PLATO NOT PROZAC, LITHUANIA NOT LITHIUM
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2009
1
23
25
Trip End
Jun 24, 2009
I get another hour changing buses in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania. This is cool in a travel-rap sort of way, four countries in less than twenty-four hours. This is the way crossing borders should be, nothing but a 'Bon Voyage' sign on one side, a ‘Welcome’ sign on the other. It’s starting to feel more eastern European here, less Baltic north country, though even in Vilnius you’re still almost 55 degrees north latitude, which is farther north than Edmonton on the other side of the northern hemisphere and as far as you could go south even in Tierra del Fuego. Still it’s already dusk as our bus takes off at 9pm, and little by little we crawl further under the late-night shade of the earth’s curvature as we head south to Warsaw. Soon the midnight sun will just be a memory. I have yet to reach the Arctic Circle fully but may get there yet in Russia soon. The midnight sun is not the prize anyway; the aurora borealis is, and you need complete darkness for that. A little more warmth would be nice, too, and August, even September, has plenty of that. You can get a RT LAX-Moscow for less than $700. The visa’s extra, cost and hassle. Living on the road may keep you free, but that doesn’t mean that it IS free… They say that men got buried with their horses here up until the 14th century. What more do you need to know? Stay tuned.
