Top 5 observations about Latvia

1. Nobody uses handbrakes.
2. More than one in four young women wears knee-length boots.
3. The only people who will ever talk to you on the street in Riga are foreigners. In my case, a German.
4. Trendy clubs have English names, such as Club Essential. Not-so-trendy clubs have English names, but put an extra “s” on the end of the noun (so that it can be declined into genative, dative etc) such as Clubs I Love You.
5. The nation’s relatively short existence (1918-1940 and 1990 onwards) means that there is a paucity of figureheads to put on currency. The one-lat coin has a fish and the 20-lat note has a tree.

And, as a bonus:

6. The only blues bar in the whole of the Baltic states is Bites Bluzs Club in Riga. Bites means bee. My friend L reckons that this is because Latvians are very fond of honey and not, as I suggested, because the club has a buzz about it.

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