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Tuesday, Oct 14, 2008
Between the fistfights and the Finnish girls, it's hard to get any writing done.
Nov 23, 1999 | I was halfway through my second beer when the trouble started. Someone at an adjacent table had apparently offended my Latvian hosts, and within a few moments, fists were flying, women were screaming and chairs were being overturned. Sitting there, beer in hand, I spent a long, anxiety-ridden moment trying to decide if two free drinks now obligated me to jump in and punch someone.
Until that moment, I had been quietly enjoying myself on the cobblestones in the heart of Riga's medieval Old Town. Plastic tables had been set up at the edges of the square near the enormous, German-styled Dome Cathedral, and scores of people had gathered to relax, drink beer and chat. A string quartet was playing on the grass in front of the cathedral; an accordionist squeezed out a tune on the opposite side of the square. Children raced across the cobblestones into narrow alleys. Young couples embraced in the shadows.
I'd met the Latvian fellows just 20 minutes earlier, when they'd hailed me from another table (where I'd been sitting alone) and gave me a glass of beer. They were all big burly guys in their early 20s, two blond and one dark-haired.
"Canadian?" the dark-haired one asked as I joined their table.
"Close," I said. "American."
The Latvians grinned and nodded and indicated that they wanted me to drink with them. The three of them wore brown leather jackets and smoked Marlboros, looking like syndicated-TV American bounty hunters. None of them spoke English, and none of them introduced themselves or showed much interest in me once I sat down. Squinting around at the other people in the square, they joked and laughed together in their own language. Every so often, they would hold their beer glasses up, and we would clink them together. When I'd drained my first beer, they bought me another. I wasn't sure why they'd invited me over, but I rather enjoyed the simple camaraderie.
Thus my moral dilemma when they all jumped up and started brawling with a foursome of well-dressed middle-aged men one table over.
Perhaps if I was Latvian, I would have known what to do in this situation. Unfortunately, I grew up in America, a country where -- because handguns are as easy to acquire as waffle irons -- good old-fashioned fist-fights are a risky and rare proposition.
Figuring it the wisest option, I stood up from the table and backed away. In front of me, the fight reached a quick crescendo, then neutralized into a stalemated shoving and shouting match. Someone bumped the table, and our beer glasses crashed down onto the cobblestones. People from other tables stood up to view the commotion. Suddenly disgusted, I turned my back on the fight and walked out of the square.
Once I'd gotten back to the Aurora Hotel, I still hadn't shaken my feeling of disgust. Taking my backpack from under the bed, I began to fill it with gear and clothing. Once I'd finished, I took out my Riga guidebook and looked for a hotel as far away from Old Town as possible.
At the time, my disgust had little to do with the spontaneous melee in Dome Square. Rather, I was disgusted because I'd come to Riga to catch up on my travel writing, and -- after three maddeningly entertaining days in the city -- I had yet to write a single word.
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