces are kind of important for using Skype
;-). The mac has all the hardware so I tried to plug in
the LAN from the library computer into Karen’s MAC and connect –
no luck there! So I had to explain to the girls that I need a headset
from the ladies. After what sounded like a harsh discussion between
the girls and the ladies a headset appeared. OK, basic skype w/o
camera now worked on the library computer. The interview could now at
least happen. I continued to play around with the MAC to see if I
could get it to work. After the second restart the wireless suddenly
started to work and we were able to connect to the library WiFi.
Great! The MAC would be the interview computer and the desktop PC
would be backup.
During all this Karen also got ready
for the interview and I shuttled all of our gear into the library and
locked the bikes. I returned to work on the setup at one point when
one girl stopped by and put the below note on the desk and left
immediately. These compliments made us laugh and feel okay about taking over the library for awhile.
Karen’s interview was on for a several minutes when two young boys came into the library to use two other computers. I noticed that they were playing some games and they were pretty intense and “hard on the keyboard”. One of the library ladies went to the boys and I think explained to them that they needed to be quieter because of us. However, a couple minutes later the boys were in full action again so I decided to bribe them with the last Latu (Latvian money) we had so they could go and buy some candy at the store (and would leave). It worked and the boys were happy and when I saw them later outside again they were still saying “thank you” and were still quite happy. During the interview another young man came in and talked to the library lady with a whispering voice. He obviously wanted to use the Internet too and after a while came over to me and asked me if it would be OK to use one of the other computers. We “talked” and he went on to use it. During the interview I was sitting behind a row of books behind the PC aisle next to the library entry and when he was leaving he came over and said “Thank you”. I felt like the guard of the computers and the library ladies were my allies…how cool it is, super friendly, in a different country, and we were using their resources…we invaded their space, one out of two library rooms, and they were so supportive. I went dinner shopping during the interview and got the ladies a bottle of Russian champagne. When I gave it to one of them she was the happiest and smiliest person in Salacgriva for that moment.
As a result, we have a
great story to tell about the people in Salacgriva and overall had a
good time again ;-).
Love the stories! We are making some of our own in Kyoto, Japan! Miss ya'll....
ReplyDeleteChanda