Vilnius

It snowed last night. Only an inch or so but berlin looks refreshingly different. Too bad I'm leaving. It was not that cold out though, 3° or so. That is, Celsius.

Celina was meant to leave around 8 this morning, but when I woke up at 10 she was fast asleep. Turns out she missed her morning train to Prague. I hope she made the 10:45, but she didn't leave much time for that either.

I packed up the last of my things, said my goodbyes to Ben and James, checked out and departed without any fanfare. It's bittersweet; I enjoyed Berlin so much, but I've been here long enough, and there's a constant shadow of the not-so-recent War still looming over us here. Reminders are everywhere.

Not that they wouldn't be in Vilnius, Minsk, Kiev or Odessa. I fully expect scars of the War to be very much present. But it's very different to be at the center of it all.

My third time arriving at Tegel Airport was no easier than the first two times. The bus ride was long, and terminal C never seems to have any flights at it. I was at D, and in a rare feat of anti-Mayer family behavior, I showed up before the checkin desk even opened!

So I waited impatiently until the checkin desk opened at 12:35, 2 hours shy of departure. I was one of the first in line, and when my turn came I warily put my bag on the scale.

In New York, Air Berlin told me that my bag was about 2kg overweight and it would cost me $140 to put it on the plane. I managed to fit the extra 2kg in shoes into my carry on instead, so there ended up being no problem. Air Baltic's limit is, based on German signs on the matter, approx. 25kg. Air Berlin's was 30kg, I think. And their hand baggage limit is 8kg. So, mathematically, I should have no way to not pay their exorbitant fees.

However, the surface area of their scale was exceedingly small, and my bag hung over onto the second section of conveyor belts, making my 32kg bag read only as 24.7. It was a short-lived victory, however, because I then had to bring the bag, which they deemed "oversized" (so what if it's taller than I am?!) from terminal D to terminal A to check it into the oversized luggage department. Good thing I checked in early. Either way, I breezed security and was at the gate with about an hour to spare.

The first leg of the journey took me to Riga on BT218. We landed at 5:30, but didn't disembark into the snowy wonderland that was the airport until 5:45 or so, and didn't get to the terminal via the busses until 5:55. And my plane to Vilnius was to leave at 6:00. When I looked up in the terminal and saw "Last Call" in red letters next to Gate B16, I started to run. But my lack of faith in the Riga airport was misguided.

My flight to Riga held about 84 passengers; small plane. The one to Vilnius held 48, and only 25 of us were on board today. And 8 of those were on my flight from Berlin. So there really wasn't anything to worry about. But being on the road, much like so much else in life, involves making snap decisions on imperfect information, and I had decided to run from an imagined threat to my travel plans.

We left shortly after boarding, and I had two seats to myself, so I spread out. On the Riga flight, I opened my eyes twice the entire flight; when they yelled at me to put my seat up, and when we jolted onto the runway upon landing. I tried to repeat the feat on the second flight, but to no avail.

I may have made my flight to Vilnius, but my backpack did not. When we arrived at the airport, only 15 minutes late and amidst copious falling snow, I discovered that of the five checked bags on our flight, none of them had made the transfer from the Berlin-Riga leg. So myself and my fellow transferers found ourselves in the baggage claim office. They were very kind, taking our information, permanent and local address and telephone numbers, and let us know that our luggage would hopefully be placed on the midnight flight to Vilnius tonight, arriving at 1am, then delivered to our respective hotels in the morning, after 9. They were professional and took bag descriptions and tag numbers, gave me a receipt and all kinds of contact info to reach them with, and then sent me on my way.

Assuming I get my bag in the morning, I feel like there is not much of a downside to all of this. Now I don't have to drag my own bag through downtown Vilnius alone at night, and all I sacrifice is my toothbrush and a clean shirt for a day, since everything of value or that I care about is in my carry on. But that's assuming I get my bag  tomorrow morning, as promised.

Jonas and I had agreed to meet at our hostel, a place Jonas had found and booked. I got some money at the ATM, 100 Litu (it's about 2.77 Litu to the $), and got a bus ticket on bus 1 into town for 2.50 Litu.

The directions on the hostel world website were adequate, but it was a little difficult to get my bearings to get started. The walk was about 1.2km through Vilnius, which is beautiful at night in the snow, if cold too (it's -4°C outside).

The hostel is located in a little hole in the wall that would be all but impossible to find if not for the directions. It's owned and operated the past two years by a Canadian named Pete who runs it like a co-op almost. There's a group kitchen, a hookah for the tenants, no locks on the doors (but one always locked at entrance to hostel and locks for the lockers), empty alcohol bottles all over the shelf, etc. It's also incredibly central.

I walked into the hostel and Jonas was hiding behind a door to surprise me. He had told Pete to make some sort of joke about "no Jews allowed" or something, but Pete, with the sensitivity of culture that only a Canadian has, instead waited for me to walk up the stairs and said, "your friend wants to know if you're circumcised." I liked him immediately.

Jonas and I snacked on some bread, cheese, and turkey he had gotten at the supermarket for 20 Litu, or $7.22. It was more than enough for both of us at the time.

A few hours later we found ourselves at a nice restaurant called Čili Kaimas, where we managed to eat a full main course and beer apiece for only 34.96 Litu ($12). I had the Cepelinai, or Zeppelin, a Lithuanian national dish, which basically consists of a creamy bacon-based sauce slathered on a potato that has been stuffed with either just pork or pork, beef, and veal. It was delicious, but I couldn't finish it, I was stuffed.

After the restaurant we went, around 11, towards Vilniaos Gatvė 33, to a place called Soul Box, where live jazz was playing until 2 (which turned out to be 1). We meandered quite a ways before finding it, taking photos in the snowy city at night, but find it we did.

The Soul Box is modern, trendy, and actually had a half-decent band playing. It was most enjoyable. We had a beer each and played some foosball against two guys, won, then played their girlfriends, won, and then played one guy and one girl and got miserably destroyed.

At 1 the music finished up and we left for the hostel. Upon arrival we met our third roommate, Michael.

Michael is from Norway, and is writing his masters thesis while traveling around. He's writing on Social Media, Facebook specifically, which was perfect because Jonas and I had gotten into a very intense debate about the moral and economic issues with movie and music piracy, something Michael knew a great deal about. He sided with Jonas, and I lost my morality argument against the two of them.

We were up until 4 arguing various grandiose items such as gender equality and affirmative action, but had to call it quits sometime.

4:30 = bed.