Vilnius, Lithuania

I will start with the bad. So far I have lost my Terza Rima t-shirt, my scarf that Dusty brought me back from India (that one sucked), and all of our soap products. Shampoo, condtioner, bodywash, and face wash. I've actually lost our shampoo twice, having lost the replacement the day we bought it. Awesome.

Having said all that, I will now say this: I LOVE VILNIUS!!! So far, this city has been our favourite. I'm actually not really sure where to start...so much has happened. Also, I'm pretty sure that I'm still drunk from yesterday (it's about 6pm right now) and I'm not going to attach any guarantees to my wit today. This is going to be a long one folks, so buckle down.

Day 1: Wo Wowy Wow

We arrive in Vilnius at 8am, having taken an overnight bus and been harassed by terrifying Polish border guards, who we thought were Belarussian, which led to minor panic attacks, as we did not have visas for Belarus, and it was 3am. And very cold outside. And a very long walk back to Warsaw. Turns out that they were just angry Polish people, which really should not have surprised us at all. Sorry Dorota, but the older generation of people in Poland were just plain horrid. Younger generation, wonderful (and the women are unbelievably beautiful...like...unbelievable...men, not so much...a cross between Neanderthal and KGB). Older generation, as cruel and hard as the communism that they lived through.

Back to Lithuania! Vilnius, day 1, 8am. We get to our hostel and immediately go to sleep. We wake up and hit the streets in the afternoon-ish. We wander around, grocery shopping, soap shopping, toursit informationing. We shower (we smelled very bad, having lost all of our soap). We then go to a bar called Amatininku Uzeiga. Say that one...well, I was going to say "three times fast", but in reality, just try saying it at all. If Guiness is the steak of the beer world, then Horn is turkey. It smelled remarkably like ground meat, tasted very wonderful and went down very quickly. It is served in a giant "glass" emblazzened with the name of the beer. I'm guessing that it's not actually glass, but carved from the clear horns of some mystical Lithuanian creature. Beer cost about $2 for .5L in a bar here. Yup, we love Vilnius.

From here we moved to Ibysh. This bar has become my best friend. There was a DJ spinning awesome hip-hop and 60's doo wop music. The decor was a cross between a disco and an exploded paint store. There was a giant fish in a giant tank just hanging out. At this point we were drinking rusty nails. We were actually the only customers in there. We ended up hanging out with the bartender, who's name we only learned last night is Mantas (like preying mantas), and the DJ (who's name I forget) and a couple of girls, Ruth and Steffanie, who were there hanging out with those guys. I believe the bar closed at 3am, but in the style of the Fixx, we just hung out after it was closed, drinking and smoking around the bar. Possibly, we got home at 5am. Ibysh = A+

Oh oh oh...almost forgot! For those of you who have seen Borat, and Kealey, this is mostly for you, remember how he gets excited about something and he says "Wo Wowy Wow"? The DJ did the same thing. But for real. No word of a lie. Exactly the same.

Day 2: TO THE RIVER!!!

We wake up around...1pm? We are useless sacks of shit until about 3:45pm, at which point we decide our need for food is greater than our need to nurse our hangovers. As we are leaving, Adam asks if we want to go to Forest.

Lets talk about Adam. He's from Perth (Australia, for those geographically challenged) but he's been living in Riga (Latvia) and a little in Vilnius for about five years. He now speaks broken English. It's crazy. He sounds like English is his second language, but he has the Aussie accent. He deletes little words (ie. a, the, are) and drops all tenses. So when he asked if we wanted to go to a sauna in the forest overnight, it sounded something like this:

"Some of us, we go to Forest. There is smoke sauna. We take train to town...how to say...not all way? We take taxi cab to village from train, there is well, river, maybe we stay for night? Come home morning. Forest is relax, calm. Maybe you come?"

So strange.

However, we decide that this sounds pretty sweet. We went and grabbed some food from the most magical pancake house you can imagine. Pancakes of every kind. Filled with everything. For maybe...$3 Canadian? Magic. Not quite Kebab magic (please note the capital 'K', Kebabs deserve it), but pretty close. Then we meet up with Adam around 5pm to catch the train.

We get on the dodgy train and about now is when the horror movie feeling starts. At this point I started wondering if Adam was taking us out to the country to kill us and steal our identities. However, we were then joined by a group from the other hostel in town and I felt much safer. Except for the fact that, once again, I was the only girl. There was Andrew (from Melbourne, smart as hell, could talk about anything), Chris (a Christian from the States studying at a school in Tallinn, Estonia), Viktor (the Spaniard...think Princess Bride) and Andrew (English drunkard obsessed with documenting through photo and video). I'm not sure how to describe our experience in Forest. I think the best thing to do is go point form. Hopefully this disjointed flash of images will give you a good impression of our side trip.

- we are staying in a bunk house with bunk beds, a wood burning stove, a clock that is stuck at 3am, the Witching Hour. The clock appears to be trying to go backwards. Kaare changes it so that we are not stuck forever in horror hour.

- there is a pirate eye patch outside our door.

- crazy neighbour who keeps knocking on our window. Adam attempts to talk to him. He's nice, but absolutely looney.

- the outhouse is the worst one I have ever seen in my life. Bar none.

- we have lots of beer.

- somehow a fishing lure appears outside our door that wasn't there when we arrived.

- we have mead...for real mead.

- our dinner consisted of a block of cheese, a loaf of rye bread, some salami, all between seven people. Oh, and three bags of fish crackers.

- the sauna is built of wood, with smoldering rocks that aren't even properly contained. Low roof. About 20 meters from our bunk house.

- as Kaare and I are getting ready to go into the sauna, the owner came in to ask us for money. Adam walked out completely naked to talk to him.

- the boys are all naked. And very very very hairy. I kept my bathing suit bottoms on. My legs are very very very hairy.

- the sauna is soooooooo hot.

- throughout the night we discuss everything from suicide to ewoks riding laser shooting dinosaurs.

- the whole thing feels like the Blair Witch project. We are literally in the middle of nowhere.

- there is a river about 5 meters away. A very cold Lithuanian river, in the middle of a very cold Lithuanian winter. It was down a flight of extremely slippery wooden stairs, which you dived off into the water. I did it once. The cry for the night became "INTO THE RIVER!!!"

- shrinkage.

- the Spaniard screams like a girl.

Day 3: Chlamydia?

The next morning (or afternoon) we went to go catch our train from the station. The night before we'd got off the train a town early because the train didn't run all the way at that time. We'd taken a cab to Forest. Forest train station? Some tracks, two benches and a sign post reading Zervynos. That was it. We spent about 30 mins in the freezing ass cold hoping, waiting, and wishing for our train. Which eventually came, leading us to warmth, home and food. Oh, and Andrew, our English documenter? Absolutely no shame about what he took pictures of. There are some really really good photos. Well...I'm not so sure that "good" is the right word...incriminating is a much better word. He's got my email, so hopefully we get them sent to us! Nana, you can't see them. Dad, you DEFINITELY can't see them.

Side note: eating out here is so strange. If you get service (large IF), you are not given the right amount of menues, your food will come out whenever it's ready, sometimes your food will come immediately, sometimes it will take half an hour, no one checks on you, it's extremely easy to walk out on your bill 'cause no one appears to care, and the servers are all very nice! Much different service standard.

Back at the hostel we start chatting with an Aussie named Shane and a brother sister combo from Hungary named Anita and Saboech (I probably completely fuckered the spelling on that name). Anita lives in Budapest and is visiting Saboech for a few days, who is studying in Klaipeda. Which I cannot ever say correctly and have continuosly pronounced as "chlamydia". It worked out rather well 'cause Klaipeda is our next stop. It's on the coast of Lithuania, and Mom, you'll like this, it has the biggest amber museum in the world. So we're going to meet up with those cats for a few days in Klaipeda and then in January we're going to go stay with Anita in Budapest for a few days. Anita is completely fluent in English, Saboech almost as good.

The night that ensued with these people was crazy. But Kaare is going to tell you about it. Otherwise, this blog would just be way way way to long. If he doesn't have something up in a few days however, you'll get the rest of the story from me. You hear that Mr. Iverson? Get your ass in gear. I don't care if you're "not feeling it" right now. Stop being a girl. (He's sitting at the computer right beside me at this moment and he's going to read this as soon as I post it. Hehe...)

Fun fact of the day: bars here don't appear to have a closing time. Or if they do, it is completely ignored. I asked Mantas (from Ibysh) what time he closed the bar. He said "last person". Which means that he was there until 6am with us. The "closing hours" represent what time they stop letting more people in. If you're already in, you can stay as long as you want. At least that's been our experience.

Quote of the day:
We were discussing with Chris (the Christian American) the emo culture in Canada and the States and how absolutely ridiculous it is. This is what he came up with...

Chris: I mean, yeah, we're all depressed, but we don't have to be fucking queers about it.