Doomsday

It all began with an intense talk the night before about the role of religion and faith in humanity and in the world. It was heated. It was engaging. It apparently doomed us.



The next morning started off fine. We left almost on time, we reached our first destination - the Hill of Crosses - in good time and the clouds even seemed to “part” while we were there. After a delectable picnic lunch we headed west for the coast. Just seconds into the drive it started POURING rain. Visibility slipped to about ten feet. Fortunately I wasn’t driving, which meant nap time in the back seat while Matt and Nigel dealt with the bad weather and insane Lithuanian drivers.



We pit-stopped for gas and a bathroom break somewhere between Creepy-ville and Spooky-town. Save for a few truck drivers, a squatter toilet and the lovely man drinking vodka and smoking a cigarette behind the counter it was just like every other gas station I have ever been to.



Westward-ho and we arrive at the ferry terminal just as the other cars are exiting. “Perfect timing!” I scream. “We’ll be just in time to see the sunset from the island!” Wrong. Forty minutes later it’s our turn to board. Now, having had very little stick-shift experience Matt and I were both a bit weary about hurtling the car up a wet metal ramp set at a 30-degree angle in drizzling rain with cars in front of us and behind us. Things just got worse from here. We stalled the care NINE TIMES before Chris - a manual transmission pro - slid into the driver’s seat and zipped us right up and on.



Across we went on our 4-minute ferry ride (seriously) followed by a mad dash to the coastline where we took in one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen before heading directly south to our evening destination of Nida - a beachside resort town. Just miles from arrival a deer appears out of nowhere and BOOM, just like that his body hurtles into the car in front of us. Fortunately we were traveling at a safe distance but it still shook us up. Nigel got out to assess the situation. The deer had miraculously hopped into the forest and the front of the guy’s car was completely damage free.



Now with that on our minds we arrived to town to find EVERYTHING (save for the grocery store) dark and closed. I checked my watch, It was 7:30pm. After stopping at every hotel on the tourist info center’s list we resigned ourselves to the possibility that we just might have to sleep in the car. Fortunately, the wonderful waitress at the only restaurant that was open directed us to an apparently super secret hotel nestled back behind the street and surrounded by forest. We checked in as THE ONLY GUESTS IN THE ENTIRE 100-room hotel and after running through every possible bad hotel pun (“you check in...but you don’t check out!”) we went for dinner at the same and only restaurant in town before calling it a night.



What. A. Day.

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Kyle Taylor

LIthuanian Lovin’ in Vacant Vilnius

Nearly right at the center of our trip, Lianne her brother Nigel and his fiance Chris joined us in Lithuania for several days of non-stop fun and excitement (minus the fun and excitement). Just kidding!

We rented a car so as to cover as much ground as possible despite their traditionally British intuition of thinking a 20-mile car journey is some great distance. After pick-up at the Ryan Air airport located in the middle of nowhere we headed back to Vilnius via the spectacular Trakai Castle which is set amidst a collection of islands in the middle of the lake.

For whatever reason, this nation’s gorgeous capital - Vilnius - was oddly deserted over our stay. By deserted I mean there were no people anywhere at all. Anywhere. At all. Anywhere. I have been in remote African villages with more happening on the streets. Fortunately, it made it feel like the city was our own - a comfortable sensation for Imperialist Britons who view the entire world as their plaything (just kidding!).









A big night out and a lovely day wandering the Old Town set us up nicely for a day of adventure on the road. Our first stop was the Hill of Crosses, where - as the name so obviously suggests - a hill is in fact covered with more than 200,000 crosses. It was completely surreal and unlike anything I have ever seen. We even contributed to the collection with our own cross that was both names and dated (that’s a shout out to my date-loving father).



From there it was directly west to the Curonian Spit, where a small island less than a mile wide runs along the coast of Lithuania and into Russian’s mini me - Kaliningrad. We arrived just in time for sunset then cruised down the enchanting land of forests and dunes to Nida at the southernmost point of the Lithuanian side. A near empty town meant we were had the pick of the litter for lodging, food and fun (read: we were the only people in the hotel).





Day four found us trekking on mile after endless mile of sand dunes (yes, sand dunes in Lithuania! Amazing!) and through mile after endless mile of magnificent pine forests before heading back to the Ryan Air airport located in the middle of nowhere. It was an excellent visit that came at just the right moment! A few other highlights:



Photo Shoots - We did lots of them, most of which included people jumping in the air. What really changed was the location. First a town square, second a beach and third a mysterious sand dune.

Nigel’s Positivity - While he wasn’t the happiest camper when it came to long journeys, every city and site was followed with a comment like “this city has charmed me. I love it.” or “this place is just beautiful. Lets stay here all day tomorrow.” It was much appreciated.

Picnic Lunches - It’s the only way to eat on the road. A quick stop at the grocery store and - for about $2 a person - we had a feast of deli meats, cheeses, chips (crisps), fruit, juice and delicious deserts. If this isn’t perfection I don’t know what is.

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Kyle Taylor

Overnight Buses Are Awesome. Or Not.

It seems like such a brilliant idea at the time. An overnight bus means you don’t have to spend quality daylight hours traveling from one city to the next. An overnight bus means you don’t have to spend quality dollars and cents on lodging. An overnight bus means you’ll arrive to your destination incredibly groggy, irritable and a little bit smelly. Fortunately, you usually forget about all the bad things before booking the next overnight bus so it’s easy to convince yourself time and time again that they’re a stellar idea.

It starts the same. Arrival at the station around 9pm having just eaten dinner saying things like “I’m nice and full and just so tired. I’ll be asleep before we even pull away. Yeah, that’s it. I’ll be asleep before we even pull away.” You stow your bags below, hop aboard and cram yourself into the microscopic seat with your hand luggage between your legs. You then convince yourself that the hand luggage will make “the perfect legrest.” Absurd.

The excitement of the last ten minutes means your energy levels are a bit high. That and it’s a million degrees on the bus so you’re sweating buckets and shedding layers like nobody’s business. The bus backs out and you pull out a book thinking, “I’ll just read for a few minutes and then “poof,” asleep I’ll be. An hour later the lady behind you is kicking the back of your seat the guy in front has reclined far enough for you to notice his recently balding head and the driver has decided the bus would really benefit from a Lady Gaga dance party.

Maintaing your commitment to saving money, feeling rested and making the most of this “investment,” you pop in some ear plugs, inflate your neck pillow, pull down your sleeping mask, recline your seat and “sleep.” The remainder of the journey is spent “asleep” fighting off near constant numbness in the buttocks region.

There are several ways to fend off such sensations. The first in the left-cheek right-cheek cha-cha. This is when you shift your weight from left cheek to right cheek every fifteen to twenty minutes or whenever you’re woken up because you can’t feel one entire side of your body. The second is the “crouching tiger hidden butt numbness.” This maneuver requires the performer to prop their knees up on the seat in front of them and then slide so far down in the seat that their butt is no longer making contact with the seat. This position is shockingly comfortable for the first thirty minutes or so then everything from the waste down goes completely numb. As a result of the numbness it is near impossible to move your legs back to a normal seating position and you become a sort-of flailing turtle rolling back and forth to loosen your knees. Unfortunately, the more you move the further down you slide. The final position is called the “normal guy just sleepin’ sittin’ up.” This is when you pretend that you can in fact sleep in a normal sitting position which is, in fact, impossible. Feet flat on the floor, shoulder back and head upright you doze off only to find that your head begins to bobble back and forth, left and right, up and down as you doze in and out of sleep. In this position, while your body parts do not go numb you appear to be one of those bottom-weighted dolls that pop back up when they’re flicked, punched or jostled. This position leads to no sleep and a serious neck problem.

Save for one unexplained 3am interruption for passport control or something equally bizarre when you aren’t traveling over international borders, you arrive on time at an ungodly hour that is too early to check in to your hotel, leaving you tired, disoriented, smelly and forced to wander around a city in half-darkness saying things like, “please god, just let me take a nap. I’ll do anything for a nap. Anything.” Around noon that nap comes. With it goes the entire rest of the day and your entire original plan of saving time and money on a night bus. Next time, just take the train.

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Kyle Taylor

The Baltics. Or, Europe’s Fun Times Battlefield

Having lived in Belgium I became acutely aware of the feeling that your land - your country - is being constantly rail-roaded by larger, more militarily powerful oppressive states. Belgium was really the western front line for both World War I and World War II. It was the site of the Battle of the Bulge. Miles and miles of trenches still stretch across the middle. After Arlington National Cemetery, more Americans are buried in Belgium than any other place in the world. Now look east to the Baltics.

The entire region’s population hovers around 7 million people. That’s 1.2 million Estonians, 2.4 million Latvians and 3.6 million Lithuanians. Historically they’ve “belonged” to Poland, Sweden, Finland and so on. Then, in 1939, Stalin and Hitler (two top guys, really) signed a secret pact that divided up “the world” so each got their fare share. The Soviet Union thus “got” the Baltics and subsequently invaded to take what was theres. Okay...

Then Hitler, being a man of his word, invades the Soviet Union, invades the Baltics and claims them as part of Greater Germany. The people greeted the Germans as liberators after nearly two years of Soviet oppression. A premature reaction, unfortunately. The Nazis set out to do what they had been doing everywhere else - killing Jews and anyone else that stood in their way. In just five years they killed 200,000 Jews just in Lithuania, leaving only 500 when all was said and done.



When Hitler began his westward retreat he did another really nice thing - burned, pillaged and destroyed most everything in the three countries. Then, at Yalta, The USA, Britain and Soviet Union carved up Europe into “spheres o influence” and essentially gave Stalin the go-ahead to carry on oppressing people in their “sphere” which included the Baltics. Thus begins 55 years of social “re-education,” Sovietization and terror.

A favorite activity of Stalin’s was to relocate people. Why? To kill off native races in an effort to Sovietize the people. Basically, it was a culture genocide. He would have them shipped in the thousands all over Siberia to work in forced labour camps or simply resettle with nothing in the middle of nowhere. More than a million people were taken from their homes with just minutes notice and shipped away from their friends, their family and their homeland.

When freedom finally came in the late 1980s and early 1990s it was naturally greeted with overwhelming excitement. For some it was the first time in their lifetime that they had known independence, freedom and choice. The more I see of this part of the World the more I question who, exactly, won World War II. Yes, we secured freedom and democracy for Western Europe by ending the reign of terror brought on by Hitler’s Nazi Germany but when all was said and done we handed over more than 100 million people to another oppressive regime whose reign of terror - led by Stalin - lasted nearly sixty years and brought an end to more lives than even Hitler could muster. How is that victory? I don’t doubt the courage and ability of those who fought for the allied forces; I only wish we had been able to secure the freedom of all people in Europe. It seems that some lives have more value than others. Maybe that is what I find most upsetting because in the end every great power rises and falls. At some point in history we’re all the little guy trying to make it. I only hope someone won’t forget me when I’m the little guy.

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Kyle Taylor

SART (Seasonal Affectiveness Road Trip) Disorder

It’s one of thoses new-age illnesses that just creeps up without warning. It hits hard, but you don’t know you have it until after it has happened. IT’s SART, or Seasonal Affectiveness Road Trip Disorder. Symptoms include dreariness, expectation of gray skies, endless contrast-less pictures as a result of no sunshine, a consistent stream of churches and other monuments that look the same in what appears to be 5pm ALL THE TIME and general sarcastic cynicism. The only remedy is blue skies, sunshine and several continuous hours without rain.



You only know you’ve suffered from SART once the sun comes out and your happiness levels skyrocket. You find yourself saying things like: “Sun! Beautiful sun! Pull over so I can stand it!” Things that - on any other occasion - would sound patently absurd. But after more than 700 miles of road-tripping in snow, mud and biting cold, when those clouds break you begin to do very silly things. Everything changes with sunny weather. The music choices change from Alanis and Sarah McLachlan to Lady Gaga and The Jackson 5. The windows go down. The coats come off. It’s as if the sun has never shown before. You pull over and take pictures of it. Dozens and dozens of pictures of it to have proof that it did in fact appear. You look directly at it thinking things like “oh sunshine. You’re great. I really really like you.”

Then, without warning, the clouds return, the sunshine dissipates, Norah Jones comes on the radio, the coat go back on, the windows go up and the camera goes away. The sarcasm and lethargy recommence. “I bet it’ll snow tomorrow. Yeah, definitely. Stupid weather.” No, stupid SART.

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Kyle Taylor

Baltic People Are The Nicest People On The Face Of The Earth

This is no lie. Baltic people are the most incredible people I have ever come across. While Lithuanians were less than chipper compared to Latvians and Estonians, I’m still going to speak of the entire region as a whole.



It started in Tallinn, Estonia when our couch-surfing host literally GAVE US HIS HOUSE and moved to a friend’s while we were there. We slept in his beds, bathed in his bathroom and cooked in his kitchen while he slept ON THE FLOOR at a friend’s place. Mind you, this all happened twenty minutes after meeting us for the first time and he would not listen to any discussion about it. That was it. Period.

Next we hit Riga, where are host - a friend of our friends in Tallinn - once again GAVE US HIS HOUSE after knowing us for less than ten minutes and only hearing of us through our really new friends in Tallinn. WHAT IS THAT? Where have you ever heard of this happening? EVER.

Finally, we reached Lithuania where our rental car guy met us at the bus station at 7am to drop off our car, gave us a full overview of the entire country then told us to text him n hour before we wanted to drop off the car and he would meet us at the bus station for pick-up no matter what time it was (nearly 9pm, for the record).

I just find it absolutely inspiring that people who have survived so much - two world wars fought on their territory, a Nazi occupation and a Soviet occupation - can still be so open and trusting of near strangers. I’m a firm believer in the theory that it’s better to anticipate the best then expect the worst. Life is just more enjoyable that way.

Dear Baltic People: THANK YOU! You are the best. Ever.

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Kyle Taylor

Road Trips Are Funny. No Wait, It’s Just The Baltics That Are Funny

Twelve days in the Baltics and I can safely say this region is absolutely one of the World’s hidden gems. Naturally, as is the case with any trip, there have been some funny moments. For some reason, however, it seems that this portion has been particularly humorous. I think it is owed in part to the fact that these countries are just so tiny and adorable thus able to embrace and celebrate tiny adorable things.



It all started in Tartu when - while standing in line to use the ATM - I realized the girl in front of us was no more than 8 years old. She was totally full-on too. Knew exactly what she was doing even to the point of looking at the receipt, sighing then ripping it up. She was rocking some designer clothes and carrying bags from “Accesorize. I both nearly passed out and felt a million years old. We meandered over the city’s main bridge to take in the monument to the 100,000th person born in Tartu. Seriously? An entire monument? I think we would have to get right down to my neighborhood to commemorate such a feat: The 100,000th car to be stolen or 100,000 swimming pool to be installed.

That night, while attempting to find our B&B, I led Matt down the tiniest little roads (none with street lights) only to arrive at the correct location totally shocked that we actually found it. The thing is, all the “roads” were ON THE MAP. In fact, the map considers any concentrated population of 5,000 or more to be a “city” and includes a “city map.” 5,000 people equals a city in the Baltics! Tiny AND humorous.



Speaking of our car, it had a button on the roof that the manual described as a “kill” button. Naturally, being me, I pressed it hoping it would initiate some sort of James Bond-esque launch sequence or laser guns. Nope. Instead it just turns off all the lights and makes the car stop running. Oops? More importantly, why? On top of that, there are NO radio stations in large parts of the Baltics. The “seek” function just went round and round and round sadly finding nothing. Also, when you park in a public lot you have to put this tiny paper clock in your window set to the time of your arrival so that meter attendants know how long you’ve been there, as the first 30 minutes of parking is free everywhere. I don’t even know where to being with this one. How is that enforced? How do you buy more time? WHAT?



Finally, the external conditions. Naturally, having brilliant luck, it started to snow minutes after leaving from Tallinn. Couple this with random stretches of dirt road, mud pits and the most insane drivers I have ever encountered and you’ve got a general sense of road-tripping in the Baltics seriously crazy drivers. Overtaking on blind curves, going 100 miles an hour on dirt roads, massive trucks overtaking massive trucks, the works). It shows, however, as Lithuania has the most road fatalities per capita of any country IN THE WORLD.

Finally, just for kicks, our adorable host in Riga was telling us about his night out at a “house-heating” party. Of course he meant house warming, but how cute is that?

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Kyle Taylor

Paging Opel Astra. Open Astra, Come In.

As is always the case, situations change and you must change with them. Our plan was to buy a car relatively cheap and then sell it back in Greece at the end of the journey. That was foiled because it takes ten days to get registration and finding insurance was near impossible. Our plan was to camp our way through Eastern Europe. I was unaware of the fact that winter arrives in the summer here. It snowed today and the weather forecast calls for “heavy rain” the next few days. Oops? Fortunately, couchsurfing has gone really well and we’v not only had luck in nearly every city, but the people we’ve met have been wonderful!



The new plan then is to rent cars in each region for four to five days at a time and drive leisurely through big cities, small towns and the like with no fear of having to fix a blown gasket along the A1 in Lithuania (can you blow a gasket?) or ending up thousands of dollars in the red after getting in a fender bender sans proper registration or insurance. So far so good.

Martin of the “Tallinn Trio” booked us a car over the phone and arranged everything to a tee. All we had to do is pick it up and drive it away. Easier said than done. We arrived at the “office” to discover it was in a room on the fourth floor of the Hotel Metropol amidst guests and housekeepers. Knock knock. Nobody there. Knock knock. Nothing. Twenty minutes later the gentleman in charge arrives and we begin to fill out the mountains of paperwork while this same gentleman asks us every possible question about traveling in Russia. We’re politely answering but the only thoughts in my mind are “I really want to go now.”

He escorts us down to our Opel Astra (upgraded from the Renault Clio because they were out of them - AWESOME) and we find ourselves in monsoon rains and gail winds. This is the perfect day to be IN a car. All is clear, we drive him to the hotel door and we’re off. Well, we’re almost off. I haven’t driven stick in years and Matt found a page online called “so you want to drive stickshift...” so we’re both fiddling with levers, pushing buttons, testing the clutch, etc. before Matt inches (read jolts forward and backward) through the parking lot and onto the main road. “How is this legal?” I ask myself.



Fortunately, Matt found his clutch legs and we were off on freeway that had NO LINES on it. It looked more like an airport runway than a major highway. Opting for a slower place and winding roads, we turned off to a “second class road” (according to our map book) and found ourselves bobbing and weaving through the dense forests and manicured farms of Estonia’s countryside complete with falling snow and deer. It was somewhat surreal.

After a failed attempt at visiting the national park (the dirt road we were on literally ended without warning in an enormous pool of thick mud that took a good five minutes to crawl out of) we stopped in Tartu - the nation’s University town. In fact, every University is in this town, meaning every University student in the entire nation lives there. Luckily, there are some lovely museums and a monument dedicated to “the one hundred thousandth person to be born in the city” to keep them busy.

Then it was west along the country’s biggest lake and into Viljandi, where we booked a night at a lakeside B&B with a divine elderly woman who does not speak English. After signing our way through registration we ate some dinner and decided to retire. It was 8pm. In a matter of nine hours we criss-crossed through three quarters of Estonia, and it’s adorable.

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Kyle Taylor