Auks-taitij Visaginas

Yo!
This time I'm going to actually just type out my handwritten journal cos it'll be quicker..and probably better!

So on Friday, after we'd got off the night train, we had sausage rolls for breakfast (containing about 10g of fat each) and then roamed the streets of Warsaw to try and find our hostel. Our backs were very strained still from the previous days' bagathon (carrying our backpacks all day!), so we were getting fed up with being lost. At that moment, 2 ...

... lakes and strange houses of people called 'Karaims'. Each Karaim house has 3 windows facing the street: one window is for a God, one for the duke and one for the family. I note is as interesting.

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Having passed a few kilometres of rows of the Karaim houses, we finally arrived at the castle. I decided I wanted a picture I'd actually be in, so I began climbing an old fishing boat to add some element of ...

So that's Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. I get off an exceptionally uncomfortable bus after a 7-hour night drive and find out that every single sign on the station is written in Lithuanian - which perhaps would be funny if I didn't have to pee. Anyway, with the linguistic help of my two Lithuanian friends I manage to find the loo, so I burst into the first cabin available and ...

All ...

... ourselves for a while.

On the drive out of Zarasai, there were plenty of hitch-hikers - black-clad and scary looking. Our car was stuffed full, but we still managed to fit a couple of lads in, with Saskia and Eartha sitting on their knees. After they left us in Utena, we picked up another one for a few km.

Two minutes after we'd dropped him off, we saw a bloke in a suit hitching. We both shrugged and drove on by. Sorry, we only pick up hitchers that look mad, bad and dangerous!

... bizarre turn of events meant we spent the evening down by the lakeside, in Virginia's completely empty summer house. They are doing it up, so the only things inside it are a few tools and some unused, newly bought appliances. The water and electricity worked, so we blew up out airbeds in the empty rooms and went for a walk round the lake with a gorgeous sunset.

That is serendipity.

This morning I woke up a different man. In fact, I woke up the same man, but into a completely different world. I was alone. For a start it meant I too had finally been able to sleep in a bed. And it felt right off. And second, Visaginas woke up awash in sunshine. Festival had ended, my band had gone home and one could say the rain really had no reason to linger around any more. Suddenly, the summer stopped by in Lithuania ...

After we had been relatively lucky with the weather the night before, at least to the extent that it had not rained, it grew grim again today. Robi and I came down for breakfast first again, whoever had slept better. Or worse. With the fact that he had slept in the bed and I on the fold-out, he had also been relatively early in the room last night. Some time around midnight. As for me, I had attended a rather boring after-party with a part of my band until around three ...

"Do you know if there's any post office around here?" Robi asked me. "Yes, there is. I saw it yesterday." "I'd have to send a few postcards," he said. As it's usually the case, we were by far the first ones down for breakfast. I knew that by the time we descended to the restaurant the others would still be very much asleep. Somehow we managed to find a common ground as to what we would have for breakfast with the restaurant personnel, and then we started eating ...

Our destination was Visaginas, quite likely the most bizarre place in Lithuania we could think of. Until we were given an offer to play at a local festival, I had had no idea it even existed. And then I realised that, for starters, it was by no means easy to find it on the map. For it most certainly doesn't belong in the first or the second category of places an average tourist would want to visit here. Most likely not even the third, either. Consequently, for someone who knows nothing ...

Next day (friday, saturday ?? dunno :/) we went by car with some other people to party place, in the middle of the nowhere, near Visaginas, Utena region, N-E Lithuania ... It was cooold (salti !!) but cool :) We stayed at someone's dacha for 2 nights, forrest, lake, fire, sausages, beer, vodka, birthday cake and funny people (especially 2 spanish hihih...) Me happy !! Went cold, dirrty and smoked back to my host place on sunday ...