Well, I have learned my lesson. Never take a trip to Riga too lightly. On the train ride there, one of my colleagues remarked that this trip was nothing more than a glorified TGIFriday's run. We arrived, gave our papers to a document agency, ate at TGIFriday's, went to the movies (saw Quantum of Solace), which were played in English (with Russian and Latvian subtitles)! We expected to come out of the theater and go pick up our passports with our visas, but we were told that there was a new Russian consulate general and that the consulate wasn't working on visas that day. 

At this point, we expected the worse. The reason we go to the Riga Russian consulate is because it is one of the few consulates that will issue visas to Americans. If the Riga consulate stopped doing visas for Americans, we would have to send our documents all the way back to the US to get them processed. So, since we couldn't get our visas that day, Thursday, we had to spend the night in Riga. We were in this interesting hostel; it promised a continental breakfast and free tea and coffee during your stay. I woke up in the morning, to find that my idea of continental breakfast and the hostel's idea of continental breakfast were not exactly congruent. No matter, I thought, all I need is some tea and I'll be good to go. Of course, they didn't have any tea. 

I had another day to kill in Riga so I went and got a real breakfast, watched another movie (Body of Lies), and walked around Riga. I now know Riga like I know my 5 fingers, as the Russians would say.  It turns out that earlier in the day, the document agency had told us that with this new consulate general it could take about 2 weeks to process. 2 weeks?!? Stuck in Riga for two weeks? At that point, the only reason  I would have to get back to St. Petersburg would be to catch my flight back to California for Christmas. However, about an hour later, the agency called again and said the consulate-general was calling back to Moscow to figure out what to do with "all these Americans." So, Moscow must have told him to let us back in, because the agency called about an hour after that and said if we bring the money, they'll bring the visas. So, after an uneventful train ride, I made it back to St. Pete yesterday (Saturday).

I did go to TGIFriday's twice, while in Riga. I got the BBQ beef sandwich and the BBQ Burger. I'm missing Fat Daddy's, can you tell?