The last of Prague, and the start of Latvia

Monday: 

Prague: 

The morning after my hike I woke up feeling fairly unmotivated.  My feet were pretty sore, and I was having some leg cramps, so I just laid low.  I grabbed my book and went for a short walk, and got some breakfast (I ate so many pastries that day), and just hid in the shade and read for the morning. 

In the afternoon, I had a tattoo appointment, and one of my hostel-mates who was suffering from her previous evening's festivities wanted to come with me just to get outside for a bit.  The appointment went really well.  I went to One Love Tattoo in Prague, and they had a guest tattooist in from Singapore who specializes in brightly coloured trad art.  I booked my appointment with him, but I didn't have a good idea of what I wanted to get.  We looked over his portfolio together, and then I had him draw me a rose, based off the colours of a rose I saw the other day.

Fresh ink!

The appointment went well, and took about an hour or so for the tattoo itself.  I bled a little, but overall, I was able to keep a full conversation during the tattoo.  It hurt a lot less than my leg pieces.

After the appointment, Kira and I walked around for a while in search of stamps for our postcards, and then eventually headed back to the hostel to make dinner.

At the hostel, we just hung out for the evening, playing a few rounds of Uno with some Scottish hostel people named Izzy and Lauren.  I stayed in for the night because I had to get up early to head to the airport.

Tuesday:

The next morning, Tuesday, I woke up really early and made my way to the airport to catch my flight to Riga, Latvia.  I'm glad I left so early, because I had to take the tram and a bus to get to the airport, and I couldn't buy a ticket on the tram, and there was no booth to buy a ticket anywhere near the tram stop, and nobody could speak English to explain it to me, and it's super illegal to ride the tram without a ticket.  So I watched two of my trams go by (and an additional 40 minutes) as I walked around aimlessly trying to ask people how to buy a ticket, or hoping to find a ticket booth. 

They love their flowers here.

Just a duck in a park.

Riga likes their bronze statues.  These little weirdos are all around town.

Eventually, I found someone who told me I can buy one at the corner stores, so then I went off in search of a corner market to purchase a ticket.  It was stupid, and even though it was early in the morning, it was getting really warm out, and I was carrying my bags, and I was getting really grumpy about how much time it was taking to figure this out.  I just had no idea. 

I did finally get on the tram, and transferred onto my bus, and made it to the airport without any further incidents.  Got a seat on the plane no problems, and then finally had time for breakfast. 

The flight was much shorter than I expected, because I didn't realize Latvia was in a different time zone than Czechia.  I'm now an hour ahead of before.

Riga:

I stepped off the plane and my senses were immediately assaulted with the scent that I singularly associate with home.  I giggled.  Latvia is flat, and forested, and while the trees are a little bigger, and the air is more humid, and not all the plant species are exactly the same, Latvia reminds me so much of home that it hurts.  I didn't realize other countries could be just as beautiful. 

Rando canal

Freedom Monument

The air was cool, and I found my bus into the city without issue.  I checked into my hostel, and after grabbing a map and a few suggestions of a place for lunch from the front desk, I went out for a wander in the old town area.  I didn't get up to much, just walked around and looked at things, trying to get a feel for who Latvian people are, and what it means to be here. 

I got out some euros, and found this pancake place that is self serve and popular with locals on their lunch break, it looked like.  Each pancake had a price (but a cheap one) and they were all different.  Some were filled with cottage cheese, or potatoes and smoked meat, or apples, or bananas.  There was also potato pancakes, and something else I got that tasted like cabbage and vegetables, but looked like a potato pancake.  I ate way too much, but it was good. 

Town square

More town square area

I went back to the hostel for a while in evening, and met my new hostel-mate, Anne.  Anne is from London, but has been living in the UAE and Singapore on and off for a while now.  We decided to go for dinner together, and have been hanging out everyday since.  We've even both extended our stays in Riga to keep doing stuff together. 

We went for dinner in this underground medieval style pub called Folkklubs Ala Pagrabs that serves microbrew and cheap, but hearty latvian food.  Anne got some crazy pile of meat and cheese and veggies baked into a pan, and I got a salad with beets and giant slabs of smoked salmon.  I couldn't even eat all the salmon, there was so much.  We also got something called beer fritters for dessert, that reminded me of sweet fry bread and I loved it.  And of course a few beers.  I'm finally in a country with dark beer again, and it's great.  Hungary and Czechia like their pale beers, and I'm so over hops right now. 

After that, we walked back to the hostel, and Anne stubbed her toe on something on the sidewalk and started bleeding profusely.  We joke about it now, and she's fine, but she was actually bleeding everywhere.  We don't know what cut her, but it was filling up her sandal with blood.  The cut turned out to be tiny, but deep, so we figure it was glass.  I made her let me bandage her up at the hostel, and gave her some spruce pitch to put on the cut.

Wednesday:

On Wednesday, I laid around for a slow breakfast of waffles at the hostel (they make them every morning!), and then Anne and myself went for a walk to the central market.  It's the second largest market in Europe, and it was overwhelming.  I felt like I wanted to have a cry because the fresh produce was so beautiful.  It was ridiculous.  We both bought some fresh cherries and wild picked strawberries, and just marveled at all the fresh cheese, meat, fish, and produce that everyone was selling.  We also found someone selling chantrelles, but they were too expensive.  We bought a bunch of little things, like dried fruit and tried some pickles (Latvians will pickle anything.  Anything.) and then headed to a coffee shop to grab a quick caffeine break before our 12 o'clock walking tour.  The thing I remember being the most impressed about was the complete lack of wasps around the fruit.  I always have to be careful around fruit stands, but not this time!

Central Market! They used to be zepplin hangars during the cold war, apparently. 

Chamomile!

They pickle everything.

The walking tour was a lot of fun.  I've never done a walking tour before, and I really enjoyed it.  It's this whole thing in Europe now, and they're free.  We met the tour guide (and about thirty other people) at the St. Peter's Church, and did a 2.5 hour tour through old town, into the central market, and then through the Moscow district.  We learned about some local foods and superstitions, and a bunch about the Soviet occupation of Latvia.  It's different here than it was in Czechia.  In Czechia, everyone dislikes the Russians.  In Latvia, one third of the population is Russian still.  The guide says the relationship isn't perfect, but it's hard to hate Russians (or Germans) when you're working with them, living beside them, married to them, etc.  Everyone living here just tries to get along for the most part.  One of our other hostel-mates was on the tour with us, and him and Anne buzzed off to do a bike tour right afterwards, leaving me solo. 

This building is significant, and I can't remember why.

I was pretty hungry at this time, so I went to a restaurant chain called Lido, and got the biggest plate of salad I could find.  They're a self serve buffet style chain with cheap Latvian eats (mostly large roasted animals, grey peas and speck (this dish of beans and pork), cabbage, potatoes, and lots of different salads.  I tried kvass for the first time, which is a fermented rye by-product drink.  I know that's not really selling it, but it tasted like a less sweet soda, and it was different, but I enjoyed it.

This cat building has a hilarious story.  A gentleman's guild built a huge wealthy building next door, and didn't include the other guild in town.  So they built this building, and puts cats on the roof with their butts facing the other guild's building.  They got sued though, and had to change the direction, so the cat statues faced the opposite direction.  Passive aggressive architecture is my favourite.

Inside the only jewish synagogue in Latvia not to be destroyed by nazis during WWII.

Later in the evening, a big group of us wanted to go out to watch the sunset, and it was supposed to be cheaper to grab a drink at this skyline bar (on the 26th floor of a hotel) than to pay the 9e to climb the church tower, so we did that.  We missed sunset because of the clouds rolling in, but it was a fun time anyhow.  There were five of us that went out (myself, Anne, Kyle from Chicago, Matt from NYC, and Ian from Ireland), and then we met a random guy named Kevin who joined our group later.  We all ended up getting cocktails, and it cost us a lot more than 9e by the end of the night.  My first cocktail was beetroot juice and caraway seed vodka, with a few other ingredients, in a glass, with smoke.  It arrived with a lid on it, and the smoke wafted out as I took the lid off.  It was fancy as hell, and actually pretty good.  I liked the savouriness of the cocktail. 

20 euros and a lot of alcohol later, we were in search of a dancing bar.  The waitress suggested a place called the Funny Fox, and so we went there.  Got some beers, turns out it was karaoke night.  It must be a national sport in Latvia.  Every person who went up was Latvian, and every one of them could absolutely belt out the songs with the voices of angels.  This is a singing nation.  They sing at funerals, weddings, in the park, when they're happy, sad, etc.  It's beautiful and poetic and I love it. 

Our drunken mess of a group went up too, but I chickened out.  No amount of alcohol is going to get me on stage.  We watched the sun go down, and watched the sun start to come back up before we finally stumbled home to bed.  I didn't get to sleep until after 3am, and was awake again by 7 the next morning.

Needless to say, I didn't feel the greatest. 

I tried desperately to avoid singing, but the guy seemed to like it!

Thursday:

I spent the morning struggling with a mild hangover, so I kept it quiet and kept it chill.  I stayed in the hostel reading until noon, and then tried to drag myself out for the day's festivities.  Yesterday was the summer solstice, and it's a big national holiday here, and a big deal, and my little heathen heart was as happy as a hen in a henhouse.  Everyone was dressed in festive attire, and wearing flower crowns or crowns made from reeds, grasses, or oak leaves, selling baked goods in the streets, selling dried meats.  The air of the entire old town sector was festive and light. 

my flower crown!

Ligo cookies!

I bought myself a flower crown, a big cookie, and a glass of wild strawberry wine (hair of the dog, and all) and sat down on the grass and just soaked it in with a full heart. 

Some of the folk singers at the embankment

Rain still didn't stop the impromptu dancers

In the evening, there were some festivities.  Live singing, arts and crafts fair, foods for sale down by the embankment of the river.  The weather wasn't very favourable, but people were out anyways.  There were a few outdoor stages, and an indoor stage, and both had live folk music performances.  Anne and I watched some traditional dancing, and tried to sample as many foods as possible.  I bought myself a linen dress in the market, and we waited out the night.  At nightfall, they lit the giant bonfire, and sung a song over and over again until I could start making out the words to the chorus.  Everything at the festival was in Latvian, but it didn't take away from the magic of the night. 

She was too precious.

Inside the tent

I think they caught me.

The celebrations carried on until dawn, but we tuckered out around midnight and came home.  Līgo is a weekend long celebration, and I wish I understood more of the culture. It rained heavily on and off, but it didn't really put a damper on the mood.

I'm really loving Latvia. It's modern and wild, northern, but eastern, it's inexpensive and full of beauty.

Pots of traditional food cooking over the fire.  Left to right was stewed cabbage, grey peas and speck (it was delicious!), and stewed meat and veg. 

Pigs noses for the more adventurous.

Everyone was beautiful.

Watching the bonfire to keep the darkness at bay.

Solstice bonfire.

Hiking through the Czech countryside

On Sunday, I went for a really long walk.

I woke up early and headed to the train station, after packing my bag and making sure I had loads of water with me.  I grabbed an espresso and some breakfast at the station, and then caught the train to Karlstejn.  The train ride was a short 40 minutes away, and populated mostly by commuters on the way to work, by the looks of things.  I read a book.

Karlstejn

Karlstejn town

The view of the castle above the town. I can't help but think how intimidating this must have been in the 13th century.  Would it have inspired fear, or protection in the common people?

At Karlstejn, I got off the train and walked the three kilometres into town and up to the castle.  I was there pretty early before the rest of the tourists, and the town was actually quite quaint and peaceful.  Once I crossed the bridge and turned off for the castle though, the residential area fell away and it became shop upon shop of tourist souvenirs.  I bought myself a trdelnik because they smelled fresh, and a big group of what I think were Greek cyclists stopped me and asked me to take some photos of them.  I couldn't understand them, and they didn't understand me, but we hand-waved our way through it and they seemed satisfied. 

Part of the castle wall and the countryside

Overlooking town through the woods

It was already warm outside, despite only being a little before 10am, and I actually had to take a break walking up the steep hill to the castle.  I have no mountain legs.  When I got up there, the castle was just opening up to the public for the day, and I walked around the castle grounds briefly.  Took a few photos of the views, bought a couple of postcards, but didn't pay to see the inside of the castle.  Then I hopped on my way and started the hike.

The start of the hike. Note the little red marker. 

My temporary dogbro

I downloaded an app before I left called mapy.cz and it shows all of the hiking trails in Czechia.  So armed with that, and some knowledge gleaned from the internet, I prepared to head off into the middle of the woods. 

Finding the start of the trail was relatively easy.  They use a colour system here in Czechia, so I just needed to look for the red marker, and that was the start of the trails from the castle.  The red trail is the trans-Czechia trail, and then there's a bunch of other ones that branch off from it.  I saw markers for white trails, yellow, blue, and green while I hiked. 

The trail often looked like this

Or this

Or this

The trail was relatively easy for the first little while, and I even had a random dog accompany me for maybe the first kilometre or so.  The only time I got turned around was at the beginning, when I missed a trail marker, and headed up a hill instead of down the road.  I figured it out pretty quickly though.  The trails were well marked, and sometimes they followed roads through towns as I passed them instead of on unpaved trails. 

Someone put a fresh beer out next to the shrine. 

A few kilometres into the hike, I took a seven kilometre detour up the yellow trail to go see some old quarries.  I managed to get up and go back down again in a bit over an hour, but I was really pushing.  The view from the top was really nice - I passed by many picnicking Czech families out on a Sunday stroll, and I passed three abandoned quarries, Lom Mexico, Lom Amerika, and Velka America (Little Mexico, Little America, and Big America).  Lom Amerika had some candles and a shrine laying on it.  I can only assume someone fell off the cliff into the quarry and died at some point.  I met someone who was telling me that people used to swim in the water in Velka Amerika, but too many people were dying or getting injured, so now it's off limits. 

Velka Amerika

the view

Randomly, the police.

Once I got up to the top of the hill where Velka Amerika was, I needed to take a break, so I sat in the shade and munch on some wild strawberries I found, and drank some water.  It was probably close to 30C out, and the sun when it was shining was brutally hot.  I was covered in sunscreen, but I tried to stay out of the sun as much as possible.  As it was, I was drenched with sweat.

I found a little box with a notebook in it.  

Another Canadian came through this way at some point!

I loved coming across these.  They let me know how far I've come.

Eventually the path got more rugged, and I almost immediately twisted an ankle.  So now that's two twisted ankles I'm traveling on.  They only bother me at the very end of the day though, so I've been completely ignoring them.  After about 15km, I stopped passing people as frequently.  Almost nobody I passed could speak English, so I just spent the day lost in thought.  I stopped periodically for a snack or for water, but otherwise I just trudged on.  At around 20-25km, I climbed a steep hill and then descended into a tiny village called Svaty Jan pod Skalu (I cannot say this) - it translates to St. Stephen under the rock.  It was this perfectly picturesque town with a river flowing through it and a beautiful church.  I walked across it in ten minutes, and I thought it was just so quaint. 

The trail got really rugged.  I twisted my ankle.

Walked through a waterless gorge

the land of a thousand tiny mushrooms.  These things were everywhere. 

Went off the trail...found a cave.

I was really tired by this point, but I only had another 5 kilometres to my end town, Beroun, where I would take the train back to Prague.  So, I soldiered on.  At some point, I had brushed against some stinging nettle, and my ankles were really itchy.  I climbed what was the last steep hill of the day, and when I finally reached the top, the forest opened up into this tall grassy meadow overlooking the town of Beroun.  I passed by a woman who waved at me, so I waved back, and then she awkwardly stopped for a moment and stared at me.  I kinda just cocked my head as if to ask "Yes?", and she then switched to English and asked me if I wanted to join her for a cider and a game of frisbee with some of her friends.  I was so tired at this point that I just wanted to get home to Prague, but I decided that sure, I'll come play frisbee.  So we hiked back up to the top of the hill where we were going to meet her friends, Petrik and Martin, and we played a bit of frisbee in the long grass (that I later learned has ticks in it), drank a cold pear cider, and they smoked some weed that Petrik pulled out of his pack in a mason jar.  He said he has a friend that grows it a few kilometres from where we were sitting. 

Svaty Jan pod Skalou

Svaty Jan pod Skalou

The rock above the church.  There were lots of rock climbing routes on it.

this random little church

They all spoke some English, so we chatted and sat around for a bit in the shade, and they told me stories about their hometown of Beroun, and how they still have bears that roam around on some of the hills, and about their local brewery, and where they grew up.  Eventually, they had to go, and the woman (who's name I actually never learned), offered to hike out the last few kilometres to town with me since she had nothing else to do that day. 

She showed me around Beroun. "... and here is the church, we went here as children, here is the town square, we saw a concert there last night, here is our grocer, how beautiful is our little town, here is the river, it is named the Berounka, this is my house, I live with my father, etc".

The view of Beroun with the impending rain clouds in the distance

The only photo I snagged of them.

She was very animated and clearly in love with where she lives, which was admittedly, very beautiful, and she was just so excited that a foreigner would come to see it, because nobody comes to see it, and I barely got a word in most of the time.  She asked me lots of questions about Canada, and wanted to know what our buildings looked like, and what our town squares looked like, and I struggled to explain to her that we didn't design our cities the same as in Europe.  Most of our towns don't have a town square (she was baffled - where does the town meet, then?), and not all our buildings are colourful because it was more efficient to build giant glass rectangles (which she thought looked 'sick' and 'sad' and 'communist' - not a good thing to Czechs).

A mural in Beroun

The town square of Beroun

Eventually, it was getting dark, so she walked me to the train station and waited with me for the train.  And we said our goodbyes.  I regret not getting her name.  It rained while I was on the train on the way home, but had mercifully stopped by the time I got off the train.  I walked back to the hostel, totally beat, and very hungry, and made myself a huge plate of food, and then just collapsed and went to bed. 

It was a good day.