In Stockholm Part One

Cab rides and airport terminals. This time, my bags do not follow me like faithful dogs. I arrive in Stockholm with only the contents of my carry-on bag and what i am wearing. A bedraggled pair of pinstripe dress pants over lazy sandals...no underwear, and a t-shirt. I am carrying a tablet and a phone with no chargers for either (those i checked for some reason). I have a pair of sweat pants, a back-up t-shirt, and a pair of socks—no shoes.

I file a report on my missing luggage and give my address in the states as well as my address in Vilnius. It seems more like home now anyway.

Welcome to Stockholm, it's going to be a bumpy ride. 

I am stopped on the way out by a buxom blonde customs agent. Thank you Sweden.

I seem suspicious since i have no luggage. After i explain that my luggage has been delayed she asks me what i am doing in Stockholm. I begin to tell my entire story of the GROW program, Lithuania, and this trip. She stops me. "Enjoy your stay in Stockholm". I guess even in Sweden I'm still white.

Adopted in the airport + the Arlanda Express

There is an express train to take you from the airport into the city. I need to get on tis. There are automated kiosks selling tickets, but they won't take my credit cards. My cards only have a magnetic strip and these machines only read cards with chips.

I look lost standing in front of the machine with my useless card.

A friendly young woman comes up to me. "You know there is a discount ticket for two." "We could split the price and i can give you cash for my half". "My card won't work" i respond dumbly. "Oh well i'll just put it on mine". She runs her card. "I don't have any krona, my money is in dollars or plastic". "That's OK, consider it a welcome to Stockholm gift".

Things are looking up.

The Metro

My adoptive guide takes me onto the train. Sits with me the whole time telling me her life story, and how she once sat on this train with the guitar player of Bad Religion, go figure.

It was definitely not this empty

When we arrive in the city my new friend makes sure i find the right metro line, shows me how to buy a 24 hour pass, gives me a big hug, and is on her way. She paid for my train ride from the airport, kept me company in a strange new place, made sure i knew where i was going and how to get there, andi don't even remember her name.

Oh well. Now i'm in a subway station, and this is familiar. The red and green lines crossing on the subway maps, the shiny ceramic tiles of the floor, and the soft white lights warning you away from certain death at the hands of the third rail. It's like being a teenager back in D.C. again. I pu tin my headphones, press play, and away we go. To Bonnier corporate offices, Bert Menninga, and adventure?

Finding my hotel proves to be slightly more confusing than i thought, but only because i exit the subway facing the away from it and blissfully walk three blocks on the wrong direction bobbing my head like an idiot and just taking in Sweden through the nostrils.

Bert Menninga

My contact here is Bert. He writes for the corporate newsletter and runs something vaguely important sounding. He lived in Chicago for a while. His parents even lived in Boulder briefly, and we connect over the shared disdain for Boulder residents. He moved to Sweden for love and never regretted it. gotta respect that.

Bonnier AB offices + Fika break

The offices are a monument to scandinavian design, and a slightly moldering presence of wealth.

a discussion of politics
weird intern

Kate Goodin

Meet Kate Goodin 

Kate is from New York. She is doing her GROW rotation here in Stockholm. She is a quite young lady, very focused on her job and on making a good impression...on everyone. She offers to show me around the city tonight after work. She doesn't know what she is getting into.

A Google map of places to see in SoFo (Southern Folkungatan, or some such hipster rubbish)

On our walk around the office one of the girls there offers to show me a few places to check out. "Why don't we use google maps" I suggest, since i've got a tablet and this may the only time i get to use it without a charger to keep it going.

In hindsight, this is where things started to get weird.

She marks several places of interest in the area and i head out to get something to eat and wait for Kate to get off work.

Bar Nada

We ander the area known as SoFo and stop at each of the places marked on the map as we pass them. Some are closed, some are just record stores...but one draws us in. Bar Nada. It is a small cafe-like space in a block of brick buildings.   The front door stands wide open and a few small tables dot the sidewalk in front.

We stroll in the front door with the intention of having "just one beer", a beer i was told we would not have by Maria in Warsaw, but have one we would. Kate and I are greeting immediately upon entry, by an exuberant young man behind the counter. We are invited to a beer, and we agree.

To be continued...

In Warsaw

The two days of meetings...

What can i say? Atex is a British company, and the sales team here is straight out of a Family Guy parody of an English pooftah.

Meetings can be productive planning sessions, meetings can be great brainstorming colloquiums, meetings can even be enjoyable time-wasting events. This meeting was none of those things. This was the sales-pitch-black-hole-time-suck-acrimonious mother of all meetings. It was scheduled for two days, and it felt like a lifetime. If meetings were rock concerts this was that one where the rolling stones hired the hell's angels for security and everyone died. If meetings were football this was the Superbowl for the arena football league.

Every rule of a good meeting was broken. The presenters did not have their files ready and projector set up so the first three hours were spent looking for adapters and changing laptops for the right files (as if the files were chained inside each hard drive and never allowed to leave that computer). Everyone in attendance had a laptop out and was typing and doing other things throughout the meeting. People came and went and halfway through the first day it was revealed that most of the people there didn't need to be there until the second day.

I spent most of the time on my Xoom, dicking around, and would occasionally pop my head up to ask some inane technical question that was very unhelpful to the process. As Arunas said best, "let's say you go to buy a car and spend all your your time there, checking the engine, comparing gear ratios, and generally attempting to be an automotive engineer, even though you are, in fact, an accountant. The salesman comes out and you ask him, "what is the oxygen mixing mechanism, and how does the ignition work?" and he says, "are you an automotive engineer?", "no.", "then all you need to do, is sit in the car, and imagine driving it for the next 5 years. If you are comfortable with that, buy the car, if you are not, don't."" Words to live by.

All that being said the product was extremely comprehensive and really offered a lot of support and streamlining of the editorial process for both print and web with communication between the two. 

Near the end of the first day-long-meeting I am introduced to Maria, the GROW participant here in Warsaw. She works for marketing, and is dragged into the meeting room by her boss during one of our infrequent breaks.

Maria at a desk that isn't hers

Maria Urso

Maria works in New York normally, in marketing. We found a spot to chat in the office after the second meeting had finally wrapped up, and compared notes on our experiences in our respective locations. We came to the conclusion that we both felt like we had accomplished very little "work" compared to our usual productivity back in our home offices. However, this made perfect sense since a lot of our time was spent on the social "ambassador" activities of the program, and the staff we were added to was already full so we were, in effect, extra people. The projects I had worked on were supplemental to the daily production int he office, and likewise for maria who had launched a new title for Warsaw.

Drinking at the beach + Arunas has to catch a flight

Maria tells me that her and a few people from the office and around town will be going out to a bar after work for a few drinks, and invites me to come along. I am in. I also go and check on Arunas and Rolandas to see if they are already headed to the airport or not. Rolandas has gone off to meet with the head of the Warsaw stock exchange, but Arunas is still hanging around the office, killing time until his flight. He agrees to come with us.

There is still some time before everyone there gets out of work for the day so Arunas and I head out into the city to find a beer while we wait. After a few unsuccessful attempts we find a place that accepts credit card, we assume...because it has all major credit card logos on it's front door, and sit down for one beer.

After one beer each and an in-depth discussion of social mores in the Baltic region i try and pay with my credit card. The server glances at the bar where there are piles of card scanning machines and says, "no, we can't take credit cards". We are shocked. "Well I guess we will have to go to a cash machine. Whee is the closest one?" I respond. The server looks at the bartender. He grabs a card scanner and takes my card. I guess they did take credit card.

We head back to the office and find Maria and some friends standing outside waiting for us. We decide to walk to the bar called "the beach" that is not that far away and the walk takes us through a park.

We Start Drinking

I dive right in to whiskey but everyone else starts with beer. It is still very hard for me to get drunk at sea level so i am not really trying, just enjoying the conversation. The conversation begins to disintegrate as everyone loosens up. Arunas tells us of his time as the president of the "communist youth" during the soviet era, and his current disillusionment and political apathy.

Eventually the time comes and Arunas catches a cab to the airport, and I am with just the new people i have met today.

The Girl who Loves Snowboarding

I find myself deeply wrapped in  conversation with one of the Warsaw folks. She tells me that she tried snowboarding a few years ago and loved it. We have a discussion of snow and fun, and how she taught some snowboarding lessons there, but on hills that we would not consider worthy of sliding down.

Most importantly she can speak my musical language.

I cannot remember her name, so i will refer to her as "the obscure punk reference chick" or "OPR chick" for short. Like many of the people i have met in this region their image of the U.S. is painted by New York. But for this one, it was painted by the No Use For A Name song "Fairytale of New York". Good choice.

Maria Notices that the End is Near

I hadn't even begun to contemplate how close to the end of my time in Lithuania I was, but that night Maria seemed to be completely open to the knowledge that she would be leaving the people who had been her closest friends for almost 3 months. The tears begin to flow. She has two weeks left and every day is going to be like this for her. The fact that the end is near is still not real for me.

Waking up in Warsaw...again + Maria has a hangover 

The next morning i wake up early, for some reason, and get my grub on at the amazing continental breakfast buffet in the hotel. It is my first day alone here, and until Maria gets off work I have no direction.

So I eat breakfast from 9-11, it was delicious and i will not apologize for it.

What to do in Warsaw...when everyone else has a hangover + A sidewalk zoo + Sad bears

Nothing to do in Warsaw until your friend sobers up and can entertain you again? No problem. Just head on down to your friendly neighborhood depressing-excuse-for-a-zoo, zoo.

I wander the city and try and get lost. But with no success. 






Maria has Recovered + Seeing Old-Town


Maria met me and the beginning of the "royal route" where there are many palaces and historic buildings...however none of them are real since Warsaw was destroyed in WWII and the entire city was rebuilt to match its former self in the 1960's.

It is amazing non-the-less. 

At the end of it all, we say goodbye and she gets me a cab back to my hotel.

On the way to the cab we pass a parade of bicyclist, rollerbladers, and general merry-makers in costumes and on anything that rolls. Just like Boulder-Denver. The more things change the more they stay the same.

From Vilnius to Warsaw to Stockholm to Riga and back again

Ugnius asked me "did you want to travel while you are here?"...once again my answer is "hell yes!" It's like everything Ugnius touches turns into an amazing adventure.

The beginning of this trip is a two-day meeting in Warsaw with the other Bonnier brands in our region: one in Warsaw (Pols Bisnesu), one in Slovenia (an investor blog), and us. We are all pooling resources to purchase a CMS and CRM and basic magic bullet of a software and server system to replace anything we are using for print, web, marketing and advertising, as well as scheduling and record keeping. I remain skeptical that such a system exists in this set of dimensions.

The plans are made. I will accompany Rolandas and Arunas to Warsaw to sit in on, and possibly contribute to, the meetings and discussions about the CMS/CRM system being pitched by Atex. There I will meet Maria Urso, another GROW participant with Puls Biznesu, a similar business daily newspaper to Verslo žinios in Poland. After that I will fly to Stockholm where I will visit the parent company office (Bonnier AB) and meet Kathleen Goodin, a GROW participant working there on the GRID event. I will spend about 48 hours in Stockholm and leave there by "ferry" to the city of Riga in Latvia...the boat trip will take over-night and go through some Swedish and Finnish islands. Once in Riga I will check out the city for a few hours before boarding a bus back to Vilnius.

And the adventure begins...in the next post.

In Nida II - Bigger, Blacker, and Something-something

I'm going, going. Back. Back. To Nida, Nida.

My Plans are Made for Me

I don't usually get too involved in planning a trip, event, or my life in general, and this time was no different. Gaile and her friend Laura informed me and Linas that we were going to Nida for the weekend...2 weeks in advance, exactly long enough for me to forget completely about it and attempt to go with Vytas to Poland with his band. Fortunately Gaile is very good and keeping everyone in line and Vytas was informed that I had already "made" plans for this weekend.

It was only because of my failed attempt to double-book my weekend that I was reminded of the trip, and therefore packed a bag in advance, unlike the previous trip where all the packing was done in a semi-drunk blur.

We were picked up by Laura, who had the company car...and gas card, in a parking lot near our office...Linas and I brought our bags to work with us so we could leave as soon as the day was over. We all crammed into the almost roomy-enough toyota; Mer, Linas, Gaile, Laura, and her cousin, who lived in Nida and was coming with but just for the ride up.

Road trip games are even more fun when they are in a language you don't speak

About halfway there we all ran out of small talk and I ran out of questions about language and history, so...we did what all people do on medium to long car trips, we looked for inane games to pass the time. What we began to play resembled "20 questions" where one person thinks of a person, place, or thing, and the others try and guess it in 20  yes-or-no questions. However, in this version, there was no limit to the number of questions, the "yes-or-no" rule was really a loose guideline, and the word you could think of was any word (existential concept or anything)...in any language. Needless to say it was sufficiently engaging for the trip.

Awkward sleeping arrangements

Our place in Nida was a piece of a house that had been
segmented into several apartments. Ours included,
what had been, an outside patio but had been walled in
and now housed the couch and kitchen. Rad. 

We arrive in Nida just before sunset, drop off Laura's cousin at the hotel she "lives" in, and spend some time searching the complex of cottages and apartments that is Nida, for the place we are staying. After negotiation the cost (I believe that haggling is another Lithuanian national sport, just like basketball) we unload the car and survey the two beds in one room, and a pull out couch in another, arrangement. No one wants to be the first to say it, but someone is either getting the shaft here, or getting to know one of the others very well.

Gaile and Laura took the big bed, Linas set up camp by the couch and gave me the cot/bed for which I was very grateful but also felt vaguely guilty. A reasonable solution which, for some reason, completely failed to alleviate any of the tension obviously surrounding this (I was beginning to think my man Linas, although fantastic at knowing and picking up ladies, was a habitual NBC). Gaile cut the tension by turning on the TV, finding VH1, and cranking up the Beyonce. At which point she plopped on the bed and proclaimed that she was just going to watch trashy tv the entire time we were there.

How much can you drink when you don't have to pay for it right now?

Faxe. At the bar. 

We peel Gaile off the bed and we all walk over to our favorite bar in Nida, Faxe. As we get closer I can hear the sounds of live music, which is always easily distinguished from recorded music by the shitty-ness of the execution, coming from the bar.

Inside is a 4 piece bad, playing, what sounds like, early 90's alternative jams. But the bar is not crowded, and I sidle up the bar to order some whiskey. However, when I try and pay for my drink Laura stops me, we are all drinking on her cousin's tab tonight and we will settle up before we leave town...a dangerous situation.

1, 2, 3, Booze! We drink, we talk, and we listen to some unoffensive music—which is being performed by a group Gaile and Laura claim was big when they were teenagers, and they both say they had a crush on the singer. After five or six double whiskeys, Me and Linas are talked into switching to Trejos devynerios ("999") and apple juice, a delicious drink that the girls have been consuming like water all night. We leave without paying, as promised, and stumble back to the apartment, we don't know how much we have drank (it was a lot) or how much it cost, but we (and you) will find out soon enough.

I swam in the Baltic!

In Vino, in Nida

The next day was all about the beach, but first, we headed over to In Vino, in Nida, for some legendary breakfast...we were all a little worse for wear from the night before and the sun and slow service made us even grumpier. All was bright and cheery after we ate though...like magic.

Then it was off to the beach, with a quick stop for ice-cream on the way, and several moments spent admiring the in-depth series of pictograms and signs that get more and more intense as you get closer and closer to the water.

signs, signs, everywhere there's signs

There were signs for weather, features, gender, clothing options (all or none), bathrooms, lifegaurds, and many that i couldn't even begin to understand...but they were all entertaining. The various methods of representing gender (as you can vaguely see in the photo to the right) as best as possible on androgynous silhouettes that are only distinguished in form by the length of their arms, all fail when you remove the clothing from the icon.

We got to the beach early in the afternoon, walking past all the families and aging rich people, and claiming our own stretch of pale, sandy, beach. The last time i was here i did not get in the water since it was still very cold, this time i was going to swim, but the trauma of feeling how cold the water was last time was still weighing heavily on my mind. So i watched while old men and naked screaming babies easily swam out into the baltic and told myself "if they can do it so can i".

It was cold, but not too cold, and once i was in it was very nice. The strangest thing was how shallow the water stayed for as far as i could walk. It was no more that knee height for at least 60 yards, and after that never quite hip heigh, there were people standing in the baltic so far out that they were just dots to my eyes. It's not a sand bar, and it's not some isolated feature, the shores on this side of the baltic just take a really long time to submerge beneath the water. The slope is very slight and the land just continues, at an almost flat trajectory, under the water.

...and then it rained

The rain came and went several times that day, and we, along with all the other beach goers, would seek occasional refuge at our favorite beach-side bar (the one that Linas and I drank mimosas at). It was a good excuse to drink a little each time.

The sun came back, and we continued to wander the beach, sometimes sunbathing, other times just swimming. Eventually Linas and I began to collect the flat, round stones from the area and skip them out over the water. I hadn't done this since I was small, and it was awkward at first, until it came back to me. Then, as all men/boys will do, we started to see just how far we could throw a rock and if we could hit one of the bowies far out in the distance...we came close. I knew I was too old for this kind of behavior when my arm started to hurt from throwing...that isn't supposed to happen.

Aš visada noru valgyti + Over-eating is my speciality

After a long day of being a jack-ass at the beach, i was hungry. The one lithuanian phrase i have used more than any other is "Aš visada noru valgyti", roughly it means "I can always eat"...which i can.

We went to the second of the two restaurants in town and i ordered food intended for three people. I ate it, and some of the food the girls did not finish. It was an unwise decision, but i couldn't help myself, it was delicious.

That night we all got alcohol at the grocery store, along with snacks, and watched the movies i had downloaded onto my Xoom...it worked perfectly and would have been ideal for one or two people, four was a stretch.

Leaving town

We almost forgot to pay our bar tab on the way out of town, but we remembered just in time and Laura ran into Faxe to pay up.

How much can we drink? Over 300 litas worth, and the drinks were only 5-10 each.

Misheard song lyrics

The ride back contained fewer games, but the same number of people as Laura's cousin was also getting a ride this direction. The lack of road games made space for the music ont he radio, and it was fantastic to hear the various english words Laura's cousin believed were in some of the songs (mostly hair metal hits form the 80's...good stuff).

Cookies-cockies

We stopped for a coffee and cake snack, where i was introduced to the concept of "cookies-cockies" it is a brand of sugar cookies with a rooster on the wrapper, great for making delicious Lithuanian coffee cakes, and for making Americans choke on their latte when they hear it.

In Trakai + A Real Life Renaissance Festival

Trakai is the historic capital of Lithuania, it contains many medieval structures, including: the lake castle, a treasure vault, and a bunch of dorks in tights.

A brief history of Trakai...no I'm not actually going to go into feudalism and shit here, go read it yourself.

If you held a Renaissance festival in a real castle, year round, and took it very seriously, you would have Trakai. Pure. Awesomeness.

I went with Linas and Remas, and yes they are exactly as much fun to hang out with as it is to say their names together.

We spent the majority of our day wandering through the castle and it's various museum-like rooms of armor, treasure, and creepfully knowledgable tour guides. (Yes I know that is not a real word, but it should be.)

Remas and Linas were both very familiar with the place and knew where to go and what to see. I, however  was like a kid in a medieval armor-and-treasure-candy-shop.

They put up with my enthusiasm with the patience of mountain goats (I don't know if mountain goats are actually patient, but it seemed like a good time for a folksy descriptor here).

And now...a photographic interlude.

Lithuanian Chads do not mix well with boating

Which way to the gift-shop? 

Kind-of reminds me of the painting of Vigo in Ghostbusters II

Shiny

Not creepy. At. All. 

And then...

I found the tattoo I had been looking for

I Thought that this trip would give me some inspiration for the tattoo I wanted to get to commemorate my trip and whatnot (I say whatnot with the highest regard for all the whatnot that took place here) and I was right.  The Vytis is the historic and iconic protector of Lithuania, he is the coat of arms for the country as a whole. The name means "chaser" he was not a conqueror but a defender, and would chase the enemies of Lithuania to the borders...and no farther.

Just a few smoking accessories

 We did wander over to the jousting grounds and the historic re-enactments were a sight to behold. Men in tights are the coolest, no?

In closing I would just like to say thank you to the Tartars for their strict religious beliefs and delicious food. For without you Trakai would have been just another castle.

In Nida

I apologize in advance for the utter lack of pictures for this escapade. I was busy living the events and forgot to document them at all.

A Party in the Woods

Linas sent me an invitation to a party: WILD WOODS FIESTA II: DIVING INTO GREEN

"Praeitą pavasarį 150 žmonių savo apsilankymu mums pasakė “like”. Muzika, atrakcijos ir laužai kiekvienam dalyviui padarė tokį įspūdį, kad WWF I buvo aptarinėjama daug mėnesių. Šiemet legendomis apipinta Svajonių vila atgimsta, kad savo ištikimiems gerbėjams ir vylingų istorijų prisiklausiusiems padovanotų nepamirštamą naktį. "—an excerpt from the invite...use google translate on this and enjoy the hilarity.

Friday night. We catch a cab to the outskirts of town, it's an affluent neighborhood, some guys that all rent a house together are throwing the party on their property. The house is set back in the woods and other than the house there is no sign of civilization around you.

When we arrive the last band is finishing up. They are a 5 piece horn section with a drummer and if Ska had a baby with a marching band, and that baby was a fan of reggae and dance hall, this would be that baby.

After the bands are done the DJs emerge from whatever dark holes they hide in while music is being made. Que the techno-pop. 

The night is a blur of people, crowds dancing, and lots of bottles of various alcoholic beverages being passed around. We meet a group of three guys who have set up camp there, they are traveling across Europe together, they started in Finland. One is from Finland, one is from Germany, and the other from Bosnia. We all speak in English. Our group of misfits looking for trouble consists of myself, the three travelers, Linas, and 2 girls that Linas knows.

We wander through the night and the house watching the revelers enjoy the party and meeting the inhabitants of the house, who are welcoming like the good hippies they are.  Peace and love and you tube videos projected on the walls for all. The upstairs balcony has a great view of the party; the dj spinning on the stage below, the dancers under the tap in front of him, and the camp-fires of the visitors twinkling int he woods.

The party rages on and as the sun is slowly rising we find ourselves around a still smoldering camp-fire, eating the remains of fire-bakes potatoes right out of the tin foil, with the homemade butter of one of our companions for a condiment. Delicious.

The sun is up and it is starting to rain.

No Sleep Til Nida

5am, Saturday morning. Me and Linas catch a cab back to the city, throw some money at the driver, and dash off to our houses. I tear my room apart, tossing clothes and electronics alike around the room, and stuff whatever I can think of into a backpack. There is no way we are making the 5:50 bus.

I run to meet Linas outside of his place, and together we set off through the pouring rain to the bus station. My legs are burning from lack of sleep and the fast walking pace but we are making good time, but not good enough to be there by 5:50, we know there is a 6:00 bus as well so we decide to stop at the McDonald's outside the bus station to eat since we have been drinking all night with only a portion of a burnt potato for food.


The bus schedule is inaccurate to say the least, and we kill an hour waiting for the bus to Kaunas, which is our first stop on the way to Nida.

The bus ride is hot and cramped, but I am so exhausted that I fall asleep with no problems and only wake up as we are pulling into a rest stop with an urgent need to relieve myself...perfect timing (puikus). 

The Sea-port of Kaunas

Waking up in Kaunas

Another round of fevered sleep and we are in Kaunas. We peel ourselves off the seats and stumble out into the harsh light of midday.

Linas, who always seems to have a grip on what is going on, strides confidently up to the ticket booth to get us on the next bus going to Nida. There is no one at the booth. There is no bus to Nida in the near future listed in the book outside the booth. I follow Linas out to the bus terminals and we scan the departure schedules posted out there, since we have learned that the bus schedule that is published may, or may not, have any bearing on reality. But this time it is true, there will be no bus to Nida for us.

Never fear, Linas has a plan. We will catch a taxi to the ferry and get a bus on the other side of the bay...the bus we would have taken from the station would have had to take the ferry and change on the other side anyway. Awesome. We grab a taxi, and arrive at the ferry just in time to get on.

Kaunas reminds me of Alaska, commercial sea port, cold water, no-nonsense people.

We get off the other side and just as we are about to get in a depressingly long line for the bus, we hear a taxi/van driver shouting that he has two more spaces. We take them. We end up sitting intimately close to one another in the front with the driver in about 1and 1/2 seats. still it is faster and less stifling than the bus would have been.

  

In Nida 

If Malibu had a history dating back to the 1400's it would be Nida.

We arrive a little after 1pm.  Linas heads straight for the place he had scouted out in advance for rooms. There aren't really hotels in Nida, just peoples houses with extra rooms. They all want to make as much money during the summer/beach season to compensate for the rest of the year when no one wants to stay in their house. So...the cost and the quality have a large gap.

The Houses of Nida

Sand Dunes Above Nida

The place we get is one room with two "beds" one is a cot-like structure and the other is a fold out couch. We don't really care, we toss our stuff down and hit the town.

First order of business is food, as it always is for me. We eat some over-priced but good food at one of the two restaurants in view, I purchase some sunglasses because in my rush i forgot one of the most important items to pack for the beach...among so many other things, I'm just glad I'm wearing pants at this point.

After food we hike up to the sand dunes that tower over Nida. There is a steep wooden staircase up the cliffs to the dunes, and the dunes themselves boarder on brush-land that had wooden walkways spider-webbed throughout. 

From the sand dunes we can see into Kaliningrad which is a sliver of coastline next to Lithuania that still belongs to Russia.


Mimosas on the beach

We head away from the lagoon that is the heart of Nida and over to the sandy Baltic-sea beach. This is my first time seeing the baltic sea. Walking down the sand we discover no amber treasures, but we do stumble across a beach volleyball tournament and a radio station booth blasting smooth jams. Just up the beach head and on top of a bluff is a lifeguard station, and a bar. Well i say bar. It was half bar, half liquor store.

It is at this point that I discover that Linas does not know what a mimosa is. So we top off our overtly homo-erotic romantic afternoon with mimosas on the beach. We buy an entire bottle of champagne and some orange juice and mix it ourselves in small plastic cups. We sit on the wooden deck overlooking the beach (and the volley-ball tournament) that is attached to the lifeguard tower and bar-thingy.

It is an entire bottle of champagne later and we are feeling more than a little fruity. It's time for more food.

In Vino In Nida

That night we head to In Vino, which is supposed to be a good place for an evening if you are not a 16-year-old-girl, but are also not a 60-year-old-man. It is.

The Characters

The first character of the night (for me) was Solus, he introduced himself by saying "You're American? I hate Americans"and promptly launched into a tirade about Obama (with the use of many colorful slurs that my white guilt will not allow me to repeat here), and our bloody war history. It was an interesting dichotomy of amusingly racists, and the accusation of war-mongering that usually comes from those far-left enough to be embarrassed by the use of racist terms. He did end the rant (</rant>) with the admission that he wasn't blaming me for all of the things wrong with my country. He was neat.

The girls in this group were what I would refer to as "party girls" although that might just be because they were all on vacation. However, the age difference between the men (Solus was the young one at 43) and the women was striking. My favorite (read most disturbing to me) pair was the 55something man and his overly-exuberant girlfriend who had come back from Italy where she had been living for the past few years for this trip, and seemed to have brought along with here an all-encompasing European arrogance...but she might have always been like that. At one point she remarked to someone, who was asking me if I like Nida so far, that "of course he likes it he is from Denver (note for the reader Denver-metro area pop = 3,110,436) that's the middle of nowhere and this is Nida!"  (Nida pop = 2,000, Lithuania pop = 3,339,550). I was confused because I thought, as an American, I was supposed to be the ignorant and arrogant person in the room, but she total won that contest.

We hung out until the place closed and then got dragged over to an after hours bar called "Faxe", it was dingy, small, cheap, and i felt completely at home. While the party girls danced with Linas I found some people more interesting to me (not that the others were not interesting, the shine had just begun to fade a bit at this point) out on the porch. It was a group of young-adults with low incomes and low self-esteem...so much so that one of the girls was letting her boyfriend try his hand at landing one of the party girls with Linas, downgrade if you ask me. They introduced themselves as cousins in case anyone was wondering if they were together, no one was listening except me, and i was not fooled for a second. I did pretend to be surprised when the girl, a little later, leaned into me and whispered that he wasn't really her cousin...blah, blah, blah.

It was from that group of people, however,  that i got the invite to go to a late-night club/bar in Vilnius called "play club" because of the big green "play" symbol over the door. I would have to investigate...but that is another story. It turns out everyone in Lithuania if living in Vilnius, but is actually from somewhere else. Everywhere we go we see the same people.

Boating With the Boss

We wake up Sunday, decide not to go meet our friends from last night for breakfast (in the cold light of day they are not as interesting in our memories as we seemed to think they were last night), and head down to the pier to have a boat ride. It is a warm enough day, and the mini-yacht, driven by the Verslo žinios owner Rolandas Barysas (part owner now that bonnier bought some of the company), offers us a new view of Nida. Puikus.

Rolandas regales us with tales of wild parties in Nida during his youth, and even wilder parties out on the water during the regattas during his middle age.  We eat some cured meats, and drink some beer before turning back to shore. We also sail as close as possible to the Russian border without being shot or arrested by men in black with night vision and speed boats...Rolandas enjoys very much telling us in detail what could happen if we crossed the imaginary line in the water. There is a Russian border here because after the breakup of the Soviet Union Russia held onto a lonely strip of coast here. The area is called "Kaliningrad" (Russian: Калинингра́д ).

Going "Home"

I pass out from lack of sleep again, which seems to be the best way to ride the bus. This time I wake up about halfway through to find that the seat next to me which was empty when i fell asleep is now occupied by a teenage girl who is engaged in very animated conversation with the teenage boy in the seat behind us. I don't understand their conversation but i don't need to speak the language to catch the familiar cadence of teenagers gossiping. Linas later confirms this when he tells me they kept him awake the whole time with their conversation about the guy's (perhaps) cheating girlfriend. Chicks, man.