20. Getting new friends

Latvia is growing on me every day! The roads are terrible, but the people are very cool. I felt lonely during the entire ride through Estonia, but I'm getting the impression that Latvians are much more open.

Arthur.

I stopped for a night in Sigulda in central Latvia, and was lucky to find Arthur, a laidback system developer who teached me about slav history, language, ethnical groups, and the transformational changes that Latvia has been going through since hunter-gathering societies up until the disbandment of the Soviet union.

He is a very tough chess player, but I was lucky to find a mating net during the end game.

This morning I had the choice of travelling to Riga on sandy country roads, or risk it on the highway. I decided on latter, because it was just 61 km and very straight, sloping downwards toward the coast.

Highway safari.

It turned out to be a great decision. I had an entire lane all for myself, and it made for some very easy biking.

I read that an Alaskan bike tourer died on this highway last year when he was hit by a drunk driver, so I sent my prayers to the Big Monkey in the sky and stayed concentrated, and arrived safely in Riga in the afternoon.

Demonstration in support of Ukraine.

It is an interesting experience to be here right now. Tensions are high, since Latvia has a population of 40% ethnical Russians. And today the city officials have decided to tear down some pro-russian monuments. This has led to riots, and six pro-russian demonstrators were arrested.

Vērmanes dārzs park players.

In the evening I found a park with lots of chess players. The guy on the left works as a nurse in Norway, so it was fun to speak some norwegian-swedish with him. He won against me with a score of 3-2, and I won against the other guy with a score of 2-0. My European chess tour score is now 4-2 (counting matches, not individual games.

Representing Sweden. 😁

Tomorrow I'm taking part in a blitz tournament organized by the Riga chess club. I'm sure that the list will have many more additions before the tournament starts, but I'm right now ranked as 7 out of 38 participants. The highest rated player is a very strong Ukrainian junior, and I'm the only other foreigner.

It has been years since I played in a rating based tournament, but I hope to collect at least a couple of points.