Yearly Archives: 2013

Separated on the way to Cēsis

Cēsis is a billed as a lovely, archetypal Latvian town with a Medieval Castle and cobbled streets. We boarded the train from Sigulda at 11:47am, intending to spend an afternoon exploring its sights.

As it turned out, only one of us would make it.

At about 12:15, Julie says we’re near our stop, and we make our way to the end of the carriage as the train pulls into the little station. I stepped aside to let an elderly woman step onto the train, then hop off onto the platform. As I turn around, Julie isn’t behind me, as the woman had continued through to our carriage, and Julie had moved aside also – as Julie stepped out of the carriage the doors started to close and the train, not waiting for Julie or the doors, continued.

Shit.

OK. No problem. I’ll wait in the station for Julie to catch the next return train to Cēsis, and we’ll continue our plans, just a little delayed.

I look at the station. It doesn’t say Cēsis. It says Ieriki.

Shit. I got off at the wrong stop.

No, wait – the train station at Jūrmala was called Majori, so this could still be Cēsis. OK, let’s scout it – the bus station should be the other side of the train station, and there should then be crossroads leading away from both towards the castle. The bus station looks like a car park and there aren’t any signs or stops visible. There are crossroads, but there are only houses on the corners, and the road away looks hardly used – there are no signs a bus has been down here.

Shit. I did get off at the wrong stop.

OK. Quick situation report. Cēsis can’t be but a few more minutes up the track, as we were just about to get off. I check the weather – midday, cloudy with bursts of sunlight. Good.
I’ve got a mobile phone, great, turn it on so Julie can reach me when she gets to Cēsis. I’ve got hiking boots on, warm clothing, a torch, penknife, lighter, small writing pad (which I could use to start kindling if needs), two packed lunches, 35Lats (about £30), a credit card, our hostel keys, and sunglasses. Great, put the sunglasses on so I don’t go snowblind.
The road parallel to the tracks veers off up ahead, so the best route is to follow the tracks themselves.

I got this.

The snow is about toe deep, and uneven underfoot because of the railway stones, but I’m making good progress.

Round the first corner, 2km ahead there’s a building on the left that could be a platform.

It isn’t.

It’s a small house set back from the tracks, the owner looks at me as I walk past – a wave is returned and he goes back inside. It’s a glorious day. I’m in the middle of nowhere, hiking trough a pine forrest in a National Park. Life is good. I reflect on the situation, and resolve to double-check before taking a course of action. I’m now thinking that was Cēsis, and I’ve headed off into the wilderness buoyed by my preparation and fondness for adventure.

Round another corner and I hear a train coming – I’d better get away from the tracks, so I head about 8 meters into the snow. It’s deep, thigh deep. After the freight train of oil drums and hoppers passes I make my way back up to the tracks, twisting my knee slightly in the process. This isn’t going to work if I’m injured. I winced the first couple of steps but I needn’t have, it was fine to walk on. Phew. I’ll see what’s round the next corner, and decide if I ought to turn back and wait for the next passenger train.

Next corner, no buildings. But there is a gantry with lights up ahead, and lots of railway signs – I see a car crossing the tracks up ahead – civilisation!

Just past the gantry I hear another train – this time it’s a passenger one coming towards me. As the banks are steep, I hot-foot it the 20 or so meters back to the gantry and hide from the snow-spray kicked up by the train by ducking behind the electrical cabinets. I wonder how dodgy I must look to the driver as I hide from the train.

Up ahead I see another car crossing the tracks. Perhaps there’s a village nearby? I spot a small
shelter set back to the right, it’s a station. Its name is Melturi. And there’s a granny-aged woman waiting for a train.

Excellent.

I say hello in Latvian, and read the timetables. Neither Cēsis or Sigulda are mentioned. I ask the granny “Cēsis?” and point down the tracks – first where I’ve come from, then further up the line. She gestures back the way I’ve come.

Shit. I got off at the right stop and Julie is likely on her way back there right now. Probably on the passenger train I just hid from.

Hang on, granny is waiting for a train, so I’ll wait for a train too. I sit down next to her. 5 minutes later and in perfect English, granny says “would you like to go to Cēsis?” Yes. Very much so I reply. She turns her little notebook to me where she’d written “autobus”, “2km” and “13:40”, above a cute little drawing of a bus. “Take this track 2km, there you can get a bus to Cēsis at 13:40.” I thanked her repeatedly in English and Latvian, and with 15 minutes to go, headed off once more between the pine trees.

The track passed a hotel – I made a mental note in case I needed somewhere to stay or to call a taxi from – and ended at a very major road. As I’d walked east on the railway, and north on the track, I crossed the road and waited for the next bus that went west – back towards Cēsis. As I’d missed the 13:40 bus by a couple of minutes, I now had 70 minutes to wait.

Time for a sandwich.

5 minutes later, a silver express bus to Cēsis & Rīga passed by but wouldn’t be flagged down. I’m at the right stop at least.

About 40 minutes later, a bus stopped and I asked for a ticket to Cēsis – the driver simply said “No” and shook his head. Confused that he mustn’t have liked to look of me, I got off. The bus clearly said “Cēsis, Sigulda, and Rīga” on the front. Weird.

10 minutes after that, another bus stopped. This time, as well as saying “No” and shaking his head, this driver pointed over the road to the opposite bus stop. Aha! But that doesn’t make any sense. Granny said Cēsis was west of here, not east. Maybe the bus route explains it. No sooner had I crossed the road, the proper Cēsis bus appeared.

Excellent.

The first sign I see from the bus reads “Cēsis 11km”. Holy shit, it’s miles away! It was a good decision to stop walking the railway lines.

At 15:10, 3 hours after we were separated, I arrive into Cēsis and the layout matches the map in my head and in the guidebook I’m carrying. First stop, the train station.

No Julie.

OK. I have the lunch so she’ll have been hungry – what about nearby cafe’s?

No Julie.

Checked all the bus stops, and the train station again. She’s not here. OK. What would she do. I’m 3 hours late, it’s a nice day, she’d likely have waited a couple of hours then gone to the castle.

So I went to the castle, hoping to see her on the way.

Got there. No Julie.

So I thought, well, I’m here, maybe she’s still inside, and I’d like to see it too, so I paid the entrance fee and walked around the castle and museum for an hour and a half, knowing that we’d planned to leave Cēsis at 17:10.

Just as I’m buying my ticket for the bus back to Sigulda, my phone goes – it’s Julie. She’s safe. On arriving at Cēsis she couldn’t find a payphone to call me and had gone as far as the castle but not inside to look for one.

Figuring I’d do the same, she got the first bus back to Sigulda where we were staying.

Later reunited and over a couple of beers, we swapped our versions of the day. From her silver express bus home, Julie thought she caught a glimpse of someone that looked like me, eating a sandwich at a bus-stop.

Epilogue

We’ve talked about how we could have planned for such a situation in advance, but nothing really springs to mind. We reasoned that getting separated while en-route somewhere isn’t quite the same as getting lost.

Having a cheap mobile phone each would have saved us both some time, but wouldn’t have made for a good story.

What would you suggest?

Pedvale Sculpture Park, Sabile, Latvia

2 Replies

Last Thursday, we visited the open-air sculpture museum at Pedvale near Sabile in western Latvia. The morning began with wildlife. On the 1.5 mile walk from the village to the museum a deer crossed the road in front of us and then within minutes of starting to walk around the park, we saw a bullfinch and two different kinds of woodpecker!

I don’t think that they’ve had many (any?) visitors over the winter as the man who runs it seemed slightly flustered to see us and forgot to charge us the entry fee.

The museum is run by Ojars Feldbergs, a Latvian artist, and the permanent collection consists of around 100 sculptures placed over 100 hectares of land. Most of the sculptures are made from natural materials (stone, wood, etc.) but some are made from reclaimed/recycled material. Our favourite was “MUNAMUNA” by Villu Jaanisoo, made from old TV screens.

Another favourite of ours was “Washday” by Liga Zimante. Situated by a stream, it made us smile.

Here are some of the others.

“The Path” by Karlis Alainis

“Butterfly” by Karlis Alainis

“Pedvale Totem No. 14” by Kardo Kosta

“The Makeover” by Liga Zimante

“The Sky Chair” by Villu Jaanisoo

For most of the way, the paths were hidden under snow and in some places it was ankle deep…

We were fortunate to have gorgeous weather on that day. In fact it was so sunny that we both got some colour on our faces. One thing we weren’t expecting to get in Latvia was a tan :)

Hostel Hospital, Sabile, Latvia

6 Replies

We thought it worthy of a post of its own, this quirky hostel in the Abava valley, 2 hours west of Riga, Latvia.

As its name suggests, it’s a former working hospital. Your first thought is likely as ours – “cool, I wonder if we’ll be able to make out any of the hospital’s original features?”

No problem there – the building looks to have about 8 working bedrooms as of our visit, and is still in the process of being converted into a hostel. All the facilities are done, but you cannot escape the thought that not so long ago this was an abandoned or mothballed hospital. And that thought, especially as Julie and I were the only guests, gave this place a very spooky air..

The main kitchen was obviously the old operating theatre, with its tiled floor, drain holes, electrical cabling coming up through the floor and chains hanging from the ceiling.
The TV room has some heavy duty black-out blinds, and old eye chart (is your Cyrillic alphabet better with your left eye or your right eye?), and there’s a really old velour-covered electric wheelchair. Sadly, the batteries are dead – I wondered what the horn sounded like!

Indeed, there are left-over bits of hospital furniture everywhere we looked: a couple of old wheeled beds, trolleys that would have been used in operations for laying out surgeons implements, and old sinks in almost every room.

I haven’t been able to find out what kind of hospital it was, and perhaps that’s for the best – for the sake of a good nights sleep, we liked to think it was a nice hospital where minor injuries were quickly mended, rather than ‘The Shining’ meets ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’.

Riga, Latvia

5 Replies

So, when people say “it’s Baltic” they mean that it’s cold, and in our experience Riga is Baltic in all senses of the word. Actually, it’s been a little warmer the last couple of days – up to about -2 degrees…

What have we been up to in our first week of freedom? After an evening in London and a yummy curry with Jo, we flew to Riga where we’ve been staying for a week on the top floor of a Soviet apartment block with a lady called Anna.

It’s a short walk from the historic centre of Riga which is situated between the River Daugava (frozen!) and a narrow but pretty park around the City Canal (also frozen). The streets are cobbled and a lot of the buildings are historic – a bit like York really.

On our first day we climbed to the top of St Jacob’s church tower for a view over the city.

And spent sometime warming up in the peaceful interior where there’s a huge seven armed candlestick.

Riga also has a fantastic covered market situated in what used to be old zeppelin hangars. One hall each for fishmongers, fruit and veg, cheese and bakeries, butchers and general grocers. We spent ages wandering around and then did some shopping for our dinner – smoked fish (something like a giant kipper), baked potatoes and a couple of types of pickled cabbage from the many on offer.

The newer part of Riga is famous for its Art Nouveau architecture – in fact it has more Art Nouveau buildings than any other city in Europe. There is a walking tour of some of the best examples in our Lonely Planet guidebook which we decided to do.

Halfway round we passed the beautiful Russian Orthodox cathedral. No photos allowed inside, but it is just as impressive as the outside with lots of gilt and brightly painted walls.

By the end of the tour we were ready to reward ourselves with hot chocolate :)

…before visiting the Museum of Occupation which tells the history of Latvia’s occupation by the Soviet Union from 1940-41, then by Nazi Germany for the remainder of WW2, and again by the Soviet Union until their independence in 1991.

On Sunday we decided to take the train to the coast – Jurmala is Latvia’s premier seaside resort. We managed to buy our train tickets with no problem and eventually found the platform after getting slightly lost in the shopping centre which is attached to the station. We wandered through the town and a lovely park with board walk paths and a viewing tower.

Andrew wasn’t too keen on the open metalwork steps and flooring but the view made up for it.

Next we headed to the beach for a walk along the sand…

But the beach was covered with snow and the sea was frozen! Still there were a lot of families out for a Sunday walk and even skating further out. We walked out over the sea. It seemed to be frozen for miles.

Yesterday we took another day trip, this time by bus to Latvia’s Open-Air Ethnographic museum. This is a collection of old wooden buildings from different parts of the country preserved here to show visitors what life was like in the past. The buildings have been reconstructed in a pine forest by a lake and were very pretty in the snow.

Some of them were open and had rooms set up and staff to explain what life was like. I suspect that even more are open during the summer months.

As well as houses and farm buildings, there were churches and windmills too.

This one was my favourite :)

As we knew we would be out in the cold all day we’d decided not to take our own sandwiches for lunch but to eat at the on site inn. This would have been an excellent plan except that with so few visitors in the winter the inn wasn’t open (the advantage for us being that it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves). So we got the bus back into the city, cold and hungry. Fortunately, we had already seen a restaurant selling just what we needed: bacon and bean soup served in a bread bowl. Perfect!

Tomorrow we’re venturing out to the Latvian countryside for a few days.

It begins!

3 Replies

We left our jobs a mere fortnight ago with dreams of leisurely wake ups, our mornings would consist of sorting and packing, our afternoons spent writing, and fun-filled evenings of ‘last suppers’ with friends and family.

Oh, how wrong we were.

While it feels like months since we left work, it also feels like the time has flown by because we haven’t stopped since we left – we quickly realised how much of a mammoth task it is packing our lives into boxes. It’s been a long, tiring, and emotional couple of weeks and we’ll be telling you a little bit more about it once we’ve gathered our thoughts (I’m sure they’re in a box here somewhere), and caught up on our sleep!

two year trip

Andrew and Julie's Travelling Adventures