The second blog from Latvia

The second month in Daugavpils was calmer than the first month. The works were less and we had a lot of time to travel. 

I traveled to Vilnius and joined Erasmus + meeting. I met with the other coordinators. They said that the badges will be in ESC projects. The badges will be given according to the activities done by coordinators and volunteers.I traveled a little in Vilnius. When I come back to Daugavpils I prepared to go to Sweden. 

Sweden is an interesting country. 

Firstly I couldn't meet locals to much. Most of the people came from other countries. I was hosted by one Swedish guy and one Hawaiian guy. The Swedish guy knows Turkish and the Hawaiian guy has rabbits. It was very stance experience for me. Other things for Sweden that you can not find on Internet are:

1. The Sweden has very good atmosphere outside of old city. 

2. The residences are built in unique type of wood and rock formation for Sweden.

3. The architecture was very good and all homes are in good condition. The home types are very interesting. 

4. Also the city in light people wake up at 10 am according to Turkey  (it means that they wake up on light) and street lights are very bright. Therefore you can not see any difference between midnight and night.They spend to much money to lighting. 

I spend most of time walking in Sweden. I visited a lot of museums and saw a lot of seashore's view. For food I ate chocolate all of the time because it was tasty and cheap.

The First Glance of Latvia

I have already finished my first month in Latvia. Latvia is known as a cold country, people generally come to visit it in summertime. However, I visited in winter. The winter is not as cold as I expected because the altitude is very low and there are no blazers here. Therefore don't worry about the cold weather, but you can worry about dark. There is no light pollution here, it is kinda scary and city life is very slow after 4 pm as soon as the sun goes down.

Everything from now seems like a ghost town story, but people are warm they try help and kind just need to know how to approach. They don't approach the way in which I get used to, you need to arrange an activity when you want to meet.
Besides communication, you feel also special. They care about their own, not just about makeup or nice haircut also nice gestures and way of clothing and self-body care which is you can't find in Europe very easily. The tastes, however, are different. Some of the foods are awesome like karums. Even Turks have the best cheese products in the world, even we have at least 3 different cheese desserts. Karums are healthy, relaxing and delicious and different food. You cant find white cheese here, just Greek ones which are not proper to eat and the other cheese are not as tasty as look, except karums cheese. The other milk products are very surprising to me. They have kefir, they drink kefir as Turks and it is cheap, easy to supply. However, they don't know yogurt, the yogurts are not original yogurts they are just vaporized milk; not probiotic, healthy and sports product. All of them are sweet, really?. Latvia please learn fermentation process.

Cities are fine but the cost of accommodation is expensive. Therefore they trapped small homes in nice cities and cities also are a little dirty. Therefore you will get dirt while returning home because they literally use dirt(sand) on the streets. I really don't understand why they don't use salt? Oppositely the churches and common places are really clean. They are as big as possible. They are either historical or piece of modern art.

Looking forward to discover more about EVS and cultures I get in touch with!