I found myself at Friendly Fun Frank’s thanks to a recommendation from the staff at a hotel I had stayed at a few days before in Lithuania. Despite its location a couple blocks off the Daugava River in an alleyway that could just as easily be mistaken for the mean streets of Harlem, New York and guarded by a bearlike man simply named “Vladimir,” the inside couldn’t be more quaint: with plaster walls and wide, international-style windows, the place exudes an Old World charm straight out of the 1920s. There’s also a bar in the reception area, where each guest is entitled to a free beer upon check-in. At a measly 10 lats (about $30, at roughly three dollars to the lat) a night, it’s one of the best deals in town.

It was at Frank’s that I unexpectedly encountered my guide to Riga for the evening: Ricky Cain, a 20-something Michigan resident who travels around the former Eastern Bloc asking locals what they think of their respective country’s political systems. We literally collided into each other on the stairway, and soon found ourselves planning the evening’s adventures over drinks at the mostly empty bar.

The first order of business was food. Riga boasts an exciting and — befitting its status as a national capital — very international dining scene offering everything from Georgian to Mongolian to Uzbek cuisine. Visitors, so inclined, can plow their way through mounds of Baltic caviar in elegant surroundings, but a budget-conscious traveler can eat heartily for around $10 a day simply by sticking to the many cafeteria-style establishments or chain restaurants throughout the city. And that’s exactly what we did; wandering into Dzirnavas, part of a chain of “traditional” Latvian eateries that for almost two decades has been wooing urbanites with a pleasantly romanticized version of Latvia’s rural past. Inside, waitresses wore puff-sleeved dresses, families sat at rough-hewn trestle tables, and the whole place pulsed with rollicking Latvian folk music; an Applebee’s this was not.

The food — bacon-and-tomato-scented solyanka soup with pancakes stuffed with a salty cheese and dill mixture topped with sour cream, all for a mere five lats — was delicious, but I was more intrigued by Ricky’s tales of his travels and a pamphlet on my table telling the Dzirnavas story. “Have you ever been in a tavern of a good old Latvian miller?” it began. “Lido Dzirnavas — revived good old days in the heart of modern Riga.”

‘Surely no one in the restaurant had ever met a “good old Latvian miller,”’ I thought. But after 50 years of Sovietization — which reduced the population by as much as half — perhaps this cheerful reinvention of Latvian heritage was a healthy sign of the changes taking place in this evolving city.

It was over dinner I began to hear a few of Ricky’s stories. A seasoned traveler, who also runs a political consulting/commentary Web site entitled This Week in Government that focuses on Michigan and European politics, he knew the Baltics like the back of his hand. Possessed with an uncanny knack for remembering dates and names, he seemed to know just about everyone in Riga on a first-name basis, generously spilling every detail of their lives: who was engaged to whom, who disliked her job, and who needed a vacation. Guilty as I felt absorbing the details of the lives of complete strangers, I was captivated.

Ricky’s tales of his travels were equally impressive. He’d arrived in Latvia a few weeks ago after spending some time in Moscow, and had recently received his travel visa to Belarus, the only dictatorship in Europe and one of the most closed countries in the world after North Korea. The visa alone, he told me, took around six months to process and cost about $1,000.

Our appetites sufficiently satiated, we meandered through the winding streets of Old Town. Riga’s reputation for its thriving bachelor and bachelorette party scene means it abounds in bars featuring scantily clad women (and some men), deafening music, prostitutes bold enough to solicit in front of crowded restaurants and vodka served by the gallon, and this evening was no exception. Large groups of mostly drunk people stumbled their way across the cobblestones in front of Irish bar Vecriga, their boisterousness echoing amidst the tune of a busker’s violin. Over on Skunu Iela at De Lacy’s, a blonde woman looked like she was about to vomit, an acquaintance holding her hair back. Amidst the clamor we squeezed into Galerija Istaba, just north of the elegant Vermanes Park district. Its first floor is an art gallery, filled with knickknacks designed by local artists, while the second floor is a cozy, friendly bar that attracts a wide swath of Riga’s bohemian crowd. The décor can best be described as being on the chic side of rough, but the bar was well stocked, the service friendly, and the conversation interesting. After a couple cranberry martinis and a lengthy conversation with a Russian woman from St. Petersburg named Leia and her friend Vesma about American fast food (visiting McDonald’s is enough of an occasion for some Russians to dress up, they told us) and what an Eastern European woman’s heels say about her (apparently, the higher the heels, the higher a person’s social status), we thought it best to make our way back to Frank’s so that Ricky and I could get some sleep before his flight the next day to Belarus and mine to Stockholm.

By now, it was a little after 2 a.m., and, once again, our stomachs were grumbling. We stopped off for a quick snack at Sievasmates Piradzini (“Mother-in-Law’s Pirogi”), a bustling little place open 24-hours a day where customers pluck pirogi buns filled with anything from poppy seeds to bacon to dried apricots from an array of steaming trays. A cup of tea and sweet pirogi stuffed with cheese and jam was less than one lat, filling the belly with a steamy warmness that helped stave off the frosty night air.

Finally, our bellies full and our heads pounding, we made it back to Frank’s. The day’s escapades leaving me too tired to even remove my clothes, I collapsed on the bed in cartoon-like fashion.

As comical as the action was, it seemed to be the most real of the whole night.

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