18. Bald and Bankrupt - The Parody

I just crossed the border from Estonia to Latvia (at the city of Valga), and found a nice forest to camp in almost immediately. Wild camping is allowed here in Latvia as well, so there is no risk involved.

My hammock hanging skills are perfected now, so it took me just 60 seconds to set it up and dive into it. I just received 125 mosquito bites during that time, so it felt like a small victory. 😄

Mmmm. New country celebration brandy.

I had a small bottle of french Brandy that I started to sip on in the hammock, called "Ibis". Strange name. I started to wonder why they named it like that, but halfway through the thought all the brandy was gone... Poff! 20 centiliters went down fast, and I wanted some more. It is friday, after all.

And then I saw on Google maps that there is a small corner store just 3 km away. And it had promising reviews.

So I went out of the hammock, took some money, released all the panniers from the bike, and sped of in search of the store.

The ride was incredible! This was the first time I rode the bike without carrying all of my equipment, and the difference was amazing. Instead of riding a fully loaded pack donkey, I was now riding a stream lined rocket ship. Every pedal stroke sent me 100 meters down the road.

The excitement lasted until I reached the store, and found out that it was closed. Of course.

But there was an Soviet era multi-family house just next to the store, with some older babuschkas outside of it. This made me immediately think of the youtuber Bald and Bankrupt. He would excel in a situation like this, but I don't know a single word of Latvian or Russian. So I had to do with a mix of english, swedish, german and mostly hand signs to strike a deal.

One of them went inside and came back with two bottles of Aita, "classic sweet sparkling wine", and I took one of them and gave her 10 euros. They cheered in excitement over this, probably since the bottle probably costs less than 3 euros. But I think they deserved a big tip.

Now I'm back in the hammock. Let's see what it tastes like. Skål, Priekā!