Riga, Latvia: Coffee Shops, Cold Streets, and Digital Nomad Diaries
i just checked my phone earlier… 17.33c right now, feels closer to 15.72c with this relentless wind from the baltic. weird how the weather here never matches what’s on paper. like the data is some stubborn bureaucrat refusing to budge. i wore a jacket three sizes too big last night and still woke up shivering. my knees whispered ‘winter’s a liar’ but my teeth? they’re still staging a mutiny.
turns out riga’s old town is basically a time-travel sandwich. cobblestones so rigid they hum underfoot, churches carved into stone with enough detail to make a historian cry, and shops selling that ridiculous riga black balsam everyone raves about. i tried a sample at this tucked-away kiosk near the central market. tasted like licorice exploded in a church graveyard. would recommend, but only if you’ve got prescription-strength gum on standby.
i wandered into the old town market and overheard this grumpy old vendor mutter, ‘americans come here expecting golden beaches. this is lithuania’s ugly stepchild,’ then immediately regretted it when his apprentice elbowed him. the market’s a beast-stalls piled high with pickled herring you’d think are actual fish, artisans carving wooden spiders big enough to repel mosquitoes, and chefs pretending to care about your preferences. ‘vegetarian? we have… pickled mushrooms,’ one said while eyeing me like i’d just insulted their grandma.
found this gem of a café downtown called ‘slow slow down’-it was shut when i first passed, which is typical. the wifi password was taped to the wall in cursive. figured i’d just stare at the brick wall and wait, but then some guy in a wolf sweater wandered in, slung his laptop bag on the counter, and said, ‘sorry, we’re testing their new ‘tech-friendly’ mode.’ just turned on his phone’s hotspot and vanished. classic digital nomad move. left me wondering if he’d been there the whole time, pretending to be offline like the rest of us.
pressure was 1018 hPa earlier. someone at the café’s message board said that means ‘holy cake weather’ coming. pressure’s a weird thing here. feels like the city itself is balancing on a pin. humidity? 23%-drier than a stale latvian sausage. made my skin crawl for 48 hours until i gave up and asked for a humidifier. they sold me one shaped like einstein. perks of being a tourist, i guess.
if you get bored, jen suits or tallinn are just a short drive away. tallinn’s got old town too, but theirs is all ‘instagrammable.’ riga’s old town is like standing in a board game box where the pieces are made of cobblestones and existential dread. this place whispers secrets. i heard one dude in the park mutter, ‘i came here for the beer, stayed for the ghosts.’ nobody else was around, so either he’s lying or the bartenders here are experts at concealment.
the best part? riding the tram. 80 cents to trample over neighborhoods that look like they’re from different centuries. my laptop’s skype call to mercer explosion continued through it all, while the conductor honked aggressively at pedestrians via megaphone. lag complained about the bandwidth, but i felt like i was building resilience to whatever hell riga was throwing at us.
p/s: stop me if i’m rambling. my cat’s judging me from this distance. tried to work here at co-working space ‘forminum’ but their espresso machine hissed like a defiance-laden chatbot. local barista said, ‘this machine’s 90s, but it’s what got me through my first divorce.’ true. i’ll take it.
