santa klaus

Nu ziemassvetki nu...

A Christamassy image from my Christmas night:

Vairis: (Is forty or fifty years old) This is my brothers!

Me: (I shake hands with them. I shake hands with Vairis' younger brother. He has a mustache. At first I think he has peculiarly small fingers, but then I realize that all the fingers on his right hand except for his pinky have been chopped off at the middle knuckle. It feels strange) Hello, it's nice to meet all of you.

Pēteris: If Romans don't go to woods hunting tomorrow, he will cut your hairs in factory where my father work.

Me: Fabulous.

(We pop open the champagne and start drinking brandy, and then vodka. You get in the mood for beans on Christmas)

Pēteris: Merry Christmas!

Armands: To you as well!

(We eat beans)

(We are watching Shrek 3 in Latvian)

Vairis: Fuck it... (He switches on the VHS)

(The TV starts up and it's a Latvian porno film. The man is wearing a condom in the woods and the woman is wearing nothing)

Armands: Merry Christmas!

(We drink)

This is the car now

Apparently we pulled the car down by the river and it's been there for about two or three days now. I saw some Russians taking pictures of it. It'll be there a long time.

Blee kurā dienā bus ziemassvetki?

I think the sentiment towards Christmas in Latvia can be just about summed up by a conversation we had last night while playing poker in Pēteris' basement:

Pēteris: (looking at the clock; it's midnight) Hey look it's Christmas!

Everone: Yay it's Christmas! Let's all kiss.

Pēteris: Wait, is Christmas the 24th or the 25th?

Ansis: It's the 25th.

Pēteris: Well then it doesn't count, it's just Christmas eve.

Ansis: So?

(Everyone continues the poker game for a while. A few people lose and are out of the game, and a few people go home)

Martiņš: (leaving) So, we're drinking tomorrow?

Built Ford Tough

This is what you see after your car fishtails off the road and hits a tree.

After we pulled the car out, Gatis tried to drive, but the fender was wedged into the wheel.

This is what the car looks like now.

When the tractor finally came we had to break the trees in order to pull the car out

This is what it looked like afterwards

It's a very simple equation I learned: when the road is more ice than asphalt, don't try going faster than the speed limit, and when the car crashes and you try to figure out what happened, don't yell "Ow my nose!" because it won't help anything. Oh, and don't let the guy (his name is Armands) who's only driven a car once in his life before drive. And wear warm socks, because it's gonna be snowing and you're gonna be out there for a good five or six hours and your feet are gonna be wet. And if you need to, don't be afraid to sit down in the sideways car for warmth.




I sat down in the car with Edijs and smoked a spanish cigar as he lamented the loss of his car. He told me it was a Ford and this pained me for some reason or another.

This means "Push"

The other one means pull. This is important information.

In Red Light District of Frankfurt

This reminds me of the entrance to the Church of Scientology in Berkeley

Europe is an Amusement Park

They make you pay for everything, including the bathroom. In places I know like Riga, I know ways to get around this(my friend, who is a girl, goes up to the lady who collects the money and holds up a tampon with a grimace and is let in immediately), or places to go instead (big shopping centers tend to have free bathrooms), but I was stuck in a Polish bus station where I didn't know anything. I looked around for a while, but it seemed there would be no getting out of the 1.15 zloty charge to use the stupid toilet.


I bought the cheapest, biggest loaves of bread I could find and shoveled my face with them, washing it all down with dollar hot chocolate. If I was gonna have to pay to defecate then dammit I'd get my money's worth. I ate another loaf of bread and then went to the bathroom, slamming my change on the counter with a mischievous grin and then going into the stall. I sat down and then realized that they'd won the battle. There was no toilet paper. The bastards. Luckily I had some extra toilet paper in my pocket for emergency uses, but still, I left the experience feeling very defeated.

Bus #2 Warsaw - Riga

The bus to Riga was amazing. I'd spent the day shivering in an underground bus station and trying not to fall asleep before my bus left, and I was ready. I got in and sat down, this time in my correct seat. I was surrounded by people talking loudly. As soon as the bus left they all dispersed and I was left with two seats to myself. Not only this, but there was a vertical beam on my left that would prevent my head from sliding down the glass. Also, Eastern Europeans seem to have the tendency to be much more polite than western Europeans, evidenced by the fact that all the bums and stuff in Germany try to scam you or otherwise pretend they're not begging (A guy came up to me and said "look I only need 80 more cents to get on the train!" and showed me that he had ten euros in his wallet. I didn't give him the money, and I saw him do the same thing to everyone within my view. Anyways, so the bus was silent and we were on our way. Needless to say, the sleep was better than any hotel. I woke up once in Lithuania, and then again in Latvia. It was like flying JetBlue.