XI

Two things come to mind when I think of the last two weeks; My weekend trip to Riga and a road trip to Copenhagen and Malmö. Let’s start with the first one, shall we?

After we finally found a good weekend to go to Riga, Mark, Urban, Mridul and I booked the tickets and arranged everything. Ironically, when we arrived at the airport after a 80 minute drive, we had a 3 hour delay on our flight of 50 minutes. So we ended up waiting on the airport, to eventually have to go to another airport with busses. This was kind of a letdown, since we only had 1.5 days in Riga, so time was running short. However, eventually we got on the plane and arrived in Riga!

When we arrived, we called a cab to get us to our Hostel. This was one of the most life threatening taxi rides I’ve ever had! Apparently, Latvian folks don’t take traffic rules to seriously. So while we were driving half on the middle of the road, half on the trolley car way, there were several occasions where we almost had a collision. Luckily, we arrived at the hostel alive!

After checking in and putting our stuff into place, we decided to find a nice place to eat. After all, it had been a long time since we started our journey, and airport food usually is not exactly top cuisine! The first thing we noticed is that the price level in Riga is a lot more pleasant than in Stockholm. Finally we could go out and eat for prices lower than the Swedish supermarkets, and have a beer that’s 20% the price of a beer in Stockholm! Giving a round is suddenly a lot more fun haha! So after we had a 3 euro dinner (desert included), we went back to the hostel. That night we explored the night life of Riga, and it was quite nice!

The day after we began with a 3 hour tour through the city. It was a good way to see what the must-see’s in Riga are, but frankly I was not very impressed. I thought the city was kind of a melting pot of different styles, and therefore somehow lacked cohesiveness. I might have set my expectations too high, since I had heard it was an extraordinary city, but nevertheless I was not impressed much.

After this, we did something I would have never guessed I would ever do: gun shooting! Through our hostel it was possible to sign up for this. We had to go by a cab to an old war bunker, right outside of town. Apparently safety is not considered an issue in Riga, because the only protection we got in there was ear protection. First we got to shoot with a glock, which is basically a standard pistol. After this, the fun started; we got to shoot with an AK47 and a shotgun! It was a fantastic thrill to shoot with these massive guns, and the kickback was huge! A true adrenalin rush!

In the evening we were extremely tired, so we just went to some bars to conclude the weekend. The day after we had to get up pretty early to check out and return to Stockholm again. It was a nice weekend!

After a week of working my ass of to keep up with my courses, including 4 presentations, it was already time for the next big thing: a road trip! We were with 10 guys from 9 nationalities (of course, the French are the ones that break the cycle), and we rented 2 cars to drive from Stockholm to Copenhagen, a quick stop in Malmö and then back via Gothenburg.

Of course the fun started in the car, with singing (read; screaming) along the songs on the radio, driving a little (or way) too fast on the almost empty highways and making way to many pit stops to grab some food or drinks. After approximately 8 hours we arrived in Copenhagen in the evening. After grabbing some dinner, we went to check out the nightlife of Copenhagen!

The day after we got op quite early to check out the city. Copenhagen is quite stunning, with lots of historical buildings and churches. Of course we also went and see the mermaid statue, which was as little as the legends tell us. Looking around the city took us the entire day, so in the evening we were quite tired. Nevertheless we went out, and we checked out some parts where we hadn’t been the day before.

On Sunday it was already time to leave again and say goodbye to Copenhagen! Our departure time was a little later than expected (getting 10 people ready at an early time is an impossible mission), and unfortunately our visit to Malmö had to suffer because of this. This was really a quick stop of around 3 hours, but we did get to see a big museum with all kinds of random stuff. Including working equipment from the stone ages, some fashion dresses and genetically manipulated animals.

A long drive to Gothenburg followed, where we got to see some of the beautiful countryside of Sweden. We arrived at Gothenburg again quite late, so no one of us had the power to do much that evening. All the hostels were booked, so we had to sleep in the car, which was also quite the experience. When it was getting cold in the night (Which it does, believe me), we drove around the city to get the car warmed up again. Around 5 am we got hopelessly lost however, which led to a 45 minute drive through Gothenburg! Eventually we found our beautiful parking lot, and we could go back to sleep again.

The day after we visited Gothenburg thoroughly, and I really enjoyed the city. It has a typical Swedish atmosphere which is also present in Stockholm and Malmö. I would recommend everyone to also visit these cities! After this visit it was time to return to Stockholm again. The surroundings between Gothenburg and Stockholm are even more impressive than what we saw before, and again we had great fun playing around with the cars. This road trip was an unforgettable experience!