International students impression about Riga and their studies

What was the assignment? We had to make groups of 2 – 4 people (there were 14 groups in total) and we had to make a practical research on how Riga inhabitants can help tourists who are lost. We had to pretend that we are confused tourists – an obligatory requirement was that we had a map – in order to find out how helpful are local people in helping us – by giving direction and other things. We had to investigate what is the attitude, how much time does it take, what is the level of English, etc. After the practical assignment we presented our results to our class mates and shared experiences. What were the main findings? Actually – better than we expected. We, as a group that look like typical tourists and differ a lot from the local people, did not have any problems. I believe that German and other Scandinavian students should have had more difficulties with the task. Mainly young people – 22 to 25 years old – were offering help, however, some were also older than that. Were people mainly willing to help? Yes, they were very friendly and understanding – they were showing us the directions and some of them even offered to take us to the destination. We had to evaluate many criterions – interest in helping us, English communication skills, attitude, but in general we can say that the majority of people were very helpful and understanding. An interesting fact was that other tourists also wanted to help us – in the Old Riga we met tourists from Italy and Australia that also offered help to us. Also as it turned out for girls it is much easier to find help with directions – for the only girl in our group in took around 2-3 minutes for someone to come and ask if she’d need any help, but for some of the guys it took almost 30 minutes. Were there also some funny moments? Yes, there was a homeless man, which was offering his help by asking a fee for that. But he spoke great English though. What do you think about this subject? The lecturer is really nice! The classes are also very interesting and what I really like is that first we have a look on the theoretical aspects in tourism in the Baltic Region and after that we make practical things or sometimes go on excursions. Just recently we visited various hotels in Jurmala and also some places which as tourists we would never see. Do you like Riga and how did you decide to come here? This university offers different courses in English and similar to those I’d have to have in my home university, and also the spectrum of courses available is English is quite broad. We are studying here with both – other exchange students and the local students. Riga is a beautiful city, Old Riga in particular, also the centre is quite nice and you can still see an impact from the Soviet times and many things differ from the Western capitals. Maybe that was the reason why we chose to spend a semester here in Riga.