Most of the group returned to the hostel after eating, but Matt and I stuck around in Old Riga so that I could "show him the area." We had a beer at the aforementioned Rosengrals, and we were wandering around a bit when we got caught in a sudden downpour. We had to take shelter at another pub. Any port in a storm, right? At any rate, the rain soon slackened, and we were able to catch the last trolley-bus of the night back to the hostel.
On Thursday morning, we made our way downtown to officially register with the festival. We spent a couple of hours at a crafts market held in the park where some of our performances will be, and then headed to the Ethnographic Open Air Museum (I wasn't able to find an English website for the museum). Anyway, the museum is situated in a forested area outside of Riga and is around 100 total hectares (1 hectare equals 10,000 square meters or 2.471043 US acres). Old log buildings dating from the mid-18th century are placed throughout the park, alongside of some wonderful gardens. It was a nice change of pace from the bustle that is downtown Riga.
Andy and I were about as far away from the gate that you can get when a downpour came along. We took shelter by a steam thresher from the late 19th century and were pretty dry. There was a hitch, however. We were supposed to be back on the bus by 4:20, and neither Andy or I had any kind of timepiece. We waited a bit, hoping that the rain would cease, but of course it didn't. We both thought it was getting close to the departure time, so we hiked back through the forest and soon became quite soaked. We arrived at the gate and discovered it was only 3:30, so we took shelter in the pub (I'm starting to detect a theme).
Here are a few photos:
Inside the pub as we were drying our outsides while wetting our insides, we spied this old cabinet. I kind of like the name:
That's all the time I have at the moment--I'll be sure to talk about the opening ceremonies in the next post (probably later tonight).
Adam Kiesling
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