The Riga weekend

I'm gonna try a new style of writing, I'm reading a book that uses Spanglish and I thought this will be perfect for me, although it may not be easier to understand (but I can't resist, for me it's so funny to read it!!)
This weekend I have been in Riga visiting my Argentinian cousin who went to visit my Russian tío who has family in Letland. And we took a ferry, here in Sweden they have ferries that sometimes just go and come back and the people don't even go out of it because the point is the party in the boat. So when you get on it they announce in the radio in at least three languages beers for one euro and you see the groups of kids *grownup kids with their best looks and smelling perfume trying to get borrachos at 5pm. So, of course, everybody is drinking this beer in the deck and we stayed there watching the Stockholms archipielago, the green, lushy islands with a few little houses and one or two people getting their feet in the tranquil waters (until they see the huge cutre ferry covering all their vistas).
For us it was calm, not so much fiesta, just some beers, reading by the water, watching the Uruguays match (Johannes' league). And we finally arrived to Riga after some good sleep (the cabines are so much darker than our room in Sweden!). Beautiful weather, to an extent that doesn't really exist in these latitudes, close to 30 degrees. And then my cousin, igualito like always, full of energy, talkative like buen argentino, maybe more, and also my tio oblongo, who is also a mix between Russian and Argentinian. First we got to see the city, the old centre, a little like Tallin or Prague, colorful small streets, in a Jugendstil or German Art Noveau style, and a great river crossing the city, the Daugava. Then we watched the Argentinian match but I won't say anything about it because my primo is still sensitive to it. Anyway, we went to see the sunset in the Letonian beaches of sand and pine trees, and we saw the sun disappearing into the sea, with red, blue and purple clouds and my cousin and I taking Karate Kid pictures in front of the sun. It was fun, and the beer good as well as the food, we ate lunch in a buffet where you could choose what you want and then they weight your plate, so we tried everything, the beet salad, the smoked fish, the katlietki (like big russian meatballs) and of course the wild berries desserts. Some of these dishes we knew from our babushka, who lives in Argentina but maintains the Russian cuisine, other dishes we knew from Sweden which is at the other side of the Baltic and has the same fish and style of cooking it.
On the second day we went to the country side, where my oncle's family has a dacha, or a wooden summer house. My oncle made an asado while we went to the beach crossing the sandy woods. And of course we swam (knowing me you know this is the high point of the trip) and the water wasn't cold because it's a very low beach and it takes time to walk where it covers enough to swim. Johannes says the beaches in the north of Sweden look like that because it's just the same coast going north and turning to the west. For my cousin it was more like el Río de la Plata, because it was not salty and not so clear waters.
Then we went back to the dacha (I guess this is a Russian word) and my oncle had grilled, a good asado in company of the Russian-Letonian family, a lively flow between Spanish and Russian, that felt as if we were understanding the other language. And we went back to the ferry, we read again in the sun, watching the sea (hours flow like this). We were still longing for blinis and borsch (the Russian salty pancakes and the beetsoup) so we ate in the Russian restaurant and we went out just in time for another sunset, this time with a perfect clear sky. Surprisingly, I meet one of my work colleagues, Hällena, who was celebrating her birthday with her family and we ended the night dancing.
Here you see some pictures of Riga with Nico and my best Karate Kid kick. Next pictures to come from the Uppsala summer. And Ole Spain that is going to the final!!