Another glorious summer morning awaits us; we stroll into the small ‘old town’ and indulge in specialities from a bakery that seems to have remained unchanged since Martina was a child. But then we set off, wanting to continue to Riga, the capital of Latvia and ‘only’ about three and a half hours away.
The conditions are ideal and we reach Riga, an old port and trading city with over 600’000 inhabitants today, without any problems. And the best thing: here, too, we sail with the ArgoFram directly into the city; wherever I have gone on my previous explorations, the marina is usually in the heart of a city or close to its present centre, for historical reasons. Great, this travel experience! Everything is within reach: market square, historical centre, pulsating life.
Riga is phenomenal: the old town, unlike Tallinn, does not live only for or by tourists. It is overflowing with people shopping, strolling or simply enjoying the summer. (And the prices are a bit lower than in Tallinn.) While Tallinn, with its 400,000 inhabitants, is about the size of Zurich, but has a rather small, let’s say manageable and prettified old town, which is very much geared to tourism (if the tourists are missing, Tallinn is as if deserted), Riga’s city is also a centre of everyday life!
Insert: Tallinn is the metropole of Estonia; one third of the entire population of Estonia lives here. In the Pirita district and in the suburb of Viimsi (where the Miiduranna harbour is located and Marko has its business), the upper ten thousand live in their villas trimmed to modern standards. In the Lasnamäe district, on the other hand, tens of thousands live in gigantic blocks of flats (from the Soviet era), linked only by huge shopping centres. Where social life takes place here is not discernible. At the same time, Tallinn has a thriving culture of young entrepreneurs seeking and apparently finding their fortune in IT, design, fashion and gastronomy; there are sprawling areas with start-ups, boutiques and clubs that put comparable places like Zurich in the shade.
Back to Riga: again, about a third of the country’s population is concentrated in this city. But the fact that the historical centre is also the modern centre and is very spacious makes Riga seem more homogeneous, somehow more ’rounded’. And very busy. Riga is accordingly a big positive surprise. – However, we experienced the downside of the marina’s central location during the night: the area along the river where our marina is located is the destination of all sociable night owls at the weekends!
It’s nice when we, as residents, can walk through the stylish and excited people everywhere without a Covid certificate and entrance control… So we decide, in view of the endlessly booming beats at midnight, to go out again, dance along and wander through the various open-air clubs and parties. But in view of the hot rhythms around us, we don’t find any sleep afterwards either (our boat lies on a jetty right between two event areas where the party folk flashed by). And at five in the morning, when there was still no end in sight to these festivities, we set off! – The day wakes up, the DJ’s are playing, the young beautiful people are jolting – we break down our sleeping tent and dislocate to the next boat stop, which is a few kilometres away in an idyllic place – which will only open at 10 o’clock on this Sunday morning… So there is some sleep after all.