Blogs from Vilnius, Lithuania, Europe - page 10

Well, considering I hadn’t slept in almost 48 hours, no real surprise that I when I woke up it 10:30am. Then I rolled over and it was 12:30pm. One more roll, and 1:30pm. Crap. I basically threw clothes on and left the hostel haha - way to sleep half the day away. I started with a walk down towards the Museum of Genocide Victims, about 20min away. The walk was nice - some nice churches along the way, and of course, great graffiti. The museum was very well put together - it’s actually housed in the old Gestapo headquarters, which then became the KGB headquarters and prison. The main floor talked about the lead-up to WW2, while the second floor was mostly the Soviet aftermath (deportations, occupation, the partisan war, etc.) They also had a wing ... read more

On the flight over to Vilnius, I got chatting to the pretty, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Lithuanian girl sitting next to me. My subtle flirting with her was in vain unfortunately as her command of English meant she never really grasped the subtleties behind the words I was saying. Either that, or I'm just a really crap flirt. My attempt was not in vain however - during our conversation about what I was getting up to in Vilnius, she recommended catching a train to see a fantastical island castle on a lake I had never heard of just outside of Vilnius. It was apparently the most beautiful castle in Lithuania and much more impressive than the Gediminas Castle we were planning to see in Vilnius. When the plane landed in Vilnius, the most curious event took place when ... read more

Since we arrived back from India it has been head down ass up in our books trying to catch up with studies. We have had a fair amount of people coming and going from us over the past two months and at one stage we had four extra people in our flat, cramped but great fun! Diana’s family were over to visit for a week whilst the largest market in Lithuania was on. So that week was pretty was very busy doing things, eating and drinking way to much but that cannot seem to be stopped when visiting the locals here. We went for a day trip to visit some family friends and at 2pm on a Tuesday out come a bottle of whiskey and within one hour it was gone (also a bottle of champagne). ... read more

So it has been over two months now living here in Vilnius and time to write what we have been up to for this time. Firstly we are already into our second apartment, the first place we were staying was with an Lithuanian guy who had a contract until May or something which was perfect but he had lost his job a few weeks back along with now 16% of the nation, exactly one year ago it was at 4% unemployment, hard times here at the moment. But anyway we had no worries about finding a new place and this time we are living by ourselves only a couple minute walk from Diana’s uni so it is perfect. We have had our one year anniversary on the 28th October, out for dinner and a fun day ... read more

Hi Everybody! I am going to get Walt to write a summary of his visit to Chernobyl later. This is a very old computer. I am having to hit most keys more than once. I apologize in advance for errors. I do not always have time to proofread my entries. I know the when to use "there and their." I cannot tell you why I sometimes type the wrong letters. I have had to go back repeatedly on this blog and reinsert apostrophes and ts. They keep disappearing. Our train trip from Warsaw to Vilnius was uneventful. The scenery was pretty for much of the way with the snow covered fields. Most of the land was flat and farmland until we reached Lithuania. Then, we approached rolling hills like we have in Alabama. Traveling by train ... read more