Traveling Latvia: Turning 23 in Riga and the Birthday I Thought I’d Spend Alone

Technically, this was not my first birthday outside Portugal. I had already spent my 18th birthday in Andorra, but considering how badly that one went, I had apparently erased it from memory.

By the time I was 22, I was backpacking around Europe and already knew I would spend my next birthday somewhere away from home. I just imagined it would be somewhere more familiar, maybe Italy or the UK. Latvia was definitely not on my birthday bingo card, and I never expected that traveling Latvia would end up giving me one of the most random and memorable birthdays I had ever had.

Somehow, I ended up turning 23 in Riga.

Celebrating My Birthday Before It Even Started

I actually ended up celebrating my birthday twice. The night before, I went to Folkklubs Ala Pagrabs with the two Portuguese girls I was traveling with and a bunch of people from the hostel.

We ate grandmother’s meatballs, drank Latvian beer, moved on to another bar for daiquiris, and eventually ended up in a karaoke bar. This was where I spent the first minutes of my 23rd birthday listening to one of the drunkest men I had ever seen absolutely destroy what felt like the longest song in human history.

Honestly, it was perfect.

There was nothing particularly organized about the night. No birthday dinner booked weeks in advance, no stress trying to get everybody together, and no complicated plan. We were simply a bunch of travelers in Riga who had ended up going out together, and somehow that became my first birthday celebration.

Waking Up on My Birthday Feeling Like Crap

The next morning, I woke up feeling weird and slightly sick, and my only real wish was to stay in bed all day. Unfortunately, it was my birthday, I was in Latvia, and spending the whole day hiding under a hostel blanket feeling sorry for myself seemed like a waste.

We forced ourselves out and joined one of Riga’s free walking tours, which obviously was not actually free because you are expected to tip at the end. Afterward, we spent the rest of the day wandering around Riga, which somehow felt much bigger than we had expected.

I did not have some giant birthday itinerary planned. We just explored the city and let the day happen, which was probably one of the things I liked most about it.

A Birthday Dinner That Somehow Became Ten People

That evening was supposed to be simple. Three of us were going for dinner.

Somehow, three people became ten.

We ended up back at Folkklubs Ala Pagrabs because apparently one round of grandmother’s meatballs was not enough, and this time we added a five-liter jar of Latvian beer to the table.

What I remember most is how easy the whole thing felt. At home, planning a birthday dinner could become an entire operation. Who is coming? Where are we going? Does everyone like the restaurant? What time? Who cannot make it? Suddenly something that is supposed to be fun turns into admin.

In Riga, I had planned absolutely nothing. People just wanted to come.

The International Birthday Table I Never Expected

At some point, I looked around the table and realized how random the entire group was. There were three Portuguese people, someone from France, someone from Korea, a guy from Chile, another from Germany, and other travelers who had basically ended up part of my birthday because we happened to be in the same place at the same time.

For someone who had wondered whether spending a birthday away from home might feel lonely, this was pretty much the opposite.

We finished the night at a Cuban bar in Riga’s Old Town because it happened to be shots night, which obviously seemed like an excellent way to finish a birthday after sharing an enormous beer at dinner.

I had gone into that trip thinking I might spend my birthday far away from everyone I knew. Instead, I ended up with an international birthday table full of people I had barely known a few days earlier.

Why Traveling Latvia Became Such a Good Memory

There was something about traveling Latvia and turning 23 in Riga that stayed with me, especially because it was so completely different from the birthday I had spent in Andorra five years earlier.

That birthday had made me feel lonely despite being surrounded by people I technically knew. Riga was the opposite. I was thousands of kilometers from home, surrounded mostly by strangers, and somehow I did not feel lonely at all.

→ Read about my first trip abroad and the 18th birthday I spent in Andorra

It was also one of those experiences that showed me what I loved about hostel travel. You could arrive somewhere knowing absolutely nobody and, a couple of days later, somehow end up sharing a five-liter beer with ten people from several different countries while they celebrated your birthday with you.

There was no complicated plan behind it. It just happened.

Turning 23 While Traveling Latvia

When I wrote about this birthday at the time, I finished the post by saying that from then on I wanted to make it a tradition to spend my birthday in a new country.

My final sentence was:

“I wonder where next year will take me!”

Reading that now feels strange because I had absolutely no idea how much traveling was still ahead of me.

At 23, I was just happy that a birthday I thought I might spend alone had somehow turned into two nights out, a ridiculous amount of Latvian beer, grandmother’s meatballs, terrible karaoke, a Cuban bar, and a dinner table full of people from around the world.

I could not have planned it better if I tried.