Hells Sinky

Welp the room is a two bed hostel room and I'm sharing it with a Russian guy that knows no English. I would try to see if he is interested in me trying out Russian, but he seems a) sick and b) decidedly unfriendly. Cest la vie. He's around my age too, so no idea what he's doing here unless he is just looking for a cheap place to crash for an undetermined period of time.

Unfortunately, he's also pretty stinky. Feh. Oh well, hostels can be a crapshoot. Sometimes you get a seven, sometimes eleven.

The hostel has no meeting spot where people can hang out. It has a reception, an attached restaurant/bar, and a kitchen on each floor. The refrigerators, however, comprised of 24 individual locked boxes. You can get a key from the front desk with a deposit that you get back when you turn it in. I don't know what to think about that. On one hand - no one can steal your stuff and you know how much food you can store; on the other - it just seems messed up in a basic manner of kinda denying people access to a fridge. I dunno. Just seems weird to me.

The funny thing is that even though they have very few amenities, they have an entire floor dedicated to nothing but saunas. They have a mens and womens section, and a morning sauna is included in with your room. You have to pay for an evening sauna though. These there Fins looooooves them saunas, I guess.

I was somewhat beat after not getting much sleep on the cruise (there were three clubs on the boat! and a casino!), coupled with having to walk around four hours prior to my getting my room key kinda has me beat. So I stayed in the room and took a nap. I eventually ventured out to get some food and do a quick walk through the downtown area to the central station to see if I could get a tram pass. I made it to a Napalese place (basically Indian food, but it was gooooooood); had a mixed sizzling meat plate with coriander/lime and yogurt dipping sauce and rice. Plus marsala tea, though they called in Napalese Tea.

I know, I know. Different country. Food was the exact same as any Indian place I've been to though.

After that the walk downtown, though while not being very far, seemed out of reach. Plus its a Sunday night, so everything would be shut down anyway. On the way in though, I chatted with the gal at the desk about bus passes and apparently they can sell them at the desk. Sweet. Now I have unlimited tram access for three days.

Also I confirmed a flight from Riga to Warsaw. Apparently there are no direct trains between the cities, you would have to take an overnight bus. I scored a flight using LOT Polish airways for 99 euro. Since I would easily have paid that in a sleeper bunk, it sounded good to me. I also reserved a room at a highly rated hotel in old town Riga off of Hostelworld. Normally I would have just gotten a single bed room, unfortunately there were plenty of single bed rooms for every day except the last day of my stay. So I said screw it and booked a room with two beds for myself. I don't want to have to mess with checking out, putting all my luggage in storage for four hours, and then moving it to another room just for one day.

So all I have to do now it book the train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and then from Moscow to Riga (overnight). Other than that everything is taken care of.

Oh and once again, fuck Belarus.