After the chaos of the night before, our first morning in Latvia was a scene from hell. Little did either of us know it, but we were at the threshhold of what is possibly the most insane day of our lives. After both of us having some private conversations with God on the big white telephone in Andzs' flat (how did we get back there? who knows), we decided we should venture into the big wide world and try and find some food. It's worth mentioning at this point that, given that I'm vegetarian, Jamie's vegan, and Latvians regard food without meat as nonsensical insanity, eating was not the easiest of tasks. This time at least we had Andzs to help, and he was feeling unjustifiably alive. We succeeded in getting to a pizza place (or 'pica' in crazy Latvian spelling), and ordering a cheese-free pizza, but while I managed a few slices, Jamie was defeated after half of one, and then decided he'd prefer it if that slice was in the open air as well after all. Which was nice. A precedent for the day was set. The plan for the day, given that Lithuania was off, was to mosey around Riga for a while, doing some cultural type stuff, and then to take the bus to Liepaja one day early, as we could stay in Fontaine Hotel and stop clogging Andzs' toilet up with sick. We met up with Nimo and his girlfriend and had a wander round town, which included going up to the top of St Peter's Church, which afforded a cool view of the whole city. For history fans among you, the tower has fallen down a whole bunch of times and been rebuilt, most recently due to German bombing in 1941. Tradition has it that when the new tower is finished, the architect has to sit astride the weathercock at the top (which is really fucking high up), down a shot of balzams (christ) and throw the glass down into the square; however many pieces the glass shatters into dteremines how long the tower will stand. So now you know. We also went to a Hanseatic German museum and looked around the Cathedral interior. It should be noted during all this that, while my hangover was passing its peak and my sanity was slowly returning, Jamie was still having quiet disareements with most of his internal organs about the amount of Balzams we drunk the night before. This manifested itself most hilariously as we crossed a central square, looking for somewhere to eat. As the rest of us debated our choice of eatery in a leisurely fashion, Jamie was making increasingly frantic (but ignored) hand-signals. This climaxed in him projectile vomiting onto the floor next to the crowded ice-skating rink. We felt like such cultural ambassadors. Unfortnately my laughter and the suddenness of the event precluded me from capturing it on film, but he wasn't too happy afterwards (left). We made it to another pizza place for some food, where my stomach was settled once and for all, while Jamie kept visiting the toilets. Nimo and Adzs had pretty much made up their minds that we were mental by this point, and took us to the bus station with a mixture of mirth and concern. The bus journey to Liepaja took about 3 hours. The roads in Latvia are pretty fucked up, so it was a hairy ride into the night, made more scary by the fact that no one spoke any English; the bus driver had been instructed by Ansch to kick us out at the right stop. This he thankfully remembered to do at the end of a journey punctuated by Jamie being sick again into a bag. I was getting a little worried about him at this point. Anyways, we got off the bus, and were left in the middle of fucking nowhere in the middle of the night (see right). We'd been instructed to get a taxi, but taxis there were none. I tried to call Edgars, but the phones were messed up and instead I ended up speaking to a mad Russian woman who shouted incomprehensible slavic obscenities at me (Edgars was getting the same thing at his end, we found out). Bear in mind here that we'd been told that Liepaja could be 'a bit rough' and 'was not the kind of place to hang around at night'. Certainly a lot less people there speak English than in the capital. So we were, shall we say, concerned. We finally got through to Andzs who got us a taxi to the hotel, where Jamie had one last hurl in the toilet. We ran to the supermarket to buy some breakfast, and went to sleep. In the morning we woke up and contemplated our breakfast haul. As mentioned, it's not easy being vegan / veggie in Latvia, and it's even harder when you're in Liepaja, which is a former Soviet naval base and very much off the beaten track. We managed to find a dubious selection of goods, the most dubious of which was 'adzika', which, after many tests, we decided was probably curry paste. Jamie was holding his food down now, and this didn't exactly fill us up, so we went scavenging. However, the language barrier was higher here, and we had several false starts of trying to read the menu and utterly failing. We found the venue and Louie's van though, which was nice. Eventually we hit a place with an English (ish) menu where we found vegetables on lava rock. After a meal fit for, er, some hungry hippies in Latvia, we set out for the venue and the gig. Inside Fontain Palace we ran into our old friend Kaspars, who was DJing for the evening. I was the only act scheduled to play, and then there was the clubnight (opening hours in Latvia are generally 'until everyone's gone home', which is ace, if possibly medically inadvisable). The show went well, good turnout - including Edgars and friends who at the last minute drove over from Riga for the hell of it. Jamie had fun, too. We made friends with some girls who'd driven 400km for the show. I had a good chat, while Jamie danced the night away. We ended up leaving the club at 5.30am in the end, our livers well and truly punished for their sins. Well, you've come this far, you've reached the end of chapter II of our epic adventure, do you have the guts to go on to the final installment? Do you? Do you??