Tallinn and Riga - post Soviet

I’ve been in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, for the past 10 days or so.  In that time I’ve been to a concert, which I mentioned earlier, visited the old town on a number of occasions and taken a 4 ½ hour coach journey to Riga, the capital of Latvia.  I visited Riga 15 years ago on an expenses paid trip to show some travel agents the highlights (and fleshpots as it turned out) of the city.  We all enjoyed it then and I enjoyed it again on this visit (not the fleshpots this time I promise you).  This time I stayed at budget hotels outside the centre.  The hotels were OK as far as they went but both were in really depressed areas, a description that seems to apply to most spots outside the old town, including the ‘new’ bits erected since the end of the Soviet era.  But I was shown, by a very nice and elegant Latvian lady, the ‘better’ part of town which houses the embassies and elegant apartments of the well to do in Riga.  We had a splendid meal at a restaurant where I fought to eat my food before her lapdog (a tiny terrier of some sort she called ‘Mon Cherie!) which she had on her lap throughout the meal got to it first.  But it was a sweet little thing I suppose but not what I’d call a ‘dog’.

Three days later I caught the coach back to Tallinn when my problems started.  First I lost my debit card.  I spent nearly an hour on the phone to my bank in the UK who played me music for ages in between telling me how important my call was to them.  Clearly they considered it of less importance to me judging by the time it took for a human to answer but a fairly pleasant young lady eventually did the necessary pretty quickly and cancelled the card and confirmed no unauthorised transactions had taken place since I’d discovered the card’s loss.  A new card would take 5 working days to reach my address in the UK I was told so I had to find a way of ‘loading’ my pre-paid currency card with enough cash to tide me over.  My God what a task that was (is).  The currency card won’t accept any credits from anything but a registered debit card.  But I cancelled that last night I explained.  The totally inflexible representative at the other end of the email exchange was ……. totally inflexible ….. so my son in Glasgow took up my case with them on my behalf.  Two people it seems confirmed  to him they would make an exception in the circumstances and accept a transfer direct from my bank, but the inflexible email man still wouldn’t wear it.  Then, just after I’d made a transfer to my son so that he could transfer me the equivalent in Euros via Western Union the following day the currency card ‘inflexible’ guy relented, saying they’d spoken to my son and hour before and would make an exception in this case.  I’d already explained that hours before!  Bloody banks.  Then my bank  …….!  I won’t go on for fear of boring the pants off you.  Suffice to say I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.

Then the guy who was supposed to have varnished my boat’s woodwork whilst I was in Riga but who didn’t cocked the job up by leaving varnish with hardener in it overnight.  He was surprised it was a solid block the next morning.  It was the only pot of varnish the appallingly equipped chandler had in stock so where do I go from here, and how long will it take to get there?

I’m currently in the position of deciding where to sail to next.  The elegant lady in Riga is anxious I should sail there when I can take her to the opera and she can dress up in her elegant clothes (she’ll look especially upper class next to me in my jeans!)  I think she’s under the impression the trip will take about 4 ½ hours like the coach and not 5-6 days if the weather is kind.  But the weather has broken and strong winds and rain have characterised the past day or two.  The other alternative is to skip Riga and sail to Poland.  The problem with that is that I have to bypass that part of Russia that separates Lithuania from Poland and keep well out to sea outside Russian waters.  A 30-35 hour sail if I’m lucky. If I don’t stay clear of Russian waters I’m likely to be challenged by a Russian gunboat, something I’ve avoided so far and want to avoid at any time in the future.  I’ll sleep on it.  G’night.