New Country, New Car

Ah...  Latvia.  The English language is a wonderful medium of communication when both parties can speak it.  I learned that in Latvia after learning the opposite in Russia.  

We took a fourteen hour train to Riga.  Up to that point we had been riding Platzkart, third clsass with double stacked beds in an open wagon (no compartments).  On this train we saved three-hundo USD riding fourth class.  No beds, just three person benches.  Not exactly comfortable on an overnight train.  But no matter.  We stopped at the Russian-Latvian border at 2am and didn't have any problems getting out of the country on our in-valid visas.  Technically we had spent close to two months in Russia illegally but after Vladivostok no one seemed to mind.

At 8:55am we walked out of the train station in Riga, chose to turn right, and walked through a market straight to the bus station.  When navigating and in doubt, pick a direction and walk/drive/run.  If life in the "real world" is anything like this trip there's a nine in ten chance that you'll find what you're looking for by choosing a random direction.

Buying a bus ticket from Riga to Liepaja was a pivotal moment in the trip for me.  I took a picture of the bus schedule with my phone and kept it on the screen to show to the attendant behind the window.  This way I could point to the bus that we wanted and there would be no confusion.  It's a techniqe that we had used in Russia more than once with success.  I cued at the window, made it to the front of the line, and said "hi, do you speak any English?"  She stared at me blankly and looked a little annoyed.  I was used to it.  This was the typical response to the English language in Russia.  I started to lift my phone when she did something that I didn't expect.  She said, "of course I do" in perfect English.  I was so surprised I froze for a second.  In that half of full second I realized that Russia is not Europe.  We were still in a former USSR country but it was completely different world.  As much as I enjoyed Russia and would love to go back, at that moment, I was imearsurably happy that we were out.

Liepaja is 210km south west of Riga on the coast of the Baltic Sea.  We were headed there to meet Aldis who would help us buy our third car of the trip.  Aldis goes by Lincx on the Dirty Impreza forums which is where we met him.  DirtyImpreza.com has been a media partner of our trip from the early planning stages and we've kept a sub-forum going over there as best as we could.  When Aldis read that we crashed the Forester and were heading to Moscow he jokingly said,


Sucks... well ill hope you get another car...
Btw - im not too far from Moscow, and i have reliable impreza for sale (3k).... just saying! .  


Our initial reaction was "lol."  Then over the next six weeks the offer kept coming up when we were talking about our options.  We had no idea whether or not it was a legitimate offer but as we got closer to Moscow most all of out other ideas looked to be impossible.  I sent Aldis a PM (private message) not knowing what to expect.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by abumchuck (me, Jack) Hey this is Jack from "The Road is West." So we're a bit stuck researching used cars in Europe. Were you serious about your Impreza being for sale? Jack ****.*****@gmail.com

Hey!
Yeah im serious... Im trying to sell it right now...
im looking at around 2300 US $.....
its 2.0 NA sedan.. AWD, manual....


Eight emails later we were ready to make a deal.  But, fortunately for Aldis, about a week before we arrived someone offered him $3,000 for his Impreza and he sold it.  We were happy that Aldis didn't lose money giving us the "Dirty Impreza" discount.  He offered to help us find another Impreza in Latvia and he gave us a place to stay with his family.  So when we climbed out of the bus in Liepaja Aldis was waiting for us with his WRX wagon parked around the corner.

On the drive back to Aldis' place we took a "shortcut" down a dirt road.  As soon as we left the pavement Aldis put his foot to the floor and started reading himself pace notes like he was a rally car driver and co-driver.  "Left four.  Right three, tightens.  Keep right over crest."  Then he scared the piss out of us when he said, "junction right two" and flicked the car left.  I assume Ezra and Richard, who had never experienced a "Scandanavian Flick" (an advanced rally racing technique), thought that we were going to crash.  Who wouldn't when the WRX wagon was sliding down the dirt road sideways facing the wrong direction for the righthand second gear turn, seemingly out of control.  But we weren't out of control.  Aldis has been racing rally cars since he could drive and at the last second the car rotated 180 degrees back toward the turn and we slid perfectly past the apex listening to the sweet sound of the boxer engine pull us straight.  Boy do I miss the sound of a turbo boxer engine.  R.I.P. Forester.

Then right when our hearts stopped racing from the Scandanavian flick Aldis said, "right five, keep flat over jump."  There are a few things you have to understand to realize why this was such a terrifying pace note for us to hear.  First, the most basic rally pace notes have two parts: one part tells you which direction the upcoming turn is, the other tells you which gear to be in for the turn or, in other words, how fast to take the turn.  So a "right five" meant that we were driving very fast in the top gear of Aldis' WRX.  "Keep flat over jump" meant keep the pedal to the medal off of the jump.  Second, we had met Aldis twenty minutes before hearing him say this and knew almost nothing about him.  Third, like me in the U.S., Aldis likes to work on his car.  When he picked us up he had no back seats and no seatbelts for anyone.  Fourth, rally cars crash alot, especially off of jumps.  We saw the dirt road climb in front of us then disappear where the road dropped and we would leave the ground.  Oh s***!

But it was anticlimactic.  We weren't driving anywhere near race-pace and Aldis knew it.  Our stomachs stayed in place and the tyres (yes "tyres" we're in Europe now) remained planted to the Earth as we crested the jump.  The "shortcut" was a nice introduction to our new friend and savior, Aldis.

Here is an idea of how Aldis lives his life (the sticker on the back of his car):

The highlights of the next three days were hanging out at Aldis' place and playing with his two year-old daughter,

visiting Lithuania with Aldis and his wife on their six day anniversary,

celebrating Aldis' bachelor's party at some Latvian night clubs, visiting a local lake with the whole family, buying our new Subaru Impreza (see pictures below), and driving another Lithuanian rally stage with the new car (video to come).

Latvia provided me with the easiest car buying experience I have ever known and likely (hopefully not) will ever know.  We found the cheapest Subaru Impreza on Latvian craigslist (ss.lv).  It was in Riga so the day after arriving in Liepaja by bus Aldis drove us back to the capital.  This time we took his family's Honda Civic which got much better gas mileage.  We met the 1996 1.6l FWD Impreza in a parking lot spent five minutes making sure everything worked and said we'd take it.  We then drove ten minutes to the nearest Latvian DMV where the owner's girlfiend paid for thirty minutes of parking for us.  Ezra added another ten minutes and we were in-and-out with a transfered title, a new passport for the car, and three months insurance before the meter expired.  The car cost us $1,200, plus $150 for overdue registration fees, plus $46 for insurance.  Not bad.

It's no Forester, but on the plus side, it's no Niva.