Fortuna Klaipeda

... wieder nach Riga, aber dann doch nach Polen.
Das Abenteuer ist noch nicht zu Ende. Angefangen hat es. Sobald man den euphorischen und zugleich beklemmenden Duft von Freiheit in seine Lungen gesogen hat, dringt er in jede noch so kleine Verästelung des Blutkreislaufsystems. Abenteuer schließen keine Lebensgefahr mit ein. Abenteuer verändern einen im Innern. Sie schärfen die Wahrnehmung, rütteln uns aus dem Alltag und lassen uns Kleinigkeiten und beiläufigkeiten schätzen.
Ist also ...

... Oder kennt ihr viele Ostamerikaner, Halbjude mit plonischem Einschlag, Halbitalienermix, abgeschlossenes Philosophiestudium, Autor, Schwerstinteressiert am 30 Jährigen Krieg, der einfach mal so sein Gespartes nimmt und damit durch Osteuropa trampt? Also ich nich. Und wenn ich mal einen treffe, wird er ausgequetscht! Sollte dann auch 3 Tage Zeit haben ;)
Der Typ is crazy! 
Naja, wir haben uns dann die Unterkunft geteilt und zusammen die kurische Nehrung unsicher gemacht.

On our way to Nida we stopped to visited one of the most pilgrimage places I have ever been. It's a Hill of Crosses nearby Siauliai City. People come here, leave crosses, icons and pray - and the energy on the hill is simply amazing.

Nida is a resort town in Lithuania, located on the Curonian Spit. When we visited this ...

It took just over 3 hours to drive from Vilnius to Klaipeda with very light traffic. The drive is a little boring, but comfortable. The Magnisima Hotel is in the new (er) part of town within walking distance from the old town and with a secure parking lot in the rear. The room (#7) is very spacious and tastefully furnished. The street misses a couple of light poles, so gets a ...

... the waterfront, stopping occasionally. At one point, I notice a lot of nude people. As I observer more closely, it is all women. I had passed onto the border of the women only zone. I quickly turn around. There is a sign at the entrance in Lithuanian. No pictorial sign like I had seen before. Oops.

Lots of wind kept people against the sand dunes. There is a network of sand areas inside the dunes ...

I buy my bus ticket to Liepaja, Latvia for Monday. I was planning on Sunday but was told no Sunday trips and while there used to be 3 busses a day, it is now only 1. I infer that the economic downturn has hit the tourist industry pretty heavily.

Since there is no breakfast at the hostel, I stop by a grocery store for some danish and yogurt drink. I am sun burnt from yesterday. My Nivea lotion is ...

... touching herself in a fairly provocative way. "What's wrong with touching yourself?" Mary questioned me. Nothing, nothing at all! After, we stopped at an internet café to see the results of our joke. Yesterday, we emailed everybody and told them that we got married in Spain. We weren't sure if anybody would believe it, but knew that if they did, this would go down as one of the biggest jokes ever. Anyway, we sent an email ...

... hire the bikes to us for. Still not feeling well Mark declines so Sean and I head off with out him. It quickly becomes apparent to us that maybe part of the reason the hire people were skeptical was they new the condition of the bikes we had hired. They were rubbish, mine had loose handlebars, half the gears it was meant to and pedaled with such friction that I twice checked to see if a dynamo was secreted somewhere. The path however was relatively ...

... a trip into the women's territory to explore the phenomenon and returned later, somewhat shaken, after a large, naked (must we say?), middle aged women with her bosom somewhere around her navel grabbed her wrist and asked her the time in Russian. She must have looked conspicuous because she was the only women there with two pieces of bathing suit on. After much more beach relaxing we went for a walk down the other end of the beach. It extended for quite a ways, and ...

... over to the Lithuanian coast. After our fill we headed off to locate some bikes. The first place we found was run by some old man and his daughter and they were only charging a pound an hour, so we hired them for two. Once we had paid up we got on our way and cycled over to the west coast, about 20 minutes cycling away. There were some amazing sand dunes followed by a really rough and windy Baltic sea compared to the calm lagoon ...