Lithuania/Latvia and Oerol

As promised four months ago, I would go travel to some places and tell you about it.

Well, here is the first part about my nine day travel to Lithuania and my week at the Oerol festival.

Having a broken elbow is the best place to get something broken in my opinion, after the operation there was no plaster and within a few weeks my mobility came back almost entirely. I was not allowed to put too much strength on it and I had to listen to the pain, so I figured that I should just make my backpack really light and travel really slow....

I found a cheap flight to Lithuania.

Lithuania, one and a half times as big as Holland with only 3.5 million inhabitants, is a quiet, simple, straigh forward country. The people are extremely helpfull but not very cheerfull. There is enough modernity, but still it all feels like you steped twenty years back in time. The vistas were a bit normal with sloping farmland, many lakes and lots of straight forrests. I had expected more ancient woods. The fisherman houses are cute, the churces had their own architecture and the dunes were not much different then the once we have in Holland.

I'm happy I traveled here to have the mistery of what those countries look like solved, but I would not recommend the trip as a highlight.

I landed in Kaunas, the capital, saw it's old downtown and moved on to Trakai which houses a stunning fairytale Island Castle of the rare Karaite people. Absolutely not to be missed when you are here, with a great display and beautiful lakes that surround it.

Pitching my tent at the lake shore, making my noodles, taking a dip and moving on with my thum to Vilnius the next morning.

A very pretty city where it was nice to stroll the cobbled streets and see the wild parks.

Siauliai was my next destination with it's Hill of Crosses. In war times the crosses were bulldozed by the Soviets, but each night people crept past soldiers and barbed wire to plant yet more, risking their lives or freedom to express their national and spiritual fervour.

After eating a tipical cepelinai in town I started to thum in the direction af the Baltic Sea. My last ride of the day would be from Renata (16) and her dad. She spoke very well english and her dad encouraged her to ask me to stay the night. They were underway to photograph the prettyness of the yellow oilflowerfields, something I wanted to do too.

At their house I met excited Giedre (sister, 12) and Irena (mum). Fresh baked bread, cheeses and tea with jam were put on the table and it was super fun to be overwhelmed with Giedre's enthusiasm. We slept at the attic and the next morning, after breakfast and seeing the whole vegetable garden (many houses have one), it was time to leave again.

Traditional clothing of Lithuania. Demonstrated at a music festival.

It was at the Curonian Spit, a very thin (500 meter) sliver of land stretching 100 km from Lithuania to Russia's Kaliningrad region in the South, that I lost my already made photo's.

I had slept in the dunes and walked in the direction of the Russian boarder when I saw a big lookout tower in the distance, ah, that would be it. I walked all the way up to it and about three camera's turned around and were put in my direction, I made a photo and friendly waved back. When I turned around I saw a military man mountain biking towards me along a looooong stretch of cut forrest, hence: The boarder. He was pretty short, spoke no english but knew the words 'photo' and 'delead'. Here we go, you may guess what happened, I had borrowed my dad's camera and was deleading something for the first time. Even my brother told me it's pretty weird with his camera. I deleaded everything instead of just one. Shiiiit. Being mad at myself beside this man who was out of breath from biking. I had to come along to the boarder patrol where I was told 'I was very lucky' because I did not get a fine and, after showing my passport, even a ride back into town.

Tipical fishing houses with woodstacks.

The forests at the Spit and through out the whole country were pine, boring, neat and straight. Not much else. Just like the paths.

The sand dunes are a world heritage site, but I thought them not to be much different then the ones we have in Holland, maybe a bit higher.

It was great to be able to pitch my tent just anywhere. Hiphip huray for a country with few people. At this spot a thunderstorm came over and drowned my tent in gushes of rain, flashes of light and the roaring of thunder, exciting!

All the most famous things seen I still had time left. I could hitch to Holland instead of taking the plane, but eh, I could hitch to Latvia too. So up North I went and this neighboring country got seen too. Not much different, the people maybe a little less friendly, a little bit different structures, the girls still dressed like hookers (really true).

Another spot where it was time to take a dip. Not for too long cause although the water was fine, agian there were A LOT of mosquitos. Everyone told me they had never seen so many.

It was a nice trip, very cheap with the hitching, camping and cooking noodles, nice to be out there once again on my own, but as I said, it's not really the hottest country to go to.

A week later my one and only festival of the year would start: Oerol.

It's a cultural theatre festival for all ages and has a great location at one of the islands of Holland, Terschelling. The whole island is dressed in little stages and scenes in the forests and the fields. Concerts at the beach and parties in the German bunkers.

I was lucky with Siebe, the boat he worked with was rented by a group who wanted to sail to the Island and have the boat as it's homebase. I was able to sail along and so I had a place to sleep as well. Still we would get some blankets some nights to sneak away in the forest.

One of the pieces: two woman made a fantasy table with lots of creativity and personages who were telling thier thoughts on the table through headphones. Every plate was different with a different telling.

Here another thing, boxes in the dunes with really good binoculars through which you could spot strange people far away while listening to eery music.

And of course time to make new friends and dance.

Siebe, one of his friends and Nanda.

Wright, part one of the summer happenings. I'll start with Sweden straight away.......