Lithuanians believe in magic

There is something about Vilnius.. On my last day there I explored the labyrinthine passageways linking courtyards in the University, found the hidden frescoed ceilings and the student club and everything. Sat down at a sidewalk bar and enjoyed a meal of those famous Zeppelins, canonical blimp-shaped Lithuanian food composed of some kind of potato dough with meat centers, covered in bacon bits and cream.. yeah, they're a bit much! Then boarded the bus to Klaipeda, in the southwestern corner of the country.

I knocked on the door to the hostel and was immediately greeted by one of these british guys I've been hanging out with.. we have the same general plans up to Tallinn, I'm just a day behind their schedule. He introduced me to a certain Kristina, I thought she was just a super-pleasant fellow traveler but she turned out to be the hostess of this lovely hostel in Klaipeda. Read the guestbook, it's full of little stories about people coming to Klaipeda intending to stay just overnight but staying for a week — or even two. "I came here late on a dark and stormy night... and now I'm in this cozy hostel and I feel like I'm part of a big family." It's not because Klaipeda is anything.. There's almost nothing there, it's an industrial town, save this nice hostel and access to the Curonian Spit.

We arranged a trip on Friday with Jurga from the hostel, who served as driver, translator, and guide, taking us on an all day roadtrip to sites in Western Lithuania. We climbed down into an abandoned Soviet missile base, peered down into the silos, some thirty meters deep. It's deep in a forest, and it took some time to be discovered by the Lithuanians after the soviet troops abandoned it. It was stripped of anything of value, and thereafter just open for the exploring. Now they've installed fluorescent lighting and you need to get a key from the national park office, but, well, in Kenny's words, "The lack of concern for safety is refreshing."

From the missile base we drove to the Hill of Crosses, a hill in Lithuania where millions and millions of crosses have been erected. It's quite a strange sight indeed. It was bulldozed multiple times by the Soviets, yet sprouted again each time. There are crosses on crosses on crosses. Our old but trustworthy BMW shared the roadways with dozens of hitchhikers angling for rides, with horse-drawn wagons, with people marching to who-knows-where along the roadside, with tractors, with the long-distance busses, with kids selling mushrooms, each with a huge assortment in an overflowing basket.

On Saturday I rented a bicycle and took the ferry from Klaipeda down to the Curonian Spit, cycled to the fine-grain whitesand beaches, waded in the cold waters of the Baltic, searched for amber but found only what must be "fool's amber," some amber-colored hard stone that also washes up on the beaches. Bicycled all day through the forests, to the huge dunes, nearly to the russian border. In the forests Lithuanians pass quietly, gathering mushrooms: pensioners, children with manifest elfen genes, middle aged people too. They have baskets overflowing with huge mushrooms. You don't see them till you stop and then you notice them gliding through the forests. Watched the sunset over the Baltic.

On the ferry back to Klaipeda I saw in the port, highlighted by the setting sun, the vast Scandlines ferry, the ferry that sails daily from Klaipeda to Karlshamn, a Swedish city near Kristianstad, down in the southern bit of Sweden by Malmö. Malmö is the way home, and here was a ride, so close at hand.

Went, maybe, to all the bars and clubs in Klaipeda, looking for some place with people. Danced briefly at Memelis, met some American exchange students ("Are you an exchange student?" "No, I'm studying abroad." Eh?) who had no interest in talking to us, a British guy totally in love with Klaipeda. Returned always to the Memelis, a restaurant/bar/disco in a huge brick building by the river, with big wooden timbers supporting the four floors of the place — bar, restaurant, disco, VIP club. We ate more Zeppelins and some Lithuanian potato pancakes at a hole-in-the-wall place ($2 for an entree). We ran into a screening of a film outdoors projected onto a screen erected on the side of Memelis. I approached the nearest person — representing local TV, it turned out— it's a film festival, an "underground film festival" with films from eastern europe and scandinavia. I don't know if they're just culturally intuned or there's nothing else to do in Klaipeda but the 20-something crowd and teenagers flocked there in droves, even if the sound wasn't working so well that first night. Came back and watched some Russian films, sitting atop my rented bicycle in the chilly night air.

And then it was time to board the bus for Latvia, and here I am in Riga, the capital, where I've met up again with our old Vilnius and Klaipeda crew, and lots of other people too. But these adventures will be written later.