Lithuania

I arrived to Vilnius about 45mins ahead of schedule, great, more time to explore the city on my first night. I had pretty good instructions to my hostel but the initial problem was which way to head from bus station, especially cause there we’re no street signs. Luckily my inner compass directed to me straight away towards right direction ( doesn’t happen too often.. ). Walkin past first few blocks I was stunned, where the hell have I come, it was just so damn ugly and the buildings we’re in awful state.. Finally, walkin after about 15mins and been stopping all the time to make sure I’m following instructions correctly I arrived to Town Hall and from there on it was easy and reassuring that this might not be that bad city after all, just the first impression. After few mishaps finally found the right door to my hostel - not the easiest one to find. Left my bag in the room and onto Old Town.

Dunno why but Vilnius nor Kaunas and the whole country just didn’t convince me, contrast between Latvia & Lithuania / Riga & Vilnius was surprisingly big.. Vilnius had quite a bit of nice buildings to photograph but that was just about it.. ..I really didn’t feel all that safe from time to time, althou I didn’t have any problems either but anyway.. If in Latvia & Riga they are at least tryin to keep everythin in decent shape sometimes I felt that in Lithuania they just don’t care. Few main streets in Old Town we’re nice but as soon as you jumped onto a side street the whole scenery changed. I’m not sayin that Riga didn’t have anything like that but not just in this scale as in Vilnius.. On my first night went for a dinner to have some local dish, those zeppelins we’re nice. Went to a wee store to get few beers and to hostel, eventually there was bunch of us drinkin and havin fun at the common room and we stayed in for the whole evening last ones of us goin to bed around 2am.

Next morning woke up reasonably early again, this time 8.30ish. Oh well, cup of tea and onto exploring Old Town better and take proper amount of photos. I did walk around the city maybe for about 2,5hrs but most of the time just wanted to go back to hostel asap.. ..I really wasn’t able to spend so much time in the streets of Vilnius than I spent in Riga.. Ended up watchin few tv-episodes from my laptop and started drinkin with the owner of hostel and three german girls and that was another night in Vilnius, again just indoors..

Dunno really what happened in Vilnius, like I mentioned, I never felt really completely safe and I just didn’t get ‘it’ from the city.. Maybe it was just wrong timing or maybe Vilnius and Lithuania just didn’t have that much to offer me, guess I need to try this one again sometime later but at least right now, I wouldn’t really recommend Lithuania.. On my last morning in Vilnius I got up only after 9am and actually stayed in hostel up till 10am when started walkin slowly towards railway station aiming for 11.15 train. Took few more photos and was way early in the station. I saw aussie couple from my hostel briefly and jumped onto train towards Kaunas. Not really much to see on the train journey and I arrived to Kaunas maybe about an hour later than I was planning at first. Not much lost in there, basically Kaunas is a long pedestrian street from Town Hall to one big church and that’s it.. I did manage to get quite a bit of photos anyway but I was really struggling, what the hell I’m gonna do here for the whole day, my flight leaves only at 8pm.. Walkin halfway back the pedestrian street went for a lunch in pizzeria and after that decided to check few other bigger streets around that main street if I could find something interesting from there, what a waste of time..

Pretty soon I made my way to bus stop and jumped to a bus headin towards airport. I arrived to airport at 4ish, check-in would begin at 6pm.. ..and flight depart at 8pm.. Guess I was lucky to chose my trip this way cause at one point I was considering to spend a whole week in Kaunas, no way.. It’s pretty useless regretting your choices but maybe I should have stayed in Riga for 3nites and just one in Vilnius, I really enjoyed Latvia, way more than Lithuania. I just had few coffees at the airport and spent most of my time writing this. Hopefully I could get some sleep at the plane althou it’s only 1,5hr flight. Since there ain’t any public transport from Tampere to Turku at the time I arrive there I’m crashing a night at my friends place. On sat morning takin either bus or train to Turku and preparing for my farewell party later on that day.

All in all, I’d say this was a good trip but honestly, I was really disappointed at Lithuania. Right now I wouldn’t really recommend it but yet again, everyone has their own preferences and yet again, maybe those 2nites in Riga was so awesome that Lithuania just couldn’t get even close, if I would have done this trip from Lithuania to Latvia my feelings could have been different. And yet again, since I was partying pretty hard in Riga reckon that was affecting me as well in Lithuania. Like I said earlier, maybe I need to try Lithuania some other time again and obviously, Latvia as well. Funny enough, I’ve never been in Estonia, reckon that’s too close.. It could be as well since my ‘big’ trip is closing fast I wasn’t really concentrating on Lithuania 100%, who knows, and really, who cares.. I’d still say, in general time and money well spent.