Anton Maderbacher, Latvijas Universitate Riga, Faculty of Education, Psychologie and Art
Riga...
is probably the most beautiful city with three different faces.
1. Old town - Very beautiful and historical place which is, especially in summer, very crowded.Old churches, different kinds of museem and many other things here. If you "live" here and you are sick of all this touristic things, old town is the best spot for sports bars and irish pubs. Condensed you can say, it`s the most popular place for foreigners in latvia.
2. New town - Many awesome parks, "hipster" places and very cheap restaurants are located here.After one week in old town, which is enough to see nearly everything there, I
started to explore this side of the Riga, which I started to prefer.
3. Sourrounding area - I call it "Little russia". You can get easily a bad feeling if you walk alone threw the small streets at night.After a few weeks and the first contacts with other erasmus people, especially from souther countries, I recognized that latvians and russians are quiet racists. Personally I`ve never got
problems, probably because I look very similar or almost the same as latvians/russians, but colleagues heard the sentence: "Go home, what are you doing here?", more than once.
I don`t know why, but I love this russian influence. Language, style of their buildings and also the people.
Weather
February, march and april are horrible, it was snowing or raining nearly every day.Very depressive time. In the end of April the weather changed suddenly and got very beautiful. After this long periode of depressive weather, I approciated and enjoyed this sunny days a lot. I also found probably the best reason to live in northern countries: 18 hours of sun in the summer!!! Awesome experience to sit outside in the sun at 10pm with good discussions and one or two beers :) !
Nightlife
Like in the most big cities in europe,also Riga is a very good place for party. Like I mentionend before, there are many pubs, amazing hipster places and also the biggest disco in the baltics. Everyone can find her something.
One fact which suprises me at the beginning, were the prices. Especially in old town the prices are not really cheaper than in austria. Of course there are some mesmerizing cheap places also, but you have to search for them - I can say I found many of them ;) !
