Mitt liv som Tobin

From Lithuania Diary:

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. ...

On 10 Sept. 2003 I left Krakow for Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Something I have to interject here is that I was terrified of this journey through Eastern Europe. I had heard so many stories about the Polish trains, especially the overnight intercity trains. About passengers being gassed in their compartments by roving thieves. About being robbed at knifepoint. It seemed that everyone who I met knew someone who had been robbed. And I myself had been mugged in Tallinn, so I had some tendency towards paranoia. There were other considerations, too, like getting into Lithuania. Some sources said the only trains cut through Belarus, reportedly a place still suffering under a Soviet-style regime, with the associated cumbersome bureaucracy and organised crime.

In the end though, the journey went without a hitch. I took a short daytime train from Bratislava to Krakow, and in Krakow I discovered a direct bus for Vilnius. The buses are not only more modern than the trains, but they are safer too, since stops are very infrequent, and nobody is boarding and unboarding. So I can't comment really about the stories about crime on the eastern european trains, except that it seemed scary from a distance, but once on the ground things were clear and easy. That's the way it usually is.

But Vilnius. It's a magical place.

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.

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.

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.

These are some of my favorite photos from the whole trip.

Sculptures above a theatre:

Oh, the food. I am definitely a "food tourist".

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.

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.