Riga

We arrive at Riga at 5:34 in the morning and make our way to the train station which according to the map is only a few hundred meters away. The Moscow ticket box doesn't open until 11:00 but the train isn't scheduled to depart until 4:15. We both decide to stay awake and wait for the coffee shops to open in the station. It's unbelievably cheap here. I almost feel like I'm robbing them it's ridiculous. We're in a nice coffee shop and I have just paid 0.90 latis (about a pound) for a coffee and a nice chocolate eclair. Within minutes of demolishing it, I returned to the counter asking for more until 3 coffee's later, I was as high as a kite. Wide awake, I was perfectly able to navigate my way through an almost impossible conversation with the Latvian speaking assistant to find out costs and schedules for our train to Moscow.

Riga seems like an interesting city. I would like to explore but I simply don't have the energy or time to venture out properly. While Ali uses the only available internet point in probably the whole of Latvia, I run a few errands sticking within a 1/4 mile radius of the station. People here seem extremely sad and miserable. I haven't seen a single person smile yet. As I stood in the photo processing shop waiting for my pictures to be transferred onto a cd, I watched the locals get served. Their attitude towards each other was more Hostile than friendly. Or maybe my expectations of customer service are of a higher standard than they should be?