Latvian Enthusiasm

Arrived in Riga yesterday morning ;)at the bus terminal and had to haggle with a couple taxi drivers to get to the apartment we rented , yes a full 2 bedroom apartment! First we had to go to the office to pick up keys ... 2nd floor meant dragging my goalie bag up stairs , kinda hoping our apartment is in ground floor .

It wasn't .... getting to apartment we find out we are on 4th floor ( no elevator!) at this time I really hope that I won't have to drag my bag up any more stairs . Our apartment is in beautiful old Riga . Once we settled in we went out to get our tickets to see Dinamo Riga vs Dinamo Moscow and had a great meal at this Italian restaurant which was very reasonably priced. After that we went back to apartment to get ready for game .

Decided to walk as it is only about a half hour walk away this way we could see the city a bit . When we arrived at the arena there was a big crowd of very excited fans, the energy was fantastic . We went into the arena grabbed a beer which tasted like piss , actually we didn't even finish them and opted to stay sober ( for now).

The game started and the action was just unbelievable , I am sure both teams played harder due to the fans energy level which was way better then what I am used to in Toronto . We had really great seats behind the Riga bench and actually had some Moscow players sitting beside us 1 of them was Denis Kokarev , he was too busy playing games on his phone so I never got a photo with him... You will see the back of his head when I get chance to post pics.

Pretty sure I was the only Canadian in that arena aside from Jamie Lundmark and Chris Holt , goalie for Riga , if you haven't heard of him do yourself a favor and look him up ! He was amazing ! 2 penalty shot saves in 2nd period and numerous other stops to earn the home side a 1-0 overtime victory in a very exciting game.

After the game we began walking home and were approached by this Latvian fellow named Victor , he heard my accent and wanted to know what I thought about the game and we began talking hockey , he lived in same direction as us so we talked and walked together until we reached his ace when he asked us what we we had planned, we wanted a beer and he wanted one too so he took us to a pub with a lot of great beers like Terveste, amazing beer and Latvian :)we had 2 or 3 pints and the bar closed ( victor hope work was fun today ?) sorry for keeping you out late ;)

We then wandered the streets semi lost arriving at our room at who knows when, and opened the bottle of vodka we have here and went to sleep st who knows when LOL . Today we will do some tourist stuff and tonight we practice here . Hopefully we will find the time for another beer with Victor to talk more hockey .

If you are ever in this part of the world make sure you don't miss out on KHL action you won't regret it! Even if you don't love the game the energy in the stadium is world class , anybody that says otherwise has no clue ...