Vilnius diary

My evacuation from Krakow was spur-of-the-moment, based on the sudden discovery of a direct Krakow-Vilnius bus that nobody seems to know about. This was a deluxe bus with a happy funny `flight attendant' looking after everyone and a load of lithuanians, and we crossed all of Poland in the night. I'm kind of sorry I missed Warsaw, since a city with as much myth and contrast as Warsaw deserves some time on the ground for investigation. The guidebook notes "It's easy to make friends in Warsaw" and the British guys I've met here have anecdotes to back that up, ending up guestlisted at some exclusive heavy-metal club, which happens to be exactly their thing.

Krakow has a vast central marketplace (reportedly the largest in Europe), flanked by a cathedral, adjacent to a castle (with its own cathedral), all surrounded by old city walls and a park area called the `planty'. Everything radiates out from this central square, and the square itself is full of life, its perimeter full of cafes and restaurants.

Vilnius doesn't really have such a central square, so the Old Town doesn't have that focal point; instead, it's in a vaguely defined region, again in the shadow of a castle on a hill. The architecture is undisputably cool but I haven't quite found the Vilnius that is described as "bizarre, beautiful, and bewitching... there is an underlying oddness that creates its soul."

The hostel here, Filaretu Hostel, is a snug little place with a cozy common room complete with DSL; it's located in the "Uzupis district," a region just across a little stream from the old town which quite oddly proclaims itself an independent republic, and sister-city to Montmarte.

The advantage of staying in a hostel is that it's vastly easier to meet people. There are two Norwegian girls who are taking a term to travel before University and are now on a leisurely Tallinn to Morocco trip, Baltic to Balkans, flying to Spain, across to Africa. They're taking it at a delicious pace, renting a flat for a week in Kaunas after a week in Riga, taking the time to notice the subtlties. Doing it the way it should be done, I suppose. Tallinn to Athens is the trip I proposed earlier, and they're doing it, but better.

I met two British guys who are travelling my same itinerary, to Tallinn on the 24th. They're leaving 07:20 tomorrow on the bus to Klaipeda and I nearly jumped at the chance to join up with them. But These few hours in Vilnius are doubtlessly too few. But I may leave even tomorrow evening, and try to catch up. It will be nice having comrades.. that always makes things more interesting, and we can check out the bizarre baltic nightlife.

Klaipeda is at the top of an odd formation called the Curonian Spit, a 97km-long, 4km-wide arc of dunes that reaches into the Baltic, from Klaipeda to somewhere in Kalingrad (the Lithuanian half is a nature preserve; the Russian half a secret military base). In guide-book poetics it's "the Sahara of Lithuania" but in my mind the name conjurs something from Space Quest III.