meffthetravelfox

[meffthetravelfox]

Imagine this.  You know you are moving to another country.  And suddenly your are blessed by luck and become one of the two people that are given a ticket to a con. The con takes place in the country next to your new future home, which is quite far from your home country. The con takes place a week after you’re supposed to move across half the Europe.  Coincidence? 

It’s 6am and I’m trying to talk to an elderly Russian guy walking a dog, the only person on the whole street. I’m showing him the Google maps, with the tram number and the way I need to go. Either he’s never seen Google maps, or he doesn’t ride public transport. Is the tram going from this depo or from the next street?  I can feel myself panicking a bit and thinking I swear I’ll start departing for trips sooner than at the last minute possible. No that’s not gonna happen and I know it. After asking a few other people who were as weird as you can imagine bcs it was 6am and people who are willingly awake and outside at that time are not human I finally got the vital information and made it to Prāgas iela where the Coach station is and found out that, nope, it doesn’t say Vilnius anywhere on the boards, but there is Viļņu. Fucking Latvian, not even in Czech do we put cases on stuff that’s on important boards like that, why do you make everything more complicated than it already is??

Meet LuxExpress, a bus agency with the best movie list ever and memes on seats.  Also, buses and cars are the only way to get from Riga to Vilnius. Unless you wanna spend 15-18 hours on train and go through Minsk. 

If Riga is Punk, then Vilnius is Doom Metal.  Everything is grayish, slightly post-apocalyptic, familiar, yet foreign.�� I fell in love once again.

First I went to drop some stuff at the hostel and got Important Photo ™ from the guy working at the reception. It was photo of the city center with the best bars, according to him, marked.

Bus drivers in Vilnius don’t speak English and refuse to look at the name of your destination you’ve got written down. But good people exist and I got to the LITEXPO in one piece. 

A friend of mine sent me a photo of a public transport ticket from Rīga which could’ve been some 20 years old. The ones in Vilnius look almost the same. 

This is how business is done in Lithuania, grandmas on bus stops just put a basket with the goods in front of them and stay there until night. They get energy from gossiping with their neighbors. 

I manage to get lost in a magic forest that lies between the bus stop and LITEXPO. The lady at the entrance can’t find my name. What is Animefest? What is their connection to NowJapan? I just got an e-mail saying that I’ll be on the list. But why is there like hundred of lists of guests?  She gives me the wristband and writes my name down. I’ll never know if my name really was on the list or not. 

First thing after stepping inside, I meet cosplayers from Czech republic. My special power is strong. 

NowJapan festival has one big hall with 4 huge screens, so that you can really see what’s happening on the stage, and another smaller hall and that’s basically it. On the second floor there’s the artist alley, Human Library, exhibition, worshop place and a Japanese culture corner. In the hallways there’s shops with anime merch and some Japanese food. 

I learn that the main thing at this con(and later I was told that this is normal for all the Baltic cons) is the cosplay competition. It’s even divided into two days.  There’s suspiciously high number of people cosplaying K-pop people/bands.  Some put a real effort into making the same exact costumes and getting wigs and stuff, some people didn’t really bother with that, but all of them are doing a real crazy job in the dancing part. I can’t imagine how many hours they had to spend practicing. But I can’t stop thinking that it doesn’t matter how good of a dancers they are, they can’t really compete with the cosplay cosplays, so why isn’t there a special competition for them? In the end it turns out that the judges DO have a special category for them, but the regular visitors can give a vote to just one person of all the people that were on the stage.  Some of the cosplays are really good, some are not, but everyone seems to be having a great time and that’s what’s important.

The rest of the schedule is lectures and concerts by various Japanese musicians, like wow. 

This girl right here is Kumisolo and she sings in Japanese and French and her songs are so innocent and sweet and very 80′s in some way. You need to check her out.

But where’s the screenings of anime etc? There’s none. Oh wait, there is, but it’s just short movies, alternative animation, without subtitles. I manage to catch whats going on in the stories - victory. But what is maybe half of the stuff happening at Czech is not popular in the Baltics. Interesting.  Also another thing - the festival ends at 7pm both days. How alien, but at least I can explore the city. 

I’m taking it all in, enjoying my first con after forever without cosplay. Being a civilian, not fearing to fall out of role playing, being almost invisible. It’s liberating.  Also my wasp-stung arm is even worse than the day before and I kept praying that I don’t die. 

I meet some really cool people and even more great cosplayers.  I find one that combines both in the form of Cecil Palmer. I’m gonna keep my fingers and tentacles crossed for the Baltics, you’re gonna get your live show one day. 

I give NowJapan 7/10, but I have high hopes for the future of this festival. 

I had this feeling that something is weird about the city and then it hit me.  Lithuania is not flat and there are actual hills. 

This was in September, so the days were still pretty long, which was great. In a couple of hours I managed to walk around the whole Old town of Vilnius, navigating only by the slightly blurry photo of the map from my hostel’s reception. 

I passed a place with exhibition of Czech painting did I tell you about my superpower?, listened to a guy playing dope party songs on violin, saw like a bambillion churches and also decided not to die in a dark park with no lights that probably led to a hill with shining crosses?(I still don’t know what it was)

It bothers me, that you don’t need to know Lithuanian to understand what this thing is about. 

But moving on from the regular tourist spots - VILNIUS IS CREEPY AF 

I have no idea what this was supposed to be, it was just a glass case with this creepy shit in it in a darkened place in a street next to a church and there was no explanation anyhwere. 

I feel like I should’ve taken some drugs, bcs then this creepy side of this city might’ve made some sense. 

This is as close to the Vilnius castle as I was able to get, there was a fence and some repairs being done on the road that led to the hill. Later someone told me that there probably was another way up there from the opposite side of the hill, but who knows. Also, the whole hill is apparently slipping or something like that. 

Finally I made it to one of the bars I was recommended. Meeting the locals didn’t happen, bcs everywhere, and I mean everywhere, everyone had their eyes stuck to a TV with a Lithuania - Greece basketball game on.  But the Lithuanian beer I had was on point 10/10

If anyone told me that my first Japanese conversation this school year will be in the middle of the night on a hostel in Vilnius, I wouldn’t believe them. But that’s exactly what happened. Two Japanese girls decided to bake a blueberry cake, bcs why not.  

Hostelgate is a superawesome place. When I’m going to Vilnius next time, I’m definitely staying there. Every wall painted different colour, kitchen where you can take some food from the common basket and you can leave whatever you don’t feel like dragging on your travels, common room with table football and tv with Netflix.  I didn’t imagine I’d be watching Split at 2am with random people from the hostel.

I’m definitely coming back to Vilnius(update: I’m going there for ComicCon Baltics) bcs I clearly haven’t visited everything.  Like this place.

It’s a bar/restaurant, but for some reason they were closing super soon on Sunday, so I couldn’t go there.  This is one of the paintings they have in their garden. 

And this is the place.  I feel blessed. 

The next evening was raining hard af, so I camped in a bar until it was time to catch my night bus and finished Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince. It was a good ending for my Vilnius adventure ♥

Meme of the week: In Lithuania they have a motherfrikin’ Lidl and IKEA

bonus:

[meffthetravelfox]

Week 1 AKA feeling like a first year again

This right here is Ķemeri bog and its the literal Dead Marshes from LotR and this is where I want to be buried. 

The world is super small and all the trams and trolleys in Rīga are made in Czech republic.  Coincidence? I don’t think so. 

First days of school were real fun. Until Sunday evening we didn’t really have the timetables, bcs link they gave us in the materials led to a page that hadn’t been updated since spring. Google disappointed us. Someone must’ve bribed some university officials and in the end we got to the page. I thought that was the biggest problem to overcome. 

Every single class began with a new wave of panic when the teachers started speaking Latvian. Don’t worry, your Korean teacher will talk to you in Korean only. I can’t speak Korean. Even the hardcore k-pop fans and dorama lovers can say only a couple of words or sentences. The teacher hands our books. They are in Latvian. But don’t worry, Erasmus, you’re not gonna use them, it’s just a present, bcs the professor is so happy to have it printed finally. The book has been lying on my table since then, constant reminder of language barrier. I don’t know if it motivates me more to learn Latvian so that I can study Korean through it, or if it’s the other way around. 

But having Korean textbook is one thing, but Latvian textbook in Latvian is a whole new level. There’s nothing to save you, no rope to hold onto.  It’s not a nightmare I had, it’s reality. Our textbook is all in Latvian. 

Japanese lessons are cancelled, the teacher is not in Latvia yet, my classmates tell me. Does it mean we don’t have a teacher? How does this university work? 

Haijima-sensei is a Latvian lady that teaches Japanese art history. She agrees to do it in English. Victory. I soon find out that she doesn’t really teach, she just plays documentaries on different topics and translates them.  It’s still better than the big nothing on Japanese art that we have in Olomouc.

On the opposite side of the street from Faculty of Humanities is a Yolo Cafe and it’s the best joke ever. 

I explore the library that is in the building and fall in love instantly. It’s small and cozy and there’s shitton of books on Japan.  I also found Czech books. This is all of them. Half of them is Kundera. There’s Latvian translation of Švejk, Seifert and Viewegh. I am tempted to ask the librarians if anyone actually reads them and if it would make them happy if I brought them some books from home after Christmas. 

This picture right here might look like a scene from S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but it’s actually the view from our dormitory kitchen. There’s also trains with writings in Russian passing behind this abandoned building now and then and it adds to the atmosphere.  I love it.

About the kitchens. They are the meeting place. This is where you start relationships, bcs it’s so easy to start talking when the opening lines are so easy and obvious - Whatcha cookin’? If you are lucky, you get free food samples. I play a game when I’m trying to guess from where people are by the looks of the food they’re cooking. 

I found my people.  Unicon Cafe is a geek bar not far from the center of Rīga and they have about everything your heart might desire. Small TARDIS for the tips, big one in the corner for proper time-travel selfies, posters, flags, board games and Bill Cypher in the window. And also several-pages-long list of drinks named after everything, starting with the Hogwarts houses, through legendary Pokémons, all the way to houses from Game of thrones. And those were very popular my first night there, since it was a Game of Thrones party. 

People who own the bar also do summer and winter cons and shitton of various events over the rest of the year. Kudos for active community ♥ 

As the week proceeded to it’s end, it was gaining on intensity.  Friday seemed to have not 24, but at least 48 hours.  It started with being almost killed by a Latvian wasp. Then the universe balanced itself when another teacher of Korean(bcs they can’t have just one at the uni) told me that she wants to talk to the class in Latvian and that I can go home. Since it was 8.30am I was more than happy to oblige.  M. and A. + P., her new Hungarian roommate,  were planning to go to Ķemeri (it’s pronounced Ťemeri, ok, Latvian has to be special and I’m crying in phonetic transcription) bog trail not long after I made it to the dorms. My forearm was swelled af, but the weather was nice(and that’s something you start to really appreciate when you are in Latvia) and coincidences don’t exist, so I took Zodac and decided to pack a lunch and go with them. 

I was not disappointed.

We have the opportunity to taste what travelling with Latvian railways is like. It’s bumpy, but else, pretty ok.  Ķemeri used to be pretty popular spa town, or something like that, but now it’s basically just the train station that brings ppl that go to the national park that’s close to the city. When we were waiting for our train back, we found one small shop that was probably the only one in the whole town, by the number of people that came there in the time we were enjoying ice cream outside. 

The way to the bog is supposed to take 20 minutes, but it’s almost an hour and we have to cross a highway at one point.  I’m not complaining though, bcs at least half of the way leads next to an old cemetery that is part of the forest.  The others are getting skeptical, but I have Pokémon GO on and if there’s a pokéstop in the distance, it has to mean there’s something resembling civilization nearby.

We find a field that is a giant parking lot and there’s even a man selling parking tickets. There are two or three cars parked. Either it’s the best job ever, sitting in the middle of field in a forest and doing nothing for the most of the day, or the tourist season is over.  Further into the forest we pass a blue caravan. There’s a lady selling coffee, beer, chips and ice cream. It’s very surreal. 

The bog is pure magic.  It’s quiet, more quiet than should be possible. There a pair of ravens flying over it and the sounds they make carries into the distance.  I think about the Dead Marshes in Lords of the Rings. (Later I found out that the Ķemeri bog was indeed a dead bog and that there should be several thousand soldiers’ bodies decaying somewhere around that area)

On one of the tables with info about the bog there was a part about safety etc. It said that swimming in the small lakes in the national park is not recommended. Not forbidden, just not recommended. So if you wanna go and die a poetic death in the bog, feel free to do that, you’re not gonna be breaking any laws *wink wink*

When we were on top of an observation platform in the middle of the trail it hit us just how flat this country is.

Politbyro took all the mountains. 

But that was not the end, in the evening I found my own Rīga’s Plán B(R.I.P.) called DEPO, made some new friends and listened to some pretty cool music. 

And learned an important lesson. 

Even though Rīga is the capital and even though there’s shitton of public transport during the day, there’s only one single tram going from the city center in the direction of our dorms at 0.40am and if you miss that, it’s either party till the morning, or a taxi.  The fun thing is that finding the tram that you’re supposed to take is sort of a Russian roulette here. See, the night trams don’t have numbers here, even though Google maps say they do. There’s just the name of the depo to which they are going on the front window of the tram.  It’s not something pleasant to find out in the middle of the night. 

But I managed to survive. 

Meme of the week:

Politbyro tried to kill me and they almost succeeded

[meffthetravelfox]

Learning the ropes AKA: I can’t believe I had to come to Latvia to drink beer out of a paper bag like a frikin’ American

This right here is a very important photo.  In Riga, there’s a lots of cats. And I mean LOTS. Just around our dorms there’s maybe 20 of them living. Next to our dorms is a panel house where lots of old ppl live and the ladies feed these stray babes and they chill with them on the benches. The ladies always look like they wanna curse me like how dare I feed their stray cats? 

First contact with the university. We had an introduction meeting on 1st of September. How ironic. They told us that one course actually has the first lecture that same day. They weren’t joking.  One of the speakers calls out the countries from which we came. When they say ‘Germany’ more than half the auditorium stands up. Yes, there’s lots of them.  We took a picture and the university photographer almost got run over by a trolleybus.  Getting actually registered at the Uni after the meeting takes ages. I can feel myself getting older. We stand in one line for almost an hour and then learn that we were supposed to go somewhere else entirely.  In the room where we fill out the forms there’s a guy from Japan. He looks lost and anxiously translates everything on his phone. I haven’t spoken Japanese for two months and so I let him suffer. (note: he’s still alive and well)

After desperately walking around a few streets we decided, that McDonalds might be a global evil, but at least it’s basically the same all over the world and so we lower our standards and get lunch there. The sauce has a sticker with Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian. Beneath that is hidden the meme of that week.  We buy beer at Narvessen, which is a blessed chain of shops that has everything from tacky postcards to beer. They asked for our IDs, which is a first cultural shock, bcs apparently you have to show your ID everywhere - shops, bars, etc.  You also cannot drink alcohol out in the public: Like. You CANNOT.  Since it’s the 1st of September, there’s shitton of cops everywhere and we don’t feel like ending up in jail the first week of Erasmus, so we improvise.  I feel like a character in american movie. 

And this is a picture I took in Rimi, which is basically Latvian Tesco.  I couldn’t believe my eyes when I came to the beer aisle.

BUT WHY IS THERE NO RADEGAST???

I finally met my Erasmus buddy. She gives me and a guy from Valencia an Old Riga 101 tour. We end up in a bar, of course, and since in Riga there’s an unspoken rule that your friends will appear at the bar where you are, I make some Latvian friends. After more beer, I finally start to feel somewhat normal and recovered from my journey.  Tip: If you ever find yourself in a moment of awkward silence with a Latvian person, start talking about beer. They love beer almost as much as Czechs. 

I found my superpower - stumbling upon Czech and Slovak ppl everywhere. My roommate’s is that she keeps meeting ticket inspectors on public transport almost every day. 

The next day I found Tiger. It’s not IKEA, but it’s still a big victory.  In the food area of the mall I admitted defeat and got a tofu burrito. Because burrito and tofu are the same in latvian. Note: sometimes the words that sound familiar or the same aren’t actually what you think. But at least, you try out new things.

Latvians have a thing for their flag. I’m starting to think that paper bags for beer is not the only thing they have in common.  The building behind the flag pole is really really close to it and it’s actually pretty tall. This flag is the biggest I’ve ever seen ok. 

The grand finale of my first weekend was very grand indeed.  First me, my roommate and another girl from Czech went to Old Riga to explore some more.  I fed some stray cats. This is my life now, I carry cat food with me everywhere in Latvia. The chances of making new cat friends are always very high. 

So Latvijas Universitāte has this thing called Aristotelis. Welcoming of the frist years and a party at the Uni. Sounds harmless. Bzzzt, wrong.  We sip a beer hidden in a plastic bag and wait for whatever is coming at one of the many squares in Old Riga.  First comes the distant screaming and slowly it gets closer.  Group of people dressed in the same way, waving flags and signs, screaming on top of their lungs something in Latvian arrives and takes position behind a lady holding sign with the name of their faculty.  This happens in various versions for the next hour or so. One faculty carries a raft with a girl. Another group has flower crowns and torches. I smell cult.  After all the faculties arrived, their flag-bearers start running around the space in the in front of the stage. Everyone’s hyped and chanting their mottos.  The mood is contagious, and the space reserved for exchange students is the only silent part of the square. I start singing national anthem. 

Speeches start and we are pleasantly surprised that they show English translation on a huge screen next to the stage.  On top of all this, there’s a moment when a guy in actual Aristoteles’ costumes comes in a veteran car and reads his speech from a piece of parchment. 

When we thought it’s over, it wasn’t. No. They know how to make first years welcome at the University. We march through the city and scream the faculties mottos. Exchange students try as well, but we’re mostly just staring in disbelief.

Sorry for the shitty photo, this is not a protest, this is a first year pride march.  What do protests look like in Latvia, I probably don’t wanna know.

For some reason parties in Latvia start after 10pm, usually midnight and they’re wild till the morning. The one at the Uni was ending sometimes before 6am. No, I wasn’t there. We happily spent the 7 euros for the entrance on beer from Rimi and had a tired party at the dorms. But how they managed to clean it up before the lectures, I have no idea.  Latvian magic. 

Bonus: meme of the week

[meffthetravelfox]

Going to Latvia

My way to the land with no potatoes and mountains was pretty crazy. No sleep, panic attack and revolting stomach for the whole night, two-hour long ride from Ostrava to Krakow, my mind so foggy I couldn’t care if I forgot something at home. (Note: It’s been a month. It looks like I didn’t forget anything. It’s a small victory, but it’s mine.) 

It was the first time I was checking in my luggage on a flight. I was praying the cursed things would not go over the max.weight and that they wouldn’t get lost on the way. There was some problem. I was talking to the lady in Polish. Somehow, I didn’t have to pay anything(bcs apparently they can’t charge you anything extra if the fault is in their system as my mom told me later) and I said goodbye to all my fandom t-shirts in my mind.

In my leather motorbike jacket and the look of killer, exhausted with life, it’s wonder I passed the security check in one piece, nobody even asked me why the hell is my backpack full of suspicious medicine boxes. The security guy brought me my fluffy hoodie, bless the man.

(my rating of Krakow airport 10/10)

I made it onto the first plane to Warsaw. 

THIS IS IT. THIS IS THE PLANE’S PROPELLER (that doesn’t sound like a word, but i trust you on this, wikipedia) 

I accepted my fate and enjoyed the bumpy flight. It took 5 repeats of Shake It Off(my anti-anxiety song), We Are Number One and one episode of Cabin Pressure.

In Warsaw, I had some time to spare, risked a coffee and a cigarette in the glass booth

(they exist, they are real, holy shit, how amazing is that, the legends were true?!!)

and found out that I actually got an Erasmus buddy.

I might NOT die

I realized as I was using the vital time when I wasn’t in the air and had some internet connection. 

The only downside, there was no cold water running from the bathroom taps. 

(but still, 8/10 for the Warsaw airport)

The plane was the same small thing and I was the one sitting closest to the deathly piece of metal again. Due to the time change it was super quick and when I woke up from emergency nap that my body forced me into, all I saw was green forests. Must be Latvia already, I thought and of course it was. Soon we were going for landing and I had serious Dunkirk flashbacks when I saw the beach. 

We didn’t fly into any trees, even though it felt like they cut a strip of them down just to make way for the airplanes to make a safe landing.

I was nervous af when I saw the security guy with the drug-searching dog, for no reason at all since I wasn’t risking my whole Erasmus just to bring some shady substances in my suitcases. But still. It’s the feeling, you get me? When you see cops and you’re like Shit, this is it. My suitcases survived. I survived. I was in Latvia. 

This is my potato from Czech republic that I couldn’t resist but to take with me. What if the memes were true. 

My Erasmus buddy wrote me the number of bus I had to take to get to Riga. I found the rest on Google Maps, bless the phone operators in Czech republic and their decision from the heavens to finally get rid of roamings.  I asked the bus driver how to get to Reznas iela, but his English was non-existent. I knew I did latvian numbers on memrise some time ago and was hoping that he’d say something to me in Latvian and I could figure it out, but he chose the silent treatment.  A few stops after I got on, he suddenly came to me when we were standing at red lights and he passed me a piece of paper with written instructions. I should still have it somewhere. 

Through the city center, to a shady russian neighborhood that has similar vibe like home. I meet a girl that looks as lost as me and we find our way to the dorms together. She’s Latvian. That’s weird, on the webpage it said these dorms are for exchange students only. We find the building. In the small entrance hall, there are two other people sitting on a leather couch and a lady that works at the reception, doesn’t speak English and looks like she can put a curse on you. They call me into the office. The office lady doesn’t speak much English either. She checks my passport. I pray they have me in the system. If not, then the money that I don’t have on my account anymore probably went straight to politbyro. She gives me a key and a chipkarte which is super improtant and you mustn’t enter the dorms without chipping EVER. 

I find my room. I see a bed. Mission accomplished. After a couple of sentences me and my roommate realize we are both from the same country. Good. My exhausted Czech is still probably slightly better than my exhausted English.  Martina(that’s her name) tells me we have three showers for the whole floor. I accept my fate, I think when I see them in the evening disappearing light.  I meet another girl from Czech and we actually know each other from a Young LIfe Camp. The world is small. We go shopping. I buy a blanket and several other important items, like a Frozen bed linen, bcs the one we got from the dorms makes me sad and this one is on sale in JYSK. I’m running in autopilot mode. I don’t understand how I actually managed a several-hour long shopping trip in my state. 

I manage to unpack, take my IKEA seal plush that I took as a bad substitution of my dogs and fall into coma. 

P.S. this is the Dunkirk flashback