Culture is a hard concept to describe...it involves every part of one's existence from the country they were born in, to their values, to their appearance and to their form of dress. I personally can describe my culture as something that is a form of thinking, what one was brought up as. I am Lithuanian (Eastern European) and value this dearly, it is a culture of many things; of potatoes and pork, of large heavy wool and linen folk costumes, of rainy weather, of flat farmlands, of vodka and good beer, a mix of Christinity (and religiousness), of highly valued post-secondary [View Full Entry]

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The hill of Crosses It is said that this saddle bag hill 12 km outside Siauliai was once a pagan alter. How this remote location, far from anything, came to be a holy place is unknown, but the legend describe it as such. Many centuries later it became the home to a cross or two, this is estimated to be around the 1830's, and today the saddle bag hill hosts hundreds of thousands of mainly wooden crosses placed there by pilgrims and a large part by especially Polish and German tourists. The crosses are mostly wooden and unfortunately many of them [View Full Entry]

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It had been way to long since i had seen Diana so we decided that I go over for a visit for a little time, only 10 days I could go there for though but it was well worth the effort. Diana had organised a trip to the costal town of Palanga for two nights and it is sort of the tourist town of the country and gets very busy in the summer. Great to go there and have a relax though and look around. Other things we did was go to the famous Trakai and it did not dissapoint. We [View Full Entry]

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I have been in Lithuania for probably its most crippling economic period since their post-occupation economic growth began just after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early ‘90’s. Teaching English at a small English school in the center of town, on ‘Freedom Avenue’, a pedestrian street that stretches the length of the whole downtown of Kaunas, I have seen shop after shop close down. And they all have a common series of events. First a sign goes up saying ‘sale’, then big circle-shaped ads in bold colors advertising that everything is on sale. 50%, 60% [View Full Entry]

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As summer arrives, time seems to be moving faster and faster. A week flies by, seeming like just a few days. A few interesting events regarding Lithuanian Baseball: May 28-June 5: Sam Dempster, a Major League Baseball Envoy Coach, will be giving baseball clinics to youth ages 13-18 in Vilnius, Kaunas, and Utena, Lithuania. This is an exciting 'first' for Lithuanian Baseball, to host an MLB coach. We hope it will be a great experience both for the visiting coach and for the players involved. June 8-24th: Kaunas Lituanica Baseball Club travels to the US!!! We will be playing aga [View Full Entry]

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We left Vilnius at a frightfully civilised time today. 10:45. It was so civilised that MK and I had time to pop down the road and have another bowl of porridge for breakfast and after breakfast we had time for a wee stroll along the river. Luckily Andy took us on the local trams to get to the train station. We had walked to the train station the day before and none of us were relishing the concept of potentially having to do the 30 minute walk again with heavy backpacks on our backs. Our train ride to the national [View Full Entry]

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Today has been a bit of a lazy day for me. For some reason I am just absolutely shattered today. So tired that I can't quite seem to keep up with the rest of the group today. And we are talking about the fact that I can't keep up with a couple who are in their 70's and another couple that are in their 60's and here is me pootling along like an old granny at the age of 31. Anyway this morning MK and I rebelled against yet another breakfast of bread and cheese and decided to head out to [View Full Entry]

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Today saw us up and out of Klaipeda and off on the bus to Vilinius (the capital of Lithuania). The first thing that we had to do before we could leave Klaipeda was to take a photograph us all of the card carrying members of the Olympic Casino. :) The weather deteoriated as we got closer to Vilnius until it was raining pretty constantly when we were getting off the bus. This gave me a bit of a dilemma. What was I going to do with Pugsy. He has a bag to ride in, but the bag is pretty full with [View Full Entry]

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Today we went to the Curonian Spit. This involved us having to get up relatively early to make sure that we had breakfast and were at the ferry terminal in time for the 9am ferry. The hotel that we were staying at actually delivers breakfast to your room in a little wicker basket, so we had all asked for our breakfasts to be delivered at 8am to make sure that we had lots of time to eat and get ready to meet our tour guide at 8:45am. Unfortunately the breakfasts still hadn't arrived at 8:30am. MK and I have a [View Full Entry]

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Today was a bit of a travel day. But the good news was that the travel day only started at 11:45 so we had most of the morning free. MK, Jen and I decided to head off to the Coffee House for breakfast, where I had the most delicious bowl of porridge. The only hitch in the plan was the fact that we had to walk past 3 of the stores to find one that was open. Apparently they all only open at 9am - not sure what all the office workers who want coffee before work do. After our delicious [View Full Entry]

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