Hitchhiking IIII

Thanks to hitchwiki I found out that there's a free bus promoted by Lithuania's probably biggest and definitely cheapest supermarket "Maxima" into the outskirts of Vilnius. Off I went and arrived there around 9:15am, and after I had grabbed some leftover cardboard in the monstrous hypermarket and climbed over some cut-through fence, the show was on again.

On my first day with really nice weather actually nothing could go wrong, so after a mere 10 minutes, mother and daughter on their way to vacation in Klaipeda offered me a ride. They dropped me off in Kaunas, where I had a small walk until the next gas station, where Igor approached me after I had asked some other people where they were going, and offered to take me until Marijampolé. That wasn't exactly the road I wanted to take but still the right direction, and I was of course thrilled that everything seemed to be going so well. 

But thennnnn I made a major mistake: without double-checking, I let Igor choose a "good place" for me - which ended up to be in the middle of nowhere, with really bad circumstances for cars to stop. So there I stood, for an hour, in the sun.

Then I asked my clever offline map for the hundred-and-eleventh time, which still didn't have anything really satisfying to offer. Anyway I started walking towards the direction I came from, hoping to find some civilization. 

After a few minutes, a car stopped on the other roadstrip - Igor, who had returned from his appointment. Very surprised that his spot had not been so good at all, he offered to take me to a nearby gas station - wish he had had this idea at the beginning, haha. On the way we picked up a girl from Argentina, who wanted to go to Warsaw (my direction), but was on the wrong side of the road. We also picked up two Austrians, who wanted to go to Kaunas, where Igor was going - lucky them.

Said gas station was kind of abandoned, so Paula, the Argentinian, and I tried with a bus stop closer to the road. In spite of lots of waves we got nothing but almost another hour of waiting in the sun. 

Finally two elderly men from Estonia stopped and took me almost directly in front of my pension in Augustów and Paula onwards to Warsaw. Thanks to the change of time I actually arrived around 2pm, just in time for check-in. Yay :)

PS: This is what traveling actually looks like most of the time.

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

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! :(