Lithuania

7 September 2008
Vilnius, Lithuania
                The bus arrived early at 4:30pm, instead of 5:30pm.  And to our surprise there were no border formalities.  The bus didn’t stop anywhere and nobody checked our passports or anything.  This border crossing was now officially the easiest crossing.  We each put our bags back on and headed to the Old Town.  It took us about 20 minutes to walk to the touristy area.
                This was the first time we were trying something called “couch surfing.”  It is a website where fellow travelers provide a couch, bed, or even the floor, to travelers who are on the road.  We found a host here in Vilnius and were scheduled to meet her at 7pm at the main cathedral.  We had some extra time so we stopped at an ice cream shop for a snack and some ice cream.  Dour ordered a chicken sandwich and a raspberry sundae for both of us to share.  The food was quite good.  Ahhhhh, Europe at its best.
                After our little meal, we headed to the cathedral, and hung out for a couple hours and enjoyed watching a local band play in the square.
                At 7:00 a girl came up to us, asking our names.  This was Jolanta’s friend, Jolanta (our host) couldn’t make it until later.  So she had one of her friends come meet us until she arrived.  We took our bags to her flat to drop off, and then she led us to a wine bar for a drink.  The three of us shared a bottle of wine, and chatted.  She was here working for a year from Serbia. 
                At 9:00 Jolanta called.  She was waiting at her friends place for us.  We left the wine bar, and met Jolanta.  She was with a couple friends.  We said thank you, and goodbye to her friend.  Then loaded up our bags into a car, and drove to Jolanta’s place.  The guy dropped us all off at Jolanta’s.  We entered her flat.  It was very nice, and quaint.  She showed her place, and introduced us to her cat.  She had a fold out couch that we could use.  This was great, we were really excited.  The three of us chatted for a bit, and agreed to meet for lunch the next day.

8 September 2008
Vilnius, Lithuania
                Jolanta was out the door early for work.  Soon we got ready ourselves and headed to the bus stop.  The bus route begins/ends right by Jolanta’s place.  Within a few minutes of arriving, one of the buses finished its break and picked us up.  Doug went to the front of the bus and purchased two tickets from the driver and then sat with Anna.  At one of the stops a lady with a moustache got on the bus and started checking tickets.  Anna gave the lady ours and she got really upset.  She started ranting and raving in Polish about something we couldn’t understand.  We tried to explain that we purchased the tickets from the driver and even emphasized the point by steering an imaginary wheel so she would understand.  She pointed at a small yellow box mounted on one of the rails and said “Validate ticket.”  Finally this made sense, we were supposed to put our ticket in the box thingy and it would stamp it.  We thought that would be the end of it, but she was still really upset.  Then a guy sitting near us lit into the lady and they had a huge argument.  They kept gesturing towards us.  Anna started to reach into her pocket for cash and the girl next to her told her to stop because the guy arguing with the mustache lady was helping us.  Moustache lady finally took our tickets and punched them in the machine and went off looking to find other clueless Americans.  We thanked our neighbors for their help.  It wasn’t until later that night we discovered the fine for not punching your tickets was 20 Lithuania bucks each (which would come to $20 USD total).
                We wandered through the town taking lots of pictures of the cathedrals and town’s belfry.  After a couple hours we met up with Jolanta and Natasai for lunch.  They took us to a nearby restaurant in a casino.  After eating we made plans to meet up with them later in the evening when they got off work.
                There was an old castle atop a hill overlooking the city we wanted to visit.  After a little misdirection we finally found our way in.  At the top we asked an Aussie if would take our picture.  When we went to the elevator he was on board and we asked him his name and where he was from.  Chris was from Melbourne (which 75% of Aussie’s we met were from).  He decided to accept our invitation to join us as we ventured down to a little art district. 
                The three of arrived in a small district that had unofficially separated from the rest of Lithuania.  The unofficial state had its own tongue-in-cheek president, anthem, flag, and 41-point constitution (quote from Europe Lonely Planet) on a wall translated in a few languages including English.  The constitution gave people rights starting at the right to have a cat, all the way to the right to commit no acts of violence.  While we were walking around in the art district (somewhere nearby) we found a cool little pub and decided to have a beer.  We also saw some locals eating some sort of brown bread strips and decided to give those a try as well.  The bread turned out to be baked in salt and garlic, and when accompanied with an ice cold beer they were delicious.
                Soon we started back towards the center of town and said farewell to Chris.  We made it to our meeting point a couple minutes late, but thankfully Jolanta and Natasai were just walking up.  The four of us went back to the art district.  It turned out the “street art” was along the river.  There were sculptures and paintings all around for about 50 meters or so.  We took photos of some and were quite impressed with most of them.
                Next we went up a hill to a café that had a wonderful view of the city.  The café was outside so they provided, free of charge, blankets that people could drape over themselves to keep warm. After finishing our drinks we headed off back through town.  Doug took some night photos along the way while the girls chatted.  Natasai eventually took her own route while the rest of us continued to have dinner and then to the bus stop.
                At a corner convenience store we purchased bus tickets for our trips to and from Jolanta’s house.  It turned out that the tickets are cheaper if you buy them from a newspaper stand than from the driver directly.

9 September 2008
Vilnius, Lithuania
                Today we were going to a little city outside of Vilnius called Trakai.  Here we were going to see a late containing a castle in the middle of a small island.  We took a bus to the bus station, and first bought our tickets to Warsaw, Poland.  Anna also inquired where to get tickets for a bus to Trakai.  Well we were also hungry, and made a pit stop to McDonalds before boarding the bus.  Apparently in Lithuania McDonalds they don’t serve breakfast.  So we both got a cheeseburger and Anna then gave Doug her meat patty. 
                On the bus we met a guy from Chile, a girl from Poland, and Stacy from Australia.  We all chatted during the ride to Trakai.  Getting off the bus as a group we walked to the island.  And sure enough there definitely was a castle on a small island.  We walked across the bridge taking photos. 
                Inside the castle it was definitely interesting to see some of the architecture.  It was almost like a fairy tale walking around.  After visiting the castle we found a restaurant and ordered some food only known to this part of the world made by a sect called Karaites.  This name is after kara, which means ‘to study the scriptures’ in both Hebrew and Arabic.  We all ordered some sort of calzone type dish with meat.  Doug and Anna shared a chicken one.
                After lunch we walked back to the bus station, and caught a bus back to Vilnius.  At the bus station we all said goodbye.  Well now it was time to find a grocery store.  Anna had told Jolanta she would made dinner that evening.  So we found the market where Jolanta had circled on the map, and bought dinner ingredients.  We were really excited to find fajitas ingredients with all the fixings, and then we took a bus back to Jolanta’s.
                Anna took a quick shower before prepping for dinner.  She wanted to make sure everything was ready to cook once Jolanta, and her friend arrived to eat.  They walked in the door about an hour later, and Anna began cooking.  Dinner was excellent, Doug cleaned the dishes, and then we began showing them photos of the different countries we had been to.
                Around 10:30 Jolanta called a taxi for Natasai, we said our goodbyes, and she left.  Well now it was time to get ready for bed, and say goodnight.

10 September 2008
Vilnius, Lithuania
                Jolanta had to get up early to attend a dentist appointment.  Anna told her we would be ready once she returned from her appointment to go into town with her.  Our bus tickets to Warsaw didn’t leave until 9:30pm.  We were going to take the bus to the bus station, and drop our bags off at the storage facility.  This was the easiest solution, being she lived so far outside of town.  She arrived by 9:00 am and we were ready to go.
                The three of us got on the bus, and road into town.  When she arrived at her stop, we all said our goodbyes, and said we hoped some day in the future to see one another.  She was a lot of fun to be with, a really wonderful person.  The bus arrived at the bus station soon after, we dropped off our bags, and wondered back into town.
                Anna wanted her coffee so we found a little café to hang around at for a while.  Here we worked on journals for a while.  After breakfast we walked over to a Museum.  This museum was called “Museum of genocide victims.”  The museum building was also the old KGB headquarters.  The museum was quite interesting.  We learned a lot about some Lithuanian history when the Nazi’s were there, and then when communism was around.  One thing we did read which was awesome was that when communism fell about 17 years ago 2 million people held hands from Tallinn, Estonia through Riga, Latvia and ending in Vilnius, Lithuania.  It was a joint effort to get rid of the government’s hold of the people.  There were many other stories we read about different events prior to, during and after the fall of communism. 
                In the basement of the museum were the former cells used by the KGB.  They had a lot of different rooms to keep their prisoners under control.  The rooms varied from regular incarceration to solitary confinement, to torture and finally to execution.
                After the very unhappy museum we went to the grocery store to get some things for lunch and ate on a park bench.  It started to rain and we began walking around looking at the city stopping in a store or two.  We eventually ended up at the main cathedral square, and hung out there for a while.  A few more hours went by; we wanted to get a beer, and some food.  Good fortune steered us into a wine bar, that was very reasonably priced.  We shared a bottle of wine, a plate of cheese, and some really good homemade bread.  The bill only came out to $30 of their money, about $12 US or so.  Once dinner was over we made our way to the bus station, got our bags, and hung out until it was time to board the bus.
                The bus was prompt we all got on and the bus took us into Poland.

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