I flew to Riga from Dusseldorf with my homie DJ Marcus, who was on a trip to Europe from San Francisco. We got a deal with Baltic Air that got us some free tickets to the Positvious festival, featuring Moby and Sinead O’conner. The only problem was that the festival was a hour outside of town and we couldn’t figure out how to get there with public transportation. After staying in town for a couple of days, we finally decided to hire someone to drive us out there. The dude was a nice enough fellow, but it seemed that everywhere we stopped to on the way to the festival we got the cold shoulder and when we got to Positivous, they refused to let the dude in with us. I guess it turns out that the guy was Russian and after WWII, Russia repopulated the city of Riga with Russians. There is about a 40% Russian population and there is a lot of animosity from the Latvians towards them. In this world you get judged by the company that you keep.

After DJ Marcus took off early, I stayed in town for another week and explored the city with my camera as much as I could. The city has a small old medieval center that sits right on the banks of the Daugava river and extends out to some wooded areas spotted with communist era apartment buildings. It was a bit rough skating through the center of town as all the streets are made with large cobblestone bricks, but gets easier the more you get out of town, even though the pavement isn’t the most up-kept around. One day when I was taking pictures on one of the main bridges, I noticed through the lens a couple that was looking up at me and pointing. It turns out it was my friend of mine from Amsterdam and his girlfriend on a trip to some of the Baltic countries. Seeing him in Riga was a trip and it shows that it can be small world indeed.