Out of the window and into the world: July 2015

Friday, July 31, 2015

Vilnius from the "top"

To get this view for you, I climbed a full distance if 136 meters. Hope you appreciate it :D

This is by the way the highest point if the trip so far, haha.

My lunch

Any guesses? :D

Hint: it's definitely not kosher.

I converted to Coffee

Today was a good day all in all. But what made it really special is a coffee shop just around the corner of my hostel: "Crooked Nose & Coffee Stories".

I stumbled upon it when carving for caffeine after a very heavy lunch (see next post), on the way to the Tolerance Center of the Vilna Gaon Jewish Museum.

After I had admired the awesome furniture, I chose my favorite smell from 5 different sorts of coffee - I knew right away that mine would be a lighter type from Columbia, something like "Avata".

Mr. Crooked Nose (whose nose is not crooked at all) then proceeded to explain the different brewing methods. I of course chose the one I had never seen before: the coffee is first brewed with hot water in some special apparatus, which is after a short moment turned around, and then the coffee is pressed into a vessel. I still don't completely understand how it worked but it's supposed to give the coffee a bit more intensity - I guess I'll just believe that :D

One way or the other, the coffee was purely awesome. I'm still not sure of it was the coffee itself or just the charming Mr. Crooked Nose with his black-and-grey beard and dark brown eyes (probably a mix of both), but I have never enjoyed a coffee that much before.

When paying I discovered a thing called "Cold Brew" on the menu, and learned that for this method, the coffee is "brewed" in cold water for about 14 hours, which makes it very strong on caffeine, but still mild in taste. It is then served in very small portions "on the rocks", like Whiskey for example.

Obviously I had to try that one, but first went to discover the city a bit more with some people from my hostel. Around 6pm I had what I thought to be a small snack, but in the end I waited around half an hour until I finally got it. Obviously I didn't finish because my beloved coffee place was supposed to close at 7pm. Just before I left it started raining as heavily as every evening, but I jogged all the way back to Mr. Crooked Nose to be there on time.

Turned out that they are very flexible with their closing time, so I had lots of time to enjoy my cold brew. One thing I can tell you for sure: Much better than Whiskey :D

Thursday, July 30, 2015

First impressions

Churches and crosses and churches and crosses. And rain.

Hitchhiking II

Started sticking up my thumb in Riga at 9:15am and arrived at the hostel in Vilnius at around 4:30pm - what the hell is wrong with you, Baltics?! :D

To be fair, I spent around 45 minutes in the outskirts of Vilnius because I had just missed the bus to the center, and then another 30 min running around house number 8, when the hostel was actually number 5, duh.

I almost found a new friend, but then he put on his toeshoes and left to a place where he can sleep in his tent. Oh well.

Then I thought I had found a cool event to attend tonight, with some Israelis playing the Didgeridoo, only to find out that said event is sponsored by the Israeli Embassy. Sorry guys, won't see a penny from me! :(

Storm time :o

City Jungle

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Stalin's Birthday Cake

I forgot where the name comes from but I think it's hilarious 😁

Monday, July 27, 2015

Hitchhiking I

As one can tell from my looks, my hitch-experience in Estonia wasn't too exciting. 7 hours for a little more than 300km is definitely not my best bet, but at least the weather was good, I almost took a swim in the sea (if there hadn't been a huge and fancy golf course being built all over the beach), and the road was EU-sponsored, yay!

Around 7 I finally arrived at my final destination, the "Chomsky" (named after Noam Chomsky!), where I met my lovely host Luis from Portugal :)