Personally, I hate rudeness. It makes me angry. And Eastern Europe has a bit of a reputation for... well, not being the politest part of the world. If we’re going to get all sociological about it, the behaviour is only considered rude by us in the Western world, and we are judging other cultures by our own standards. Doubtless, if you asked the average Eastern European whether they consider theirs a rude culture, they’d frown, glare at you for a few seconds, then say, “No, not at all”. So actually, we’re just talking about a difference in culture, and it’s unfortunate that this difference is so offensive and hurtful to one of the cultures. Eastern Europe is viewed as an unhappy place by the rest of the world: maybe this is why. However, I’d spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe, and was well acquainted with the slightly abrasive side of their social interaction, and had developed a skin thick enough to be able to take it. I’d warned the other members of my party, too, so they didn’t start any “What’s your problem?” style antics. And it was in this frame of mind that we toddled off to Latvia.
A number of factors prompted us to go to Latvian capital Riga: cheap Ryanair flights, the fact that one of us had heard that it was a party city, the fact that I was having slight Eastern Europe withdrawal symptoms and in general the desire to go somewhere none of us had ever been. So off we went – my friend, Caz; her boyfriend, Matt; my boyfriend, Rob, and me. We realised early on when we flew out there that there were going to be a lot of British stag parties about – hardly a recommendation of a place. They were quick to get absolutely wasted on the plane. Did you know Ryanair serves vodka in little sachets, like ketchup? Very odd. All in all, though, the flight was smooth and we arrived at our hotel, the rather impressive Revel hotel, safe and sound. However, after travelling on a budget airline, the need for a drink can be overwhelming. And luckily for us, Revel Hotel was particularly famous for its beautiful and chic Skyline Bar on the 26th floor. So up we went.
Entering the Skyline Bar is a very odd experience. It was a bizarre mix of beautiful, haughty-looking people swanning around, and British stag parties looking like... British stag parties. There’s a reason there’s a stereotype. Personally, I was at my scruffy jeans-and-trainers best, so we thought we’d better unobtrusively find somewhere to sit and not make the place look too untidy by loitering. It was a bit busy though... it’s probably Riga’s most famous bar. We started moseying through the place, looking for free tables. It was packed to the gills, which wasn’t very encouraging. We did, however, come across a free sofa facing a taken one, separated by a table. We asked - politely, of course - the couple inhabiting the taken one of we could take the free one. The male half of the couple nodded with a credible imitation of British politeness. The female half sighed, huffed and generally demonstrated her dissatisfaction. This was very odd to us, as the tables were quite far away from each other – it wasn’t like they would then have to talk to us. But as she was rather rude to us, we then felt justified in being rude in our own way: by taking the seat even though it was evident it would annoy her. Did you see what just happened? Rudeness breeds rudeness. Although I’m not sure who started it – to us, asking for the sofa wasn’t rude. Maybe it was to her, which would explain her response. Or maybe that’s just British oversensitivity.
Anyway, it was obviously pretty uncomfortable with all four of us piled on one sofa being resolutely ignored by the girl opposite, made more so by her roll of the eyes when we asked if they would mind taking a photo of us. So when the four people lounging on the sofas behind us all got up and left we swiftly picked up our drinks and plonked ourselves down, pretty impressed with our speedy table-nabbing. We pushed the almost empty glasses that had been left behind to one side, and relaxed. But not, unfortunately, for long.
A point I should mention, before going any further, is that Latvia has recently adopted the smoking ban in restaurants, bars and clubs. Actually, it’s not quite that simple – some of them have applied for licenses to allow smoking within their bars still, which is quite comical. But really, it’s actually necessary, in a country where smoking is absurdly cheap and practically a national sport. The Skyline Bar, however, is fully non-smoking. And who should come back to the table but the very people who had just left, the lead one of whom looked extremely indignant. Let me just take a moment to describe this woman – tall, painfully thin with long, perfectly straight blond hair and perfect make-up. God, people who look like that really have more reason than most to be in a good mood, but not this one. Scowling like thunder, she strode up to us.
“Why did you take our table? We left our dreenks here!” She burst out in passable English.
We all looked at each other, confused, and then at the dregs of liquid in the glasses, then back at each other.
“What drinks?” I ventured.
“The dreenks!” She exclaimed, impatiently, reaching for an almost-empty glass of champagne with a half-eaten cherry lurking forlornly in the bottom and draining the last few drops, pointedly. “We went outside for just a few meenutes to smoke, and we left our dreenks! We have the smoking ban!” She added, in the voice of one explaining the obvious loudly and clearly to complete idiots.
We looked at a bit uncertainly at each other again. Now, I would like to state that had she come up to us quietly and pointed out that they had saved their table and were coming back to it, we would most likely have apologised and moved. But none of us takes kindly to being spoken to like that, particularly when what she was saying was such utter rubbish.
“Look,” I began, “We had no idea there was anyone sitting here, but frankly, the glasses were nearly empty, there were no coats here, there was no sign that anyone was sitting here.”
“Oh, my God!” She exclaimed, angrily. “Are you stoopeed? We went to smoke! We have the smoking ban!”
Caz started to laugh a bit at the repetition, and I was smiling too, at the sheer lunacy of the situation, which may well not have helped.
“Yeah, we know what the smoking ban is. We have the smoking ban in England, too,” Rob tried to keep it civilised.
She glared at us. “You Eengleesh ’ave no conseederation. I have been to Eengland and met lots of sheet people like you,” she added.
Well, that was the point where there was really no longer any chance of us politely getting up and vacating the table for them.
“‘Shit people like us?’” Caz exclaimed.
I made an attempt to take the situation in hand, and attempted a calm and placating tone of voice. “Look, I’m sorry if you meant to come back and expected the table to be free. But really, you left the table. So, sorry, but I don’t see why we should move.”
She stared at me in disgust. “Are you seek or something?”
“Excuse me? Sick? You don’t talk to anyone like that,”Rob said angrily, getting to his feet. I was actually about to go down that route myself, and stopped myself, recognising that getting into a fight with a Latvian in Riga probably wasn’t a good idea.
“Rob , let it go.” I said
“’Sick?’” He repeated to me.
“Yes, she’s obviously vile. But we’re not going anywhere, so let it go.” It felt odd talking about someone when they were right next to me. I was quite sure she was going to explode at any second.
A member of staff walked passed, collecting glasses, and Blondie immediately called out to her, and started firing out sentences in rapid Latvian. The girl listened to her, patiently waiting for her to finish, and then turned to us. “They... are sitting here, so you... cannot sit here.” She said, in halting English.
“They left the table. It was an empty table when we came along, so we sat down.” I answered, firmly. The girl looked troubled, but shrugged apologetically at Blondie and carried on. Blondie was starting to turn an interesting shade of purple. She turned to her companion and started ranting – in English, mind you – about these “sheet Eengleesh”. We looked at each other.
“Do you want to leave?” Matt asked, in a low voice. He was clearly uncomfortable with the situation.
“No, why should we have to leave?” Caz exclaimed, not bothering to keep her voice down, and getting a glare in return from Blondie.
“Frankly, she’s annoyed me too much for me to want to give her the satisfaction of seeing us leave now.” I said.
“God, what a cow.” Rob muttered. “Do you think that bar girl will have gone to get security?”
The bouncers had looked pretty hefty, and not exactly jolly.
“Nah. If they were coming they would have been here by now, and it’s not like we’re causing a scene.” I decided. “Besides, they seem to have their hands full with these bloody stag parties.” A few tables away, an overweight, Ted Baker-shirted, plastered Brit bloke was rolling on the floor with post-tequila slammer lemon slices stuck to his face, and a bouncer was dragging him to his feet by the scruff of his neck.
Finally, Blondie’s companion decided he had had enough. “Fine. You want sit here? Well, I sit here. I sit right here,” and with that he plonked himself down next to Caz, practically on top of her, so she had to hurriedly slide over to avoid a large Latvian man landing on her lap.
Matt the Peacemaker tried to ease the tension. “Look, guys, we really don’t mean to offend you. There’s obviously just been a misunderstanding. How about a compromise? How about if we sit on this sofa and you guys have this one?” He grabbed Caz’s hand and pulled her over to the sofa that Rob and I were on. Blondie and her friends immediately sat down on the sofa opposite us, as though they thought we might change our minds, and we sat there in uncomfortable silence, as Blondie glared at us, and her friends tried to get on with their evening. In the end, we decided that wasn’t really how we wanted to spend our night, so we sat there and finished our drinks in an effort to save face, and then got up to leave. Matt, impressively, gave reconciliation one last effort. He turned to Blondie’s partner.
“Mate. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. Have a good night.”
Honestly, it was good, there wasn’t even a trace of sarcasm. Blondie’s friend gave a grudging, mollified nod. Unsurprisingly, this wasn’t good enough for Blondie. She started on at Matt again, pointing out all of the many shortcomings of the English race. Matt declined the bait and left. We went on to a club, where the reception we received, while not friendly, was at least just normally, everyday Eastern Europe unfriendly.
So we all assumed that this was just part and parcel of Latvian culture. Some girl randomly going off on a rant at the tourists, on the weakest premise possible. As far as we could tell, what she’d been saying was all rubbish. It wasn’t until later, after a few drinks, that Rob said:
“It was all rubbish, wasn’t it? I mean, she didn’t have a point, did she?”
“Oh, she couldn’t possibly have done. There was no sign that there was anyone sitting there.” I said, confidently.
“To us, because in England if you leave a drink then there’s no way you’re coming back to it,” Rob pointed out.
“If you leave a drink in England you’ll get it spiked,” Caz muttered, accurately.
“But maybe that’s their thing. Maybe they leave drinks like we leave coats.” Rob shrugged.
“But when we leave coats, there’s always a reasonable chance that someone’ll come along and throw them on the floor,” Caz objected.
“God, that sort of implies that they are more trusting, and more trustworthy, than us. That’s a horrible thought,” I mused.
“Well, even if that is the case, and it’s really weird if it is, there was still no need to be so horrible about it. If it was so obvious that we were foreigners, surely she’d know that we wouldn’t know about their rules.” Matt said. I think he was bewildered that she’d kept up the attitude despite the fact that he was as nice as pie to her.
“And think about it: If the leaving drinks thing was only because of the smoking ban, then it must be a very new custom. They’ve had it for less than a year,” I said, indignantly. This seemed to vindicate us, in our minds.
“So it was all rubbish, then.” Caz said, happy to have that settled.
But we spent the next weekend gradually realising that this was, in fact, a Latvian rule. A new Latvian rule, to be sure, but I guess all rules have to start somewhere. In the face of the smoking ban, Latvians had developed a new form of Trust in each other. “You need to smoke; I need to smoke,” the Trust seemed to say. “Let us put aside our table-grabbing differences and respect each other’s needs.” It was beautiful, really; kind of like the British and German soldiers singing carols together on Christmas Day on the battlefield and sharing cigarettes. Only maybe not quite so admirable. It should be noted, though, that people only ever left one or two drinks on the tables with maybe an inch of liquid or so left in the bottom, just in case they do lose it. The Trust will only stretch so far, it seems. So please, take heed from my tale of abject confusion. It’s probably safe to assume that all heavy-smoking countries that have a smoking ban thrust upon them will do something similar. Do not be caught out, or you, too, could end up with some argumentative, angry, blond person yelling about how “sheet” you truly are.