Into Lithuania (by Rach)

The grumpy receptionist

After spending a week in Riga I felt sad to leave. I mean, yes, we’d been parked up in a shitty car park but we’d got to know our way around this beautiful city, the laundry place was just down the road (don’t you judge me) and having Sean’s dad Colin and our mate Rob around made it feel like a slice of home. So I drove out of Riga slightly teary and a bit stressed – the roads are awful here.

We drove to a place called Ceraukste - I don’t know why. I think we’re the first tourists to have ever visited. We needed to find a mechanic to fix our brakes. We’d been told that months ago before we left the UK and now a light had come on telling us that we really really needed to get them done. We also had to get winter tyres. Seems decadent to me but apparently it’s the law. We found a mechanic that spoke great English but couldn’t work on a van as big as ours. He suggested another place just down the road, so off we went. When we got there I went in to speak to the receptionist. Not only did she not speak English, she looked really annoyed that I’d disrupted her. Nevertheless we spent the next hour using Google translate and drawing pictures of brake disks in order to get a price and agreed to come back the next day once they’d got the parts. We had an uneasy feeling that we were going to regret paying the miserable receptionist & co, so we decided to try calling one more place. Enter Aigars, a straight talking Latvian with the bluest eyes and the best prices AND he got the van fixed up that day! Which actually, I was a bit gutted about because I thought we might be getting a night in a hotel.

We drove across the border to Lithuania and treated ourselves to a campsite - for only £15! They’d already closed the main facilities so gave us a little en-suite room to use. Sean still made us sleep in the van though. Yes, I did consider leaving him.

A friend had told us about The Hill of Crosses so we decided to visit. My God it was seriously amazing. Thousands of crosses and religious statues covered the hill, at first it was a little creepy but then it transformed into a calming, almost emotional experience. I decided to make a little cross to leave there the next day, because if God is real, he will have seen that and maybe he’ll let me in to heaven after all.

The dickhead hotspot

Our new tyres seem to be deflating. Luckily Sean is in charge of tyre pumper uppering, but it’s still really bloody annoying. We parked in a car park on the edge of the Old Town in a place called Kaunas - it’s still just warm enough to off grid… unfortunately. It turns out that this car park turns into an all-night Lithuanian rave, where teenagers drive around and around and around blasting Lithuanian pop music and laughing REALLY LOUDLY. Look, I’m not against having fun, as long as it’s me having fun.

The next day we visited an art gallery. They had a 4,000 year old mummy that looked exactly like me after a night of not sleeping. I was tempted to climb inside the sarcophagus for a nap but decided against it.

Maybe tonight will be different and we’ll get a decent night’s sleep.

Or maybe not. The dickhead hotspot was in full swing again tonight. 4 girls sat in a car a few spaces away and blasted the Venga Boys. THE ACTUAL VENGA BOYS. We may never sleep again. Send help.

Recommended park up near the Hill of Crosses, Lithuania:

http://park4night.com/lieu/24510/