Off the itinerary

Although I have been enjoying the fact that we're somewhere no one would expect, I feel I'd better send a quick message just in case!

From Riga we headed to a small town in Lithuania called Siaulai (Shau-li) to visit the hill of crosses, which was quite an impressive sight. A large gathering of crosses large and small, planted in the ground, seemingly almost spontaneously, for various reasons - memorials for wars and gulag victims, the pope's visit and I guess pilgrimage/devotional things, plus lots of crosses stuck there for people who had died recently - saw lots of 2005/2006 dates on them.

As we were walking to the hill (2km off the highway) a freak hailstorm started pelting us with bean-bag-bean-sized chunks of ice. Once we arrived, the sun came out. Was god testing our worthiness?

The place was quite strange, somehow beautiful in a spiritual mishmash sort of way. Most crosses were wooden and they were absolutely festooned, crosses draped over crosses, planted and stacked on every available space on the hill, along with photos of Jesus and his mum, and a million rosary beads etc. The sound of the wind tinkling through the various beads and metal crucifixes was gentle and a bit eerie. I'm sure busloads of religious types rok up there in the summer months and buy 20 crosses apiece to hang on whichever bit of the hill most moves them.

That night we checked out the bar scene in Shau-li, making hilarious running jokes about Iggy Pop visiting the town for a warmup gig (somewhere between vodkas, it really seemed like this was a possibility). We were delighted to discover Lithuania's very civilised attitude to food and drink. Every menu we've seen so far here has the usual hot/cold appetisers, soups and mains, but there are also separate pages for Beer snacks, Wine snacks and Vodka snacks - truly excellent! Our fave is the fried bread and garlic, we have both stacked on about 5kg after being in this country only two days. heh.

Anyway, after a hot tipoff from a guy in a bar in Shau-li, we decided to go cross country to the Baltic sea the next day. There's this weird 1km-wide tongue of land out here that goes for about 80km and the small fishing villages that are on there are apparently a fantastic sight at this time of year. We didn't quite make it there today due to a weird glitch between the ferry and bus timetable but tomorrow for sure.

For anyone following with an atlas, we're currently in Klaipeda at the Western end of Lithuania, quite near Kaliningrad. Iain and I are both really enjoying Lithuania - it's our favourite of the Baltics, and not just for the beer snacks : )