2007-Oct-15 - Rugby in Riga and the Art of Sleep

Well I think its tonight ... my time clock has been all shot to hell of late and in the last 24 hours we have snozed and then rewoken three times. Traveling is not all beer and skittles you know lol, its bloody hard work at times and the two things that contribute to the downside of it are: 1 getting the runs and 2 lack of sleep. Luckily this time its only lack of sleep I have to worry about :)

Since leaving Moscow the sleep pattern has been throughly disrupted. We have only had short stints in each city we have visited and this tends to upset the sleeping routine to start with. We have also decided to take a few overnight excursions too, between Moscow and Riga, to save money on accomadation which again tends to be detremental to sleep.

The trip from Moscow to St Petersburgh was an over night train journey of 9 hours, perched on this dinky top tier bunk, which the mattress kept slipping around on, and barely the same width as myself. You can't sit up on these either as there is not enough room between the bunk and the roof of the carriage. If I turned over I would roll off the bunk, so in the end I fitfully dozed most of the night away while trying hard to hold on each time the train lurched to a halt. Score 2 out of 5 for a good nites sleep.

Arrived at St Petersburg at 8.30am, had a Macdonalds breakfast and then ended up walking around for 3 hours in the rain looking for the hostel that we had alredy paid a deposit on. Never found it !! or the other one that we had noted. We were lucky enough though to come across an Internet cafe where we were able to suss out a YHA with a shared 4 bed dorm and soft mattresses (a real luxury as so far they have all been rather solid or thin). However the giant sized, over stuffed pillow was not helpful and the sheets are next to usless. We have found since China that all the sheets are a foot shorter than the beds - no idea why - and not wide enough to tuck in. The end result is that you end up either being wrapped up in the dam things or they get bunched up under you. The dorm room was also on the main street and the traffice flow was constant. I had one great sleep here, out like a light (probably helped by the drinking of several pints during "that" rugby game and getting in at 2am) but other than that, even with earplugs, the road noise was constant and contributed to some long nights. I even had to resort to a couple of nana naps in the late afternoon. Apart from the one night, Id score this sleeping location as a 3 out of 5.

An 8 hour (day) bus ride to Talinn gave me a bit of respite, and I was able to catch up abit on the sleep I missed by dozing in my seat for a couple of hours on and off. Handy hint here - bring your towel when on the bus as its a good pillow to rest between your head and the bus window, it absorbs the road noise and stops you getting bruises on your head from the rough ride :). This just scored a 3 out of 5 for ease of sleep.

Arriving in Talinn in the dark, with freezing rain and a solid artic wind blowing, we missed our street and wandered for an hour before finding the hostel. We were feeling quite worn out by this stage and were looking forwards to a good nites sleep - huh, to be so lucky. This was a great hostel for partying but not for sleeping. We ended up in a 10 bed dorm (the cheapest going at $25 a night each) but this also happened to be the entry and exit point for the kitchen and bathroom, and was sandwiched between other smaller dorms.This meant a constant stream of people going through it, laughing, chatting, coughing and banging doors all night long. The best plan here was to go to bed late (1 or 2am) and sleep as late as possible (although the windows faced east and the sun didn't sleep in!) as thats what everyone else did. Beds were great (save for the pillow which this time was about the size of a dinner plate) and to save $$, instead of paying extra for sheets, we were able to finally use our sleeping bags which hadn't been out of the pack to date. As can be imagined the sleep rating was not high here at 2 out of 5 and any sleep that was generated, was through exhaustion lol.

The last stage of getting to Riga was another over night bus trip leaving at 12.30am and arriving at 5.30am. This trip was in a quite modern touring bus and along roads that are as good as any motorway back home, and cost less than a night at the hostel. Managed to doze off and on during the trip but did not feel refreashed at all. In the past, when ever we have arrived at hostels and hotels, its always been easy to get a bed and flake out on arrival. Not this time however! A 5 min walk to the hostel from the bus station ... easily found this time ... to be told that book in time would not be until 12pm but if we returned by 10 there might be a bed free. So what to do ... remembering that this is Riga, the so called Bankok of Europe, with bars that are open all nite and even at 6am, still thronged with people, who it must be said, mainly appear to be drunk English larger louts, with a smattering of local mafi and street girls ... YES so what to do in a place like that ... you join in of course :)

So to while away the time we found a local bar, sunk a few pints, was nearly involved in a punch up that developed at the table next door, watched the bouncers remove a sleeping drunk to outside where he proceeded to curl up on the pavement and continue sleeping (its below zero here at night), observe the girls of the night ply their trade and then, to complete the morning, we found a Macdonalds. Arriving back at the hostel at 9:30, dying for some shut eye, we were again told by a different staff member that we would need to come back at 12!! Luckily there was a nice soft sofa in reception. However within 10 minutes the girl had checked out the 20 bed dorm room to find it .... empty!! We could have occupied the beds when we first arrived.

This place is as quite as the proverbial grave ... WHICH IS GREAT ... its more a hotel with a dorm room than a hostel, and the beds are comfy and the pillow is just right :) We slept soundly thru to about 1pm, off out for a bit of an explore, then to another Irish pub to settle in for the rugby. Here the beer was great and the bar meal excellent. And it all appeared to be so very cheap ... mind you it only appeared to be cheap!! Unlike the other country's we have been to where you get a huge wad of notes with face values in the thousands, that in reality add up to a couple of NZ dollars, the numbers here are small (pint of beer is 1.8 Lat) and you tend not to think of items as being expensive, until that is, you convert if back to NZ$ and find the small 10 lat note in your hand is really worth $30!!. I bought an English newspaper without thinking and realized later that it had cost me $6.

I finally got "home" around 2:30am, after having gotten lost for an hour wandering the streets, as they all look the same, but I managed to find McDonalds and from there it was just around the corner. I had had visions of sleeping it off in some quiet back street at one stage but couldn't find one quiet enough ;) Even so, once back in the dorm I had my best sleep for days, waking up to a nice dark, quiet, room at 11am. For tonight at least the rating is 5 out of 5.