My Life as a Circus

« Return to Latvia

Location: Airport, Paris
Destination: Riga, Latvia (via Prague)
Mental State: Emotionally Spent
Physical State: Brain throb, congested nose and chest, sore eyes, lower back

I’m thinking about air travel on the four-hour bus from Vilnius (Lithuania) to Riga (Latvia). Remarkable. Truly, incredible stuff. A century ago, it would take four hours to get from one village to the next. On this bus, in Europe, I’ll get off in a different country with a different language, currency, and religious philosophy. On a plane, four hours can deposit me on a different continent. It’s the planes that have turned cities like Riga - rich with history and culture - into European nightclubs. Budget airlines offer rack seats for the price of a DVD. Countries like Latvia were initially keen to welcome an influx of tourists from the UK and Ireland, flush with their pounds and euros. They came from Glasgow, they came from Liverpool, they came from Dublin and Oslo and Cardiff. Only, instead of middle-aged potters with twee pipes and “Gosh Richard, isn’t this just too quaint” sensibilities, the fledgling Latvian government got a little more, em, Britain than they bargained for. When Latvia’s reputation for beautiful ladies, cheap beer and dynamic nightlife met the cheap tickets of the budget airline boom, the result brought it plane loads of excessive horny hooligans - stag parties and boy’s weekends made up of Britain’s finest, if by finest you mean the kind of guys who end up pissing on each other in an alley while sexually molesting an iron gate. Inebriated men with no respect for anything, much less each other, can quickly turn a charming medieval old town into a center of vice, where prostitutes, drug dealers, casinos and everything in between (card-betting drug dealing hookers?) gather to do business. I’ve seen it in Prague, once the jewel of Europe, now a playground for loud, sunburnt idiots. Vilnius, Krakow, Budapest, Zagreb, Eastern and Central Europe opened their doors to the West and the West dumped its trash in their living room. Thus, as the bus crossed the border and the gentle melody of The Weepies song Riga Girls harmonized my iPod, my impressions of Riga were of a beautiful city plagued with the kind of foreign influence I do my best to avoid.

Just a few steps into Old Town, carrying my backpack towards an excellent hostel named The Argonaut, I had barely adjusted to the cobblestone before seeing a peroxide blonde dancing on a pole in a bar with open windows. It’s a cold, windy October night, a practice performance for the long, cold winter symphony to come. When it starts to rain, we quickly head up the stairs to the Argonaut, and I’m relieved that the off-season has left the summer-slammed hostel free of roving groups of obnoxiously tanked manboys.
“Actually,” says the lovely Ance at the Argonaut, “we no longer accept stag parties. They’re not worth it, breaking things, vomiting on things, we just don’t need it.” They stopped booking stags about 18 months ago, but owner Dean, mentions that Hen Nights (or stagettes if you will) are welcome.
When one of the city’s best hostels bans what must once have been its core clientele, you know things have got out of hand. In the hallway, I notice a hole in the wall that perfectly matches the size of my fist. I’ve stayed in party hostels before: Picture screaming voices, loud music, breaking mirrors, beer bottles, heavy footsteps echoing in the passageways. Forget about sleep. Any sort of attempt to control the mayhem results in further inconsiderate rebellion. You can either join it, which can be fun so long as you don’t mind acting like a complete arse, or leave the hostel and find somewhere quieter - usually full of lovely people who have escaped, just like you. Bags unloaded, a quick walk towards a nearby square in search of food was further proof in the perogie. I count a half dozen strip clubs, a half dozen dealers, two casinos, several ladies offering a massage, and an assortment of tough-looking heavies with whom I’d very much like to not encounter in one of Old Town’s many dark alleys. As with dating, first impressions count when meeting a new country. Riga, tonight, looks like a beautiful girl who’s been hanging around too long with the wrong crowd.

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