Crossing against the light

It’s been about a month since I’ve been displaced to Vilnius, and I’ve done what I can to see this country in this short time. The last two or so weeks, I’ve had the use of someone’s car and I’ve made the most of it.

Gas here is really expensive and the borrowed car is an SUV, so my little excursion over the weekend cost close to $200 in gas, but I took off a day (my first full 8-hour day off since the Antarctica cruise in January 2020) and headed to the coast. The Baltic coast, that is. There’s a resort city (by Lithuanian standards there called Palanga and I hung out in the beach town for a couple of days. It was just me, or, rather, me and my laundry. I got an AirBnB and made sure to reserve a spot with a washer.

I enjoyed the pier way too much.

The beach was nice – tan coarse sand but no shells. There was a long L-shaped pier that I photographed at multiple angles several times a day. The water wasn’t too cold, but as many times as I walked up and down, I only dipped once. Mostly I just made the 6000-step walk from my room to the beach, then down to the pier and back through the park. I was really a nice weekend.

And quite toasty. I forgot I’m in Europe, where air conditioners are not a thing. And, while I know the Western U.S. is cooking and this doesn’t compare, it’s pretty hot for Europe, too. It’s hit over 90, which is pretty rare. It follows a record-setting bitterly cold winter, so I guess it’s an el Nino thing.

All in all, the trip was nice. I had intended to go down a spit to see a lighthouse that’s right near that part of Russia that’s in the Baltics, but after taking the ferry over and starting the drive, I realized that it’s inside the national park, not just outside of it like I had thought. It cost way too much to get into the park, as it was a per vehicle charge. Had I gone with a group – or even another person – it would have maybe been worth it, but as it was, I decided to save four hours of driving, the entrance fee and a third take of gas and just started wandering back a little earlier on Sunday.

Two weekends ago, I did a one-day trip with a colleague to a city called Druskininski, which has a really nice nature park that is smattered with old Soviet statues. I’d read about some of these parks before; when the Soviet Union fell, the statues came down and for whatever reason, they have been installed in parks. When I heard about it, I pictured sort of a graveyard of statues in varying phases of deterioration lying haphazardly in piles. That was not the case at all. The park was set up as a nice walk, with the statues lining the path, along with descriptors for each, saying who the person was (not all were Lenin), where the statue had been, and a couple of other facts about the situation.

Sunset in Palanga, 10:08 p.m.

The Soviets sure spent on propaganda. In reading the detail, most of the statues were from the area. It wasn’t like stuff was hauled in from the FSU – that’s Former Soviet Union in this case. Nope, by and large, it was all local. Presumably, there are parks across the map with these parks, which is kind of eerie.

So that place, randomly selected off a map, was pretty cool, too. It’s been nice to have a car for this short amount of time, but I’m ready to give it back now. I may try to do another short road trip before I leave, but if I do, I’ll rent a fuel-efficient one.

All told, though, it only takes about four hours to drive across Lithuania. I didn’t start from the Belarus border, but Vilnius is only about 20-30 minutes from it, so driving from here to Palanga is basically driving the length of the country. Try doing that in America in one weekend. Perhaps The Bandit could rival it, but I also drove back in the same weekend!

Next week, I am taking four days off and heading on another trip, but it worked out that it would be better to fly, even if I am only going to Poland. Strange, I know, because Warsaw is only five hours away, but that’s the plan. I’ve got AirBnBs (with washers) reserved, train tickets bought and an Auschwitz tour booked.

Druskininski Soviet park

Honestly, this Minsk tour might go down as the most depressing in history. Not only has the job itself not lived up to what it could have been, but the fraudulent election, protests and mass detentions and obscene number of political prisoners and the whole situation adds to it, too. And the fact that my “fun” trips from here have basically been Chernobyl (Ukraine), Chernobyl (Belarus) and now Auschwitz. That’s might sad.

But still, Vilnius is a nice city. In many ways, it’s similar to Minsk but in many, it’s not. The most notable of these is the prices, but another big difference – and one I am enjoying – is crossing streets. Yeah, that sounds weird, but in Belarus, people will stop, Rain Man-like, if the little red “Stop” sign tells them to. They are frozen in place and will not, under most any circumstance, walk until the green walkie light comes on. I’ve seen people – mostly young, but very few in general – muster up the gumption to cross while the red sign is up, and the tension among the other walkers is palatable. It’s just not done, even at 3 a.m. in a snowstorm. People will wait until they are signaled.

Not so much in Vilnius. Mostly, people wait, but if there is no traffic, they’ll cross. It honestly surprised me, but now I have regressed to being one of those rule breakers. Everyone who does it – and I see this on a daily basis here, whereas in Minsk, if I saw one every two months, it was memorable – looks both ways and will not step if there is traffic anywhere, but they will do it. I’m not sure if that’s progress or not, but I’m relieved to not feel guilty about it since I cross several large intersections on the 30-minute walk to the office.

Come fly with me

 It’s a four-day weekend for me and I had wonderful plans that crashed and burned. Fortunately, how it worked out, nothing crashed and burn.

Cemetery garden

Since I have access to a car for the next two weeks, I’d hoped to make a run for the Baltic Sea and go to a castle located on a split. The sea is only about 3-4 hours away, but you have to ferry to the split, so that adds a couple hours; it’s not a safe trip for one driver to up and back in a day, so I hoped to overnight somewhere.

Since Tuesday is a Lithuanian holiday as well, I guess it booked up fast because there was nothing available on or near the split, so I looked for nearby things. Found one, but in trying to book on Friday for Saturday night, it turned out to be a little late, I guess. By Saturday at 10 a.m., I hadn’t gotten confirmation so I called it off and looked to other plans.

Research these days is done on the internet, so I checked Viator with no intention of actually purchasing a trip but instead just getting an idea of what’s out there. Lithuania is not so big, but you have to head in the right direction.

There are a couple places that seemed really good and I opted for what someone on Viator called “The Troy of Lithuania.” No horses, just an archeological site about 30-40 minutes outside of Vilnius in Kernave (Ker-NAHV-ee, I think), which seemed doable in someone else’s car. It’s a much bigger car – full-sized SUV for a family of four – that normally are found around Vilnius, and just getting out of the parking garage proved a challenge.

I walked ALL over the site in Kernave

Other than getting utterly confused in trying to find the right freeway – roundabouts; question as to what was considered “the second exit” and not knowing which direction was north – I got there just find and found parking at a cemetery.

The cemetery itself was pretty awesome; the plots had been transformed into actual gardens with lovely flowers and plants. The landscaping was beautiful, even for the plots for the people who had been dead for generations. There were several people there tending gardens; I drove in following a group of three women who hauled out dirt, rakes and loads of begonias out of their car. They really take care of them.

After heading to the museum, I went to the site itself, which is a huge, huge area that once encompassed five forts on the top of five hills. There was also a flat area between the hills and a river that would have contained tribes of people; the land had been inhabited going back to the 13^th century. It was the capital of Lithuania at one time. It was quite interesting, but in the end, it was basically a lovely walk through a lot of grass and up and down a lot of stairs. I did ALL the stairs, up to each of the five forts sites and back down again. My calves are killing me today; my iPhone says I did a total of 39 flights of stairs yesterday.

But it was wonderful to get out of town and just wander. There weren’t many people there at all, and at one point – at the top of the last fort, which was a bit away from everyone else – I just plopped down and read some of my book.

As this is my only weekend in between classes, I could do it with a clean conscience and not feel I should be concentrating on something else; that was why doing something this weekend was so important to me. (Never mind that everyone else I know was out of town.)

Before I took off for Kernave, I also looked for hot air ballooning here. I know they have them because I see them outside my hotel window on a regular basis. I looked up some companies, sent and email and immediately got WhatsApp’d. I’d plugged in looking for Sunday but it turns out, it came out that they had an opening for Saturday night.

So last night, after walking 25k steps (the last hour to the balloon meeting spot), I got into a balloon for the third time in my life.

This one was smaller than the ones I’d taken in Cappadocia and Luxor, but it was glorious, at least after I relaxed. It was far more crowded; I think we had eight people in there; six Russian tourists, the pilot and the guide. Everyone spoke Russian, and I learned I know absolutely balloon-type terms in Russian, because I understood absolutely nothing. Even the abbreviated English-language safety instructions were vague, so I was glad I’d done it before so I kind of knew what was going on.

We sailed for about an hour, drifting over close to Trakai, the island castle where I’d gone last week. It also had been a capital of Lithuania. I had thought we’d fly over Old Town, but you’re sort of at the mercy of the wind so we were off in another direction. Since I’d been to the fort and the Hill of Three Crosses, I do feel like I’ve had a good view of Vilnius from high, anyway. We did pass over one absolutely majestic castle/church/something. I don’t know what it was, but it was right on a lake and beautiful.

In general, Lithuania is full of trees and lakes, which looks lovely from the air. I really don’t know what path we took, but there were lots of balloons this weekend, about 35. This pales in comparison to New Mexico’s 700 or so, but it on par with Cappadocia, which has 30-40 most mornings and evenings. Normally, Vilnius – the only European capital that has hot air ballooning over the city – has far less than that, like 10 or so.

It was a lot of fun. My photos don’t reflect the beauty of it; I was on the west side of the balloon and was shooting into the setting sun lots of the time. It really was gorgeous.

As we got closer to the ground, we could wave to the people there, many of whom were out watching the balloons go over. One little girl chased us, waving as she ran across her yard, clearly delighted. My mind flashed to the little girl Garland Greene (Steve Buscemi) had tea with on Con Air’s layover in that movie. Her dog was quite excited to see us, too. It must be the things to do in the evenings.

Since you’re sort of at the mercy of Mother Nature upon landing, too, we wound up coming down in someone’s back yard. There’s a chase car that finds a spot, asking permission of the owners before landing. We came down in the vicinity of another balloon, at the house of a couple who were swimming in their little baby lake.

Considering that the shaky plan I’d had for the weekend went kaput on Saturday morning, I think I made quite a recovery. Today, Sunday, I am planning on checking out an English-language church service and then walking to the ritzy mall and just poking around. I had hoped to catch another movie but the one that sounded palatable isn’t playing. Something with Liam Neeson is, but as much as I like him, his movies are better viewed on cable.

One of my colleagues returns tonight and we were considering a quick day trip tomorrow, but the destination is as of yet unknown.