… Aldo! – will you help me or not? Silence… uf… Are you coming to the bus station? – me screaming. The bus is on the horizon!!! Silence… It was 7:45 a.m. when we took the 7:30 a.m. bus to Riga and six travellers were in it: Aldo, David, Vlad, Natalia, Inesse and me. In Riga we arrived relatively fast and we split in several groups: Natalia went on her way to the occupation museum, Dave went to get a tent (we had none) and four of us went straight ahead…
It was a gloomy day when somebody was knocking at my door: Natalia came to wake me up. She woke up everybody, except Aldo. Amazing: how could he be so ‘lucky’ and catch the bus, being 15 min late!
Our group had the most difficult task: to decide between visiting 5 museums, 3 bookshops, 6 galleries or having a very nice meal in McDonald’s. Guess what have we chosen? It was a disastrous combination of all of them, partly because mostly of the places have been closed and we exhausted. The top of all this was Natalia being late for the bus to Kolka and the forecast for the next two days! Raining! Raining!
Kolka, my dear Kolka! I will never forget this name: here I got drunk, slept on the ground, got cold and wet. I was looking like hell and I suppose all of us (admit it guys!).
We even did not notice when we arrived in a small and deserted village: Kolka! Despite the weather inconveniences the beauty of the nature in this unexplored corner of the world was a real reward. The first thing done on the beach was a Latin American soap opera fight for the place to stay. The ideas to sleep on the unpopulated beach, in the forest full of ants, in Valmiera or in a warm bed in Peru resulted in the fact that we dislocated our bags and us on the edge of the forest with a beautiful view on the sea. But before that we strolled 5 km on the beach hoping to get to other villages and leaving behind the lagging companions. Mosquitoes! Mosquitoes! – was almost crying poor Aldo! But, he bravely survived to the monster mosquitoes invasion with not essential losses: 135 bites on foot and hands, and not only  . All this was not because he is tastier than the others, but due to his absentminded approach to the Latvian wild nature: he brought with him only a spare pair of shorts and a shaving device – smart Aldo! Nobody knew what was that for, not even him!
After the long walk came the dinnertime, so everybody was busy with making our stay more comfortable. Of course, the choices were not many: to stay on the grass or to stay on the grass? It was pathetic, but we located a two-bedroom tent under a dry pine tree. The vodka-sunset combination went well into our stomachs, eyes and souls. We set by the fire, but what kind of party could it be without songs? Poor neighbours! We began with the Romanian-Russian repertoire and ended in an international manner. The neighbours were surprised, but it was nothing in comparison to the big and frightening fire made exactly under our dry tree. The explanation to this almost explosive-type fire was Vlad’s idea to burn a huge and long baobab tree. But because of its size we had to burn it in the middle! I thought it was enough, but he tells me now that he brought three more for the same purpose. So, after the fast-warming drink and a rain coming on us, five of us went to try and sleep in the same tent. Should I remind you that it was a two-person tent? The description of our position in the tent was representing all possible geometrical figures, more exactly – the fishes in the tin. During this rainstorm, it was a moment when I had no air in the tent and had to throw my shoes out off the tent. The big disappointment was in the morning, when I was shouting like a tiger at everybody around why I have a poll for the frogs in my shoes. All this time Vlad was contemplating on existentialist topics, something like: we shall eat some fish tomorrow! or there was not enough vodka, yeah!
At 9:15 a.m. Aldo, Natalia and Vlad were staying under a tree with a small umbrella waiting for the others to wake up. The departure was very cheerful! Everybody wanted to leave the rainy wood. We were wet and hungry. Walking 2 km in the direction of the bus station, our famine was growing rapidly. Thus, our noon picnic took place on the stairs of an old soviet-type buffet and consisted mainly of few left biscuits and some slices of bred with tongue pate. Having done that and facing three long hours of expectation, we had a brilliant idea: hitchhiking! Guys, the green folder is lying! The hitchhiking process took more than the girl’s standard 10-min waiting and the long 30-min male version: we waited 1 hour and the final result was drinking vodka in the bus station for disease prevention purposes. People were staring at us like at some aliens: we were so much different from the typical Kolk-ian landscape: dressed in bikini, hungry, dirty, wet and above all angry. We had the wolf glance in our eyes, ready to do any sacrifice to get faster to Valmiera.
This is why, when Akmis pat my shoulder in the yellowish supermarket from the Dorms, and asked us about the trip, the rage red-eyes and the irregular breath were showing that any other word could be fatal for the ‘a-day-a-question’ interviewer. That day ended with a happy dinner and another bottle of vodka accompanied by long midnight stories invented on the spot.