Hi from hot, sunny Vilnius. They’re having a heat wave in this part of Europe, so it’s been up well above 30 degrees every day. Not exactly what I had in mind when I envisioned escaping Montreal’s heat for cooler pastures. But I made it here in one piece, and aside from the heat, it’s pretty awesome so far.
I arrived at the airport after a less-than-pleasant flight sandwiched in a middle seat next to a mom with a lap baby who kept pulling up and down the window shade nonstop and kicking my lap. Oh well, it was only two hours. I’ve been to loads of airports but Vilnius’s is really unique — marble and stone, with a huge courtyard and chandelier, it looks like a charming old building, not an arrivals terminal. I was quickly able to get some cash from an ATM, get a SIM card for my phone (the equivalent or 1 euro got me the card plus 500 local minutes, 2000 SMS messages and 100mb data — take THAT, Bell/Rogers/Telus!) and find the local city bus to the train station. From there, it was only about a 5 minute walk to the hostel, though by the time I arrived, I was melting — and so were the M&Ms in my bag. Melts in your mouth, not in your hand? False advertising, that is!
The hostel here is great. It’s small — only about 12 beds — and feels more like a house than a hostel. The owner, Lina, greeted me when I arrived with offers of unlimited free coffee and tea, maps and advice for stuff to see and do. With hospitality like that, who cares if there’s only one shower, or if the attic dorm room is stiflingly hot? (Actually, everything in Vilnius is stiflingly hot; they’re not accustomed to this weather, so nobody has fans or AC.)
Anyway, I checked in, freshened up, and enlisted a New Zealander woman named Debra to be my partner-in-crime as I attempted to stay up to a reasonable hour to ward off jet lag. She was in the same boat, so we took off for a wander around Vilnius’s surprisingly charming Old Town.
So far, my first impressions of Vilnius are really, really positive. The old town is a small, compact walkable area, and I had really missed just walking aimlessly with no set destination — it’s one of my favourite activities. There are craft shops, vintage record stores, and even an arts district that declared ‘independence’ from Lithuania and wrote its own constitution. How very hipster. Oh, and speaking of hipster, most of Old Vilnius’s cobblestoned streets have bike paths, and the city has its own bikeshare scheme a la Bixi.
We meandered through the streets, saw red roofs and churches and interesting architecture, and even walked up to the top of a bell tower for a town lookout. Yeah, I was tired, but after sitting on airplanes all day, I really needed to stretch my legs, so we climbed up the steep spiral staircases for the view, and got the wits scared out of us when the bells went off.
After that, we went to a traditional Lithuanian food restaurant for cold beetroot soup and some microbrew. The food here will sound pretty familiar to anyone whose grandparents hail from Eastern Europe — potato pancakes, meat pies, fare that’s better suited to long winters than to hot summers. It was good, if a bit rich for the weather.
By then, it was the party-hard hour of 8pm and I’d been awake for, um… math’s failing me now but somewhere around 30 hours. I swayed more than walked to the hostel, and met some of my other dormmates, including a Canadian and an American who’d just come off an epic train journey all the way from Hong Kong, and a Swedish guy who’s just here on holiday. We all shared a couple of drinks of local Lithuanian wine supplied by Lina before I turned in for an early night.