Malaga part I

One of the dilemmas you encounter when you decide to visit a country as big and diverse as Spain is: where should I go? Do I go to the Basque region in the North West, where they allegedly have the best food in the world? (San Sebastian has more Michelin stars per head of the population than any other city in the world). Do I take the easy route and go to Barcelona, like everybody else? (Barcelona is the only city in Europe that takes in more tourists than their national capital) or do I go to the capital Madrid, a large and noisy city which would be right to my liking? In the end, I let the decision be taken out of my hands. 

My friend Esty is from Malaga and she convinced me to go there. She just kept going on about how great it is and how awesome the food is, that I decided to see what all the fuzz was about. Luckily, Ryanair fly to Malaga 3 times a day, so it wasn't difficult to get a reasonably priced flight. And so I set off for Andalusia on Friday morning at 7, with a weather forecast of 28* ahead of me and a book about Andalusia on the seatback table in front of me. 

The region of Andalusia is surprisingly large. At nearly 88.000 square kilometres, it's roughly the size of Portugal. It has a population of 8.5 million which is the same as Scotland and the Republic of Ireland combined. Andalusia is a big place. Despite it being the second biggest recognised autonomous region within Spain, most people don't know too much about it. There is no noisy independence movement like there is in Catalonia, who even have their own national football team. This is not some pub team that plays in a local park, but a seriously good team with players from, among others, FC Barcelona, Getafe and Real Betis. Their manager is Johan Cruyff, one of the greatest players ever.  Andalusia also doesn’t have an explosive rebel army that regularly blows up strategic targets in Madrid and other ‘Spanish’ areas, like the ETA do in the name of Basque independence.  In short, I knew next to nothing about Andalusia, apart from the fact that it is home to the city of Seville where Celtic played in the UEFA Cup final in 2003. 50.000 Celtic fans descended on the city and partied the week away, despite the team losing the final. I got myself a Lonely Planet on Andalusia, since I could not find a city guide just focusing on Malaga, so I entertained myself by reading through chapters about cities I wasn’t going to visit, or at least not on this trip. 
To be honest, I wasn’t really planning to do any serious sightseeing that would necessitate a book. I just wanted a trip that guaranteed sunshine and temperatures pushing 30 degrees, after my previous trip to Belarus that had yielded only snow. I arrived at Malaga airport at around 11 local time and jumped on the bus outside the terminal to get to the city centre. The next day, I found out 3 things: the airport has a train station, the train takes you much closer to where my hostel was, and the train is cheaper. It didn’t really matter though, as the weather was fantastic and Malaga is a nice city to walk around in. I only went down a wrong street on 2 or 3 occasions so I arrived at my hostel about half an hour later.  I had a chat with the girls at reception and found out that check in wasn’t for another hour and a half so I dropped my bag in the luggage area and went for another walk in the sunshine. I had a look at the main square, found a couple of ice cream shops, some restaurants and, surprisingly, a violin shop.  I decided that it was time for a beer so I presented myself at the bar of a restaurant that had a seating area right in the sunshine, so I ordered a local beer and planted myself on a high chair outside.
 

Warm sun, cold beer

I enjoyed myself immensely, sipping my ice cold beer and thumbing through my guide book while soaking up the mediteranean sunshine. Life was good.  I checked into my hostel, found to my chagrin that I had a top bunk, but then found to my joy that the hostel had 2 bars; one on the roof and one on the ground floor at reception. This was good news. I made my way up to the rooftop bar, ordered a beer and had another half hour of sitting-in-the-sun practice. This day was getting better by the hour. I found that I was getting a bit peckish and decided to get lunch.

Meal times in Spain take some getting used to, if you’re unfamiliar with the Spanish way of life.  I went out for a drink with my aforementioned Spanish friend a couple of weeks ago, and she suggested to go in the afternoon, after lunch.  “After lunch”, in Spain, means around 5.30. Spanish people don’t even start thinking about dinner until most people here in Ireland have worked their dinner and at least 8 pints down their throat.  Nobody in Spain thinks anything of having dinner around midnight, but I always try to adjust to the local way of life wherever I go, so I decided to just have a little snack to wear off the hunger. I sat down at a small corner restaurant and ordered a special that was advertised on the wooden chef outside. “5 tapas for 7 EURO” the sign said, so I ordered that and a pint of Cruzcampo and sat down in the sun again. 

 

The tapas were excellent, there was a small plate of paella, a tiny omelette, a little bowl of garlic soup, a salad and some meatballs in spicy tomatoe sauce. I enjoyed my mid afternoon snack and worked some more on my ‘walking in the sunshine’skills, which is ofcourse one of my favorite things to do (it comes right after ‘drinking beer in the sunshine’).  I decided to head back to the hostel towards the end of the afternoon (or, just coming up to lunch time, as they would have it in Spain) but made one more stop. My friend had written me a long list with cool places to eat an drink and one of them had the totally awesome name of El Pimpi.
Now before you start imagining a Shaft theme-bar or something dedicated to mid 70s disco, this is a traditional Spanish wine bar. Well, it’s not exactly just a wine bar, because the place has expanded continuously over the years and now covers nearly an entire block. The original wine bar is still there, and that was were I entered the place, and soon found myself lost in a rabbit warren of hallways, backrooms and dining areas. If I had been drunk, I probably would have spent a happy half hour getting utterly lost without ever finding the outside terrace or a bar. As it was, I managed to navigate the complex in a minute or two so I sat myself down in the sunshine once again and ordered a sweet white wine.

Yes, you read that correctly, sweet white wine. I don’t normally drink that anywhere, but it was recommended so I decided to give it a try. It came with a bowl of olives (I was really starting to like the Spanish custom of serving small snacks with your drink) so I had a sip and took in the surroundings. El Pimpi now consists of a whole bunch of buildings, including the wine bar, a stretch of dining rooms and an ice cream shop. It really is quite a sight. The courtyard was beautiful, full of tables, plants and trees that were all scattered around seemingly at random. At the centre of it were a small cart and a big wooden cask, manned by a girl in traditional Andalusion dress and with a red flower in her hair. She theatrically poured glasses of sherry for tourists, using a long iron spoon. I watched her for a while, both because it was interesting to see her pour drinks in the most difficult way possible and because she was very pretty, finished my wine and my olives and decided to make my way back to the hostel. 

At the hostel, I got a 1 euro beer from the downstairs bar (Score!) and made my way to the garden where a group of Americans were having a drink. I joined them and after the usual ‘where are you from- where are you going’ introductory talk, they informed me that paella was on the menu in the hostel. This certainly interested me. I had intended to go out for dinner, but if they were making paella right here in the hostel, that would be fine for me too. As there was some time to kill before the paella cooking demo, I moved to the roof again, where it was now really quite busy. I got a bottle of beer, got some people who weren’t as cool as me to move over and spent another happy half hour in the sun. When paella time came around, I found that the chef, another pretty girl in a kilt and Doc Martens boots, would be cooking in the garden, so I walked to the local liquor store, acquired a couple of 40s and rejoined my American friends for some pre-dinner drinking. 

The chef at work

For those of you who don’t know what 40s are, they are Big bottles of beer, 40 fluid ounces to be exact, hence the name. They were made popular mainly by early 90s rap groups like NWA and still have some sort of popularity with American students for some reason. In any case, for the Europeans out there, they contain just over a litre, or nearly 2 pints of beer and so will last you a  bit longer. This is in no way an advantage if you’re sitting in 30 degree heat, but anyway, I’m drifiting off a bit here and  you probably don’t really care about the history of American gangster rapper beer, so let’s get back to the paella. The chef went to work with one of those big paella pans and put in on a big cooker with 5 burners.

She put the whole contraption in the garden so that she could chat with us while she was working, and we could take in some tips on how to make real paella. It takes quite a while to cook paella the right way, so we spent a happy hour talking and drinking until the paella was finished. The paella was great and I had a great night at the hostel. I had planned to go out in the city that night,but as happens every now and then in hostels, the atmosphere was great so we all decided that we might just as well stay there. And so that's what we did.

IT'S CALLED FOOTBALL!

Hi everyone,

Today's topic is football.

As a life long football fan, it never ceases to amaze me that there are people in certain places around the world that refer to my beloved sport as ‘soccer’. The reason that they do this, is always because they have their own version of football which, mostly, has very little resemblance to football. Now before you start pointing across the Atlantic, it’s not just in the USA where they call football soccer, there are other places across the world where the noble sport of football is referred to by the wrong name, and we will start this tour of mistranslation right here on my own doorstep in Croke Park, Dublin. 

GAELIC FOOTBALL

The Game: 

Gaelic Football is a game where 2 teams consisting of 15 players each try to score by kicking or punching  a round ball that looks closely like a volleyball through the goal posts, and by kicking the shit out of each other. The game is most often described as a cross between football and rugby and the goal is also a cross between a football goal and a rugby goal.

                                                       As you can see here

Points are scored when the ball is kicked or punched through the goal posts, with a ball above the bar worth 1 point and a ball in the goal worth 3 points.  A game consists of two 35 minute halves. 

Where is it popular?

Ireland. And in places with large numbers of Irish migrants, but the only country where it is played at a high level is Ireland.  County Kerry is the record champion with 36 titles, followed by Dublin with 23 Championships.

Excitement level: 70%

A top level Gaelic football match is generally very good stuff to watch. It is fast, technical and there's a lot of scoring. Oh yeah, fights regularly break out on the pitch during matches.
If you're ever in Ireland during the season, go watch a game at Croke Park, it's a great experience.

How FOOTBALL is it?

50%. While most points scored from distance are kicked over the bar, the majority of passing is done by hand and a lot of points scored from close to the goal are also punched in, rather than kicked.

RUGBY FOOTBALL

The Game:

Rugby is a game where 30 men with the build of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the mindset of a troop of Uruk-Hai run into each other while stamping on the opposing team with spikey boots. Perhaps not surprisingly, it's very popular in Australia.

The game as we know it now, as legend has it, was invented in 1823 when a guy named William Webb Ellis, who was playing football for a school in the town of Rugby in England, East of Birmingham decided that the rules of football were too complicated and decided to pick up the ball with his hands and transport it into the goal that way. Whenever this story pops up, officials from the International Rugby Union fall over each other to say that this is not true because their game is much older than that and in any case, Webb Ellis had nothing to do with it. It is perhaps interesting to note that those same officials, when they had to come up with a name for the Rugby World Cup, decided to name it the William Webb Ellis Cup.
In rugby, the aim of the game is to run the ball into the opponents goal area and then touch it down on the ground. This is called a Try and is worth 5 points. After scoring a try, you also get a kick at goal (the conversion) which is worth an additional 2 points. What is also interesting to know is that, in the early days of the game, a try was not worth any points. The reason for attempting to score a try was that you would then get an attempt (a try if you will) to kick at goal for a point. That's why a try is called a try.

Where is it popular?
The British Isles, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Excitement level: 75%. Rugby is a tough game for hard men. A well executed try is a joy to watch and both teams will generally keep battling until the very end. The main point of criticism that you will hear from people who aren't into rugby is that too much time is spent in human octopus situations, when up to a dozen players are on top of the ball, trying to push the other team out of the way.

How FOOTBALL is it?
30%. There are basically 3 scenarios in rugby where the ball is kicked:
- You just scored a try and are attempting a conversion
- You find yourself in an unenviable position deep in your own half, with the opposing team charging at you. There is no player from your own team nearby that you can offload the ball to so your only option is to kick the ball as far away as possible and hope it bounces out of play in the opponents' half so you can restart play from there.
- You are running out of options to play on for a try and decide to take a dropkick at goal. You won’t score a try but, hey, 3 points is better than no points.

Actually, there is a fourth scenario where kicking is involved: You are the English rugby team during the first decade of the 21^st century and you play a particularly chicken dick style of rugby wherein your game plan is not even to score a try, but simply to keep the opponents at bay and play to your miracle kicker Johnny Wilkinson so he can score 3 points from a dropgoal. Who needs a try when you can have Johnny boy kick 7 or 8 dropgoals each game? 

AMERICAN FOOTBALL

The Game:

In American Football, two teams of 11 players play on a pitch that is about as long as a normal football pitch, but slightly narrower. The aim of the game is for the attacking team to advance an oval bar 10 yards in 4 attempts (‘downs’). If the attacking team succeeds, they are rewarded another set of 4 downs to advance 10 yards, and so on. The goal of the defending team is to shove the attacking team so far under the surface that they can tell them what the weather is like in China by the time they are dug up again. When the team in offense manage to get the ball to the end zone of the defending team, a Touch Down is scored, worth 6 points. The scoring team then gets an attempt to kick the ball between the goal posts for another point. In rare situations, teams can choose not to take the kick, but to try and score another touchdown from their last position, which is then worth 2 points. This play is commonly known as the ‘2 point conversion’ (No shit) and is generally only played if the clock is running out and the team that just scored a touchdown needs 2 extra points to tie or win the game.  The game originally evolved from rugby in the colonial days, with the major distinction that the rugby rule of ‘Thou shalt not go forward’ was so against American nature that they eliminated it very soon.  The game moved on from there.

Critics of the game always point out the start-stop nature of the game and the fact that a 60 minute game takes over 3 hours to finish. While this is undoubdtedly true, this is simply the nature of the game. American Football is a very tactical game, that requires tweaking of the combat plan after every play.

The NFL (National Football League) is the most popular league in America and the season’s final (The Superbowl) is one of the best watched sporting events on the calendar, world wide.

Where is it popular?
The USA, though interest is on the rise in Europe, especially in Ireland, Great Britain and Germany.  Rumors suggest that the NFL is considering starting or relocating a franchise in London or Frankfurt but, believe me, this will not happen. (I’ll explain why in a later story, so hold that thought).

Excitement level:  90%. American Football is spectacular in every facet of the game.

If you can’t get your head around the tactical start-stop nature of the game, you may not share this opinion.

How FOOTBALL is it?

20%.  Like in rugby, kicking only happens after a scoring play, or if a team finds themselves caught in a corner with no obvious way out. Or, ofcourse, if you need 3 points with only a couple of seconds remaining in the game.

AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALL

The Game:

The funny thing here is that the only game that has the term ‘Rules’ in the name, seemingly has no rules in any meaningful sense of the word. 2 teams of 18 players try to remove possession of an oval ball from the opposing team. If the opponent does not comply, they will normally punch them in the face, pull their ears or nose or simply kick them. But preferrably punch them in the face. Games are played on cricket pitches, which may seem odd, until you realise that the game was developed in Australia’s colonial days to keep cricket players in shape during the off-season. The cricket origins of the game still show in the trait of players wanting to hit anything that comes at them. Players can move the ball by hand-passing it, kicking it to a team mate, or by punching an opponent in the face.

That’s pretty much it, as far as the rules go. 

Oh, wait, the scoring system! 

As you can see here:

a goal consists of 2 tall goal posts and 2 slightly shorter ones on the outside. If you manage to kick the ball in between the 2 tall posts without somebody punching you in the face, that is called a goal and worth 6 points. If your shot ends up between a tall post and a shorter one, arguably because your aim was off as a result of one of your opponents punching you in the face,  that is called a behind and worth 1 point.  In the early days of the game, additional points were awarded for punching an opponent in the face, but when the sports regulatory body realised that this would necessitate 5 digit score boards, the idea was dropped. [Citation needed]

Where is it popular?

Australia. And places were a lot of Australian people live, which basically means London.

Excitement level: 

80%. Australian Rules Football is a very energetic game, with lots of scoring and played at a murderous pace.

90% if you’re into mixed martial arts.

100% if you’re from Melbourne.

How FOOTBALL is it?

60%. Perhaps because of the huge pitches, transfer of the ball happens mostly through kicking. Points from distance are always kicked, as are most scores from closer to the goal. Still, a lot of handpassing goes on when approaching the goal posts, to create fast-paced ball movement to confuse the defending team, and avoid a punch in the face.

So, while all of these games are great to watch, none of them deserve the name football as football does. Football is the only game where ball movement and scoring is only allowed by using your feet (okay, and your head).  Fans of the games mentioned above often have 2 main points of criticism towards football:

-       -    Football is boring because very few goals are scored.

While it is true that in a lot of football games only 3 or less goals are scored during a game, there are some obvious reasons for this. First of all, football is the only one of these games where there is only one way of scoring points.  All the other games have at least 2 ways of scoring. Then on top of that, football goals are small. Sure, a gaelic football goal is the same size, but then you have the goal posts that you can kick between from 30 or 40 yards out and there is not a goal keeper that can do anything about it if the ball is 15 feet up in the air. The same thing goes for Aussie Rules, rugby and American football- you can take pot shots at goal from half way up the pitch and there’s not a thing anything anybody can do about it, guaranteeing that you can rack up points from distance. You can put Shaquille O’Neal in front of the goal posts, but even he would need a considerably tall stepladder to have any chance of blocking the high shots. Then, ofcourse,  in American Football and rugby, the entire width of the pitch is the goal, which makes it easier to get a point in. 

-          - Football games always end in a draw.

It is true that draws occur often in football. And again, there are reasons why that doesn’t happen as often, or even at all, in the other games. First, all American sports simply play overtime until there is a winner, thus eliminating even the possibility of a draw. I watched a hockey game just last week, and instead of the normal 3x20 minutes game, it turned into a triple overtime spectacle that lasted until 5.50 in the morning. With the 3 overtime periods, the teams had effectively played 2 entire games in a row. Eventually, some player will lose focus and let in a goal.  Baseball games, too, regularly have 3 or 4 extra innings, and they will simply play on until one of the teams end an inning with a higher points total than the opponent.  Apart from that, all the other games have different value scoring opportunities. In Aussie rules, you can score 1 or 6 points on each attempt. In gaelic football, you can score 1 or 3 points. American football gives you the opportunity to score 6, 1, 2 or 3 points at the various scoring scenarios. In football, no matter how you score, it is always worth 1 point. You can make the goal of the season, score an overhead bicycle kick from the 18 yard line, after doing 2 cartwheels while jumping through a burning hoop, you will still only get 1 point. It is obvious that in such a set up, a draw is much more likely to happen than in a game where every way of scoring gives you a different number of points.

Finally, the criticism on diving football players is justified. Every football supporter I know hates it. Nearly every football fan I know is in favour of video refs to decide on divers, off-side goals and other things that are hard to catch during the game. However, unlike in pretty much every other major sport, the powers that be keep delaying decisions on this matter. 

In the end, you can simply kill off all criticism on our sport with one simple reply:

IT’S CALLED FOOTBALL!

Goodbye Snow

On the bus from Minsk to Grodna, we drove out of town past most of the buildings and sites we had visited during our stay. It was a weird experience to drive by these majestic buildings and statues knowing that this would most likely be the last time in my life that I saw them. It's not because I didn't like Minsk or didn't find it interesting, but I can't see myself running back to Belarus in a hurry. First of all there is all the hassle of getting INTO  the country, both in preparation (visas were expensive and difficult to get) and when you get there (remember the border control back at the start of the story?). Then there is the fact that we'd easily exhausted the entertainment options in the space of 3 days and the absence of a meaningful party scene that can normally keep you busy even in places that completely lack cultural or architectural diversions. The first time I got off the subway in New York, I knew I would make many visits to the city. I will very likely make return visits to places like Bratislava and Sarajevo because I really enjoyed myself there. I know I'll be back in Sydney. Minsk, however, was a once in a lifetime experience, unless I win an all-expenses-paid trip there.

                                           Goodbye, Huge square

I won't bore you with the details of the trip to Grodna because there were no details. As soon as we left Minsk, there it was again: the never ending mountains of snow as far as the eye could see. I lost myself in my book immediately. I woke from my reading when Renae pointed out that we were approaching a city. I startled from my book in that vague state of limbo that you enter when you fall asleep in daytime and wake up to daylight and realise that you have no idea what time of day it is. Did you doze off for a couple of minutes? A couple of hours maybe? Or was it the next morning? Looking up from my book, I just couldn't tell if I had been reading for 10 minutes or 4 hours. It turned that it had been close to 4 hours as we were nearing Grodna. We got off the bus and directly went about our task of getting bus tickets back to Lithuania for the next day. There was only one bus a day so we absolutely HAD to be on that  because our visas would expire the next day and I really, seriously, didn't want to contemplate the amount of shit we would be in if we were stopped at the border with expired visa papers. A friend of a friend had once shown up at the border between Belarus and Poland with a visa that was 1(one) day overdue, demanding to exit the country and was promptly sent back on a 6 hour bus trip to Minsk and ordered to contact her national embassy and a host of local burocrats to obtain clearance and a flutter of forms in order to be allowed to leave. This thought alone made sweat well up on my neck and I was glad when we got our bus tickets. Where in Minsk we had had a more or less comprehensible map of the city, in Grodna we had to go by a print out of Google Maps. Maps of Grodna exist only in Grodna.

                                    A Map of Grodna, as available in the West

After half an hour of walking around in circles we finally managed to locate our hotel. After checking in and doing all the normal stuff you do in a hotel (jumping up and down on the bed, switching on all the lights, stealing all the small shampoo bottles, you know the drill)  we set out to explore the town. The main attraction, it would appear, was the abundance of fairy tale churches. They were everywhere. We walked around, admiring the churches and then, inevitably, stumbled upon a square with a large, stately building and a massive statue of our old friend Lenin.   

The Great Leader of the People was wearing a fishermen’s cap for the occasion and looked out sternly over the town. Grodna was a nice little city, but there is one thing I did not understand. The reason that we had put it on the itinerary, was because it was listed in one of those books of “501 locations you must visit before you die”.  As I said about 2 lines ago, it was a nice little city but I could not see why it would have been listed in that book, while places like, say, Stirling or Oakland or Malaga were not.  The main attraction of the town are those Disney-castle churches and to be honest, I had pretty much seen enough churches by now. 

           This one was pretty cool though


We had dinner at a really cool traditional restaurant. We were first asked to put our coats in the coatroom and then sat down at the table. While waiting for our food, and looking at the lay out of the place, at the exact same moment we both said “This would be a great place for weddings!”.  Strange how you sometimes have those moments. The food, again, was really nice and both the food and the beer were considerably cheaper than in Minsk.  As we were approaching the end of our time in Belarus and didn’t want to be stuck with any worthless money, we sort of had to budget around our last money without having to go to an ATM again. We had an extra beer after dinner and decided to spend the rest of the money on food for the trip back to Lithuania. 

The next morning, we had a final walk around the town, bought a bag full of candy and cookies to keep us occupied on the bus to Kaunas. In the supermarket we were approached by what I would guess was the store manager. I was taking a picture of the beer aisle (something I always do) and apparently this was not to his liking and he urged us to put away our cameras at once and depart.

We had already kept aside some of the currency as souvenirs (and to have an interesting story for in the pub) so Renae decided to give our final 20.000 or so roubles to local beggars. We walked by another church, and I had noticed that a rather battered looking homeless guy was always standing near the entrance. On each of the 3 occasions we had walked by, he was there, holding a dirty beanie and asking for money. We decided to have a look inside the church. When we approached the entrance, I noticed that the beggar smelled like shit. And I don’t mean that he had that token homeless people smell, that comes with irregular showers and sleeping under bridges. No, he literally smelled of human excrement. It was appalling. Renae threw a pack of currency in his hat and we went inside. In my mind’s eye, I had a cartoonesque view of the beggar, upon receiving such a generous donation,  taking a good look at his new found fortune and running off to a liquor store or the race track. When we came out of the church about 3 minutes later, sure enough, he was gone.

I donated the other 10.000 roubles to a young girl in a wheel chair outside a supermarkt and we got on the bus back to the free world.  It turned out we could easily have gotten tickets on the day itself because the 50 seater bus had a grand total of 4 passengers. Better safe than sorry though.  When we got to the border, I wanted to make sure we were first in line, even though there were only 4 people on the bus, but before we could get off, a serious looking border guard came in and collected all our passports and then checked the toilet to see if anyone was hiding in there. He walked to a cabin beside the road, where some 20 people were shuffling in the cold, waiting to be waved through. Due to our exalted status of bus passengers,  the border guard saved us quite a lot of time by jumping the queue for us. While he was doing some important stamping and visa checking, another guard came onto the bus, and checked the toilet again. Do people really still hide in bus toilets when trying to illegally cross a border?  Within 10 minutes we were across the border and back in the European Union. It might sound a bit overly dramatic, but I was glad to drive past the European Union sign and back into Lithuania. 

We arrived in Kaunas as daylight started to fade. A 10 minute walk took us to our hostel where we checked in and had a chat with  the manager. As a big fan of staying in hostels, I was glad to be staying in one again. I have nothing against hotels, but when given the choice I prefer to stay in hostels. The atmosphere is generally better, it’s easy to meet other people and you can always have a party with the other people staying there. Hotels are generally more business like and people do not stay there to meet others. I took an instant liking to Kaunas. I don’t know why, but I just liked the way it looked, the way it was laid out and the way the people went about their business.  We had a meal at a traditional Lithuanian restaurant, which was really nice, apart from the pig’s foot that came with the main course we shared. I’m not going to go into details (you, my dear reader, may be eating) but pig’s feet go in the same bucket as pig’s ears and chicken gizzards.  After dinner, Renae decided to have an early night, and I decided to go into town and check out some bars. The hostel guy had shown me where to find a heavy metal bar, a basement location that could only be reached by crossing a darkened parking lot and going down a stair case. When I found it, it turned out to be closed. I went to a different bar and despite it being nearly 11PM, there was still live Champions League football on tv because of the 2 hour time difference with Ireland. I appreciated this very much and watched the rest of the match and stayed until nearly closing time, enjoying many pints. 

We had to get back to Vilnius that afternoon to catch our flight back to Dublin, so our sight seeing time was rather limited. Fortunately,  we had only 2 things on our to-do list, the Old Town and Kaunas Castle. We started out at the castle, which was nothing like I expected. Castle tours normally bang on about the history of the castle and when it was built and what role it played in important battles and so on. This was included in the castle experience, but only in the basement, where a couple of plaques commemorated historical stuff and a model showed how it had been rebuilt throughout the years. The rest of the castle was mostly filled with art exhibitions, which was a nice change from your regular castle visit. I especially liked the work of a Lithuanian painter called Kloshar, whose works mostly consisted of brightly colored city scapes and other urban scenes that really appealled to me. 

The Old Town was basically like any other old town in Eastern Europe, so you can paint your own picture of that. What did stand out in the old town, was a bizarre bar/restaurant called the Crazy House. It was, in fact, really weird.It had a number of seats that were actually toilets, chains hanging from the wall and, well, the whole place had the look of an asylum for the insane, which was probably the idea given the name. The food was nice though and the beer cold, so it all made for a nice lunch.  Having ticked Minsk, Grodna and Kaunas off the list, it was time to head back to Vilnius for our flight back to Dublin. We got to Vilnius with a couple of hours to spare, so we walked around for a bit, had a couple of drinks and went back to Cili Kaimas for dinner where we had another fine meal. 

And so ended our trip to the barren, snowfilled lands of the East. Back at the airport, I spent some time trying to drink all my remaining Lithuanian money, but I didn’t quite manage it. As the airline also wouldn’t take Lithuanian money, I still have some 30 Litus left, enough for about 5 pints.  The money now sits in my foreign currency pint glass, and is in the good company of about a dozen other currencies.

It was an interesting trip, though it confirmed my hatred for snow and sub-zero temperatures. Vilnius was a nice city, and I will go back there sometime in the near future to have another look around, and spend my left over beer money. Kaunas looked promising too, but I only got to scratch the surface due to the limited time spent there.  As I said earlier, Minsk was a big surprise. It was big, clean and very well organised. It was a very interesting city but it appears to be somewhat limited when it comes to entertainment options.  All in all, it was a week well spent and visiting a paranoid dictatorship was certainly a different experience.  Next up.. Spain.