RISEBA Riga, Latvia

Sveiki and welcome to digital postcard no. 2 from Riga! As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in my favourite café, which I have to admit I visit about every other day, sipping my gigantic Kafija (oat) latte for €2.50. So you can understand why I'm here more often.

The nice thing about the European diaries is not only that you can share your own experiences with others, but also that you can reflect on what you're actually experiencing here while writing. Because time abroad is limited and when I tell you that the time here flies by, it (unfortunately) really does!

Anyone coming to Riga for a holiday or a semester abroad should not underestimate the beauty of the city. As expected, the city, like the whole country and almost the entire Baltic region, is very flat, which in theory makes it perfect for cycling, but Riga residents are more likely to travel by car, by foot or by public transport, which is very cheap here. A monthly ticket costs €15 for students. The historic old town is what you typically see in travel guides and Google searches, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and with good reason. However, this also means that there are a lot of tourists in the old town and the prices in the bars and restaurants are correspondingly high. Locals tend to go out in the centre or the new town.The locals prefer to go out in the centre or the new town, but more about this in a later diary entry. Riga is also the Art Nouveau centre of Eastern Europe, which can be seen on every street corner in the city, but especially in Alberta iela (Albert Street), which lies at the heart of the Art Nouveau district and at the end of which you can also visit the Art Nouveau Museum.

But back to life: In the first two weeks, I hardly got a chance to take a deep breath, as everything was full of events to get to know each other, organised by ESN and my university, moving into a new flat and soaking up all the new impressions. After that, I needed a weekend to process everything, catch up on sleep and calm down a bit. Once I had recharged my social battery, I could really get going.

As the weather was surprisingly much(!) warmer than I had expected, we went to the beach first. After all, it's only a half-hour journey from Riga Central Station to the Baltic Sea on rustic and jerky Soviet-style trains to the seaside resort of Jurmala. The coasts here are beautiful, with soft sandy beaches, small dunes and usually very well equipped with changing rooms, toilets and rare restaurants or snack bars. As the Baltic Sea at the Bay of Riga is also very sheltered, the water was very calm and one day of swimming turned into about five in the first few weeks. In short, you should not underestimate the temperatures in Latvia, because in summer and late summer it is still really warm here! Apart from swimming, it was now time to check out Riga's nightlife and restaurant culture and let me tell you, you can be very happy here. However, as my obviously well-curated list of places to be would go beyond the scope of this diary entry, you'll have to be patient.

If you're now wondering - and correctly so - whether I'm not actually here to study, you're absolutely right. However, the university courses didn't start for me until mid-September, although the official start of the semester was 1st September. This gave me plenty of time to wander around the city and reduce the weekly screen time on my laptop to zero hours a day.

And with that: Čau, I'll see you again in two weeks!