24 July 2006: My morning waking was around 8:30, due to the “weird” woman owner, who wanted to see If I was still there or had gone away. I picked up my luggage and at 9:15 I was ready to depart from the guest house entrance. I paid for my room, thanked the owner and started my journey.
Heading for Vilnius, I passed outside Klaipeda. There I was confused once again from the road signs, resulting my delay for 30 minutes. Once I found the road back, I continued through Silute and from there for Jurbakas. The road upto there was provincial road and had nothing to offer me as a landscape. From Jurbakas up to Vilnius the scenery was dramatically changing. It was getting better and better. Road asphalt was in excellent condition, while the river was 50-100 meters right next to me. I could drive as fast as I wanted, since I was the ONLY one on that road and had high visibility. Unfortunately, I could manage to get only one shoot with my camera, since the memory was full.
Around 2 in the noon, I reached Vilnius. Not knowing where to go, I wandered a little bit to find myself outside Holiday Inn – not to ask for a room price of course – to send a message to the guys that I was there. After 20 minutes, Romanus came along with another guy, Martinas, which I already met from my previous time there. Martinas was already presuming that he would offer me hospitality and didn’t want to hear a word about that!! I was thinking that I would possibly bring some disorder, but as he told me, it was ok, so we finally agreed to go to sleep to Martinas that night.
After finishing the unload of the luggage at his house, Martinas had a job to do and left me and Romanus at his house. I did a quick shower and went out with Romanus to find an internet cafe, so I could finally unload my digital camera’s memory. At the internet cafe we sat for 15 minutes and paid … 1 lita, around 0,3 € ! After a while, Martinas came to join us. We all went to Romanus’ home to pickup his girlfriend and then we went to sit to a small but very nice cute restaurant/cafeteria, right next to one of the many lakes of the city to drink and eat something. Clock was showing 7pm and it was already time to go and meet the others. So, we started for the city’s center with our bikes. This time there were only a 10-12 motorcycles.
We all started for a cafeteria outside the capital. The cafeteria resembled a lot the one in Livadeia in Greece, built right over the waterfalls, but in larger scale and well designed and maintained. The lake was forming small waterfalls that they were connected with another lake. Right next to this sightseeing there was the cafeteria, full of people. Of course, once we arrived, the sightseeing was us, once again, and not the natural beauty, since all the people were staring at us while we were parking our bikes. What followed next is well-known: plenty of beer, clinking glasses, snacks etc. We sat there for about 2 hours, telling stories and jokes.
Leaving the cafeteria, I farewell all the guys since I wouldn’t see them again. Then Shakas, another guy from the crowd, insisted to go to stay at his house instead on sleeping over Martinas’ house, due to my… departure time the next day. I wanted to leave at 8am, meaning waking up at 7am, thing that Martinas was not very happy about, since he was also on leave. I totally respect when someone is on vacation, so I agreed to move to Shakas. We reached Shakas’ house and put our bikes on his parking, we took the car and moved my stuff from Martina’s house to Shakas’ car. En route, we saw the others guys. At 11pm I said goodbye and goodnight to everybody, I once again thanked them again and we started for Shakas’ house.
He told me that he bought his home 4 years ago, almost a wreck. Investing a lot of money, he renovated it, putting new floors, leather couches etc. He didn’t want to go to a new house (small block of flats) since he claimed that the new materials that they were using to build new houses were defective, thus giving plenty of troubles after the first year. Prices were also too high to buy a new one! After talking for an hour or something, I had to get to sleep. My next day’s journey would be big enough! I thanked them (him and his wife) and went under my quilts of the leather couch that was been transformed to a bed.