So I have a full day here. Not feeling very motivated I waste a lot of the morning and finally I decide I should do something. I see that one of the attractions is the Riga Auto Museum. I like cars and also it is way outside of the city center so I will get to see another side of the place. This proves to be a very good decision. After figuring out the bus routes and the mysterious ticket buying procedure, I head out to the museum. After a long wait for the bus (damn it, I would choose a weekend, busses don't run as often) I hop on and the bus ride itself is almost worth the trip. It's nothing special, but I get a long slow tour of the real Riga. I pass the outskirts of town and see what that looks like and then hit the suburbs. The suburbs have that same soviet era look that apartment blocks in Russia have. You just need to see it, but it proves that strict utilitarianism mixed with poor maintenance can be really soul crushing. Still I feel that I get to see a bit more about what life is like here. At least on a weekend.
I get to my stop, get off the bus and look around. I can't see the museum, so walk around a bit. I must be close because I can tell I am on the outside of a racetrack of some kind and I can hear something - motorcycles? - racing around at high speed, but I can't see in at any point so I decide to just go to the museum. I walk around and I can't find the museum, so I walk into a place that i think is a cafe or something attached to the racetrack but it turns out to be a little indoor go cart type race track where you can pay to drive around the little track. I am tempted, but it's way outside my budget (as if budget had any thing to do with this trip) so I just ask for directions. Turns out I got off the bus one stop too early and I have to walk about 500m up the road. I find the museum and it's actually really cool. There are not nearly as many cars as the one I went to in Blackhawk, CA, but there sure are some interesting ones. Here are some pictures and some comments (if you don't like cars, skip the rest of this post):
I get to my stop, get off the bus and look around. I can't see the museum, so walk around a bit. I must be close because I can tell I am on the outside of a racetrack of some kind and I can hear something - motorcycles? - racing around at high speed, but I can't see in at any point so I decide to just go to the museum. I walk around and I can't find the museum, so I walk into a place that i think is a cafe or something attached to the racetrack but it turns out to be a little indoor go cart type race track where you can pay to drive around the little track. I am tempted, but it's way outside my budget (as if budget had any thing to do with this trip) so I just ask for directions. Turns out I got off the bus one stop too early and I have to walk about 500m up the road. I find the museum and it's actually really cool. There are not nearly as many cars as the one I went to in Blackhawk, CA, but there sure are some interesting ones. Here are some pictures and some comments (if you don't like cars, skip the rest of this post):
Early subcompact car. Here in europe they have smaller cars and they multipurpose the engines for more things. for example, the engine in this car was taken from this:
Ok. I made that up, but I swear to god the sewing machine was in the auto museum.
Here's some more pics:
really early motorcycle
BMW with the characteristic sideways cylinders to reduce kidney punishment
Russian 'chaika"
Also, here's where the russian superman changes:
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