Flat Land, Big Skies, High Heels

Sometimes, when you are travelling, or at least when I am, you just have to stop. It’s a combination of things: the sensory and intellectual overload of the constantly new, the mental effort of working stuff out that you don’t understand (signs, directions, language, facial expressions), the chance to let the more gregarious and outgoing travelling persona, meet up once again with the quieter, more reserved, non-travelling self. It’s good to meet up with myself again and just do nothing. No real sightseeing, no real anything at all, much. I have also ransacked the car to see what I have: a half-eaten packet of crisps, half a bottle of Polish vodka, a jar of gherkins (!), some snickers bars (what an inspired purchase) and a packet of café noir biscuits. Well, that’s carbs, vegetables and protein, plus other stuff, so I think I’m sorted for a picnic! Ahh, bliss! 

I wander around the quiet town of Augustow, catching the people leave their Sunday Service (which is also broadcast by speakers externally, to a crowd of one, me), in darkly coloured woollen coats and hats and long boots, or flat shoes and thick tights, get a coffee in a small café on the market square and walk some way around Lake Necko.  I don’t know how far I walk, or for how long. It doesn't matter at all. I walk and stop, walk and stop, enjoying the warm weather and observing the peace and quiet and the lazy, fumbling, half-asleep flies, drunk on the sunshine. The forest, the largest in Europe, extends all the way to Lithuania and the air is fresh and the water clean and still. In the evening I treat myself to a proper meal in a reasonable restaurant. Hmmm, the fish looks interesting, just fresh water varieties: tench, eel, trout, pike and zander. I avoid the bottom, carrion feeders and plump for zander (a sort of European pike, but which is also found in the waters of the Norfolk Broads in the UK). I’m expecting something that tastes of mud, but I’m pleasantly disappointed. It comes as a fillet, with the dark, lateral stripes visible beneath the thin batter. It is cod like, but smaller, with scalloped flakes of white flesh which have the texture of meat and a very delicate taste of fish. Lovely.

The road to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, is almost exclusively through forests of pine and birch trees. The effect of the miles of silver birch, flashing strips of light and dark, is strange, almost hypnotic. It is like being in a late 70’s disco, where the strobe lighting seems to slow down time, so that it only exists in jerky, staggered moments, with missed seconds in between. When I stop periodically, the air is thick with pine scent. There is nothing but forests and lakes, interspersed with flat, ploughed farmland and small, rural communities and I wonder at the lives of the people living in them and the strange fact that I am there now, but not really, and they are there now, really; lives separated by everything but geography and being human.

Vilnius is great! Cobbled streets, old Eastern European architecture, grand squares and fantastic bars and restaurants. The women are beautiful; tall and slender, with thin, angular faces, thin wrists and long fingers, in equal measure blonde and brunette and yes, mostly blue eyes. Usually they wear flat shoes, in order to negotiate the unpredictable, very uneven cobbles, but occasionally a lady with high heels will walk past, attempting to negotiate the irregular surface with the same earnest trepidation as someone trying to use slippery stepping stones to cross a fast-flowing river. Invariably, I have a knack for tracking down cheap beer – a small side road, an alley off the beaten track. My wanderings lead me to near the railway station, where the bars have sticky wooden seats, are full of working women having a drink before going off to work and the beer is 1 Euro for 0.5 litres. There is a fantastic Mexican restaurant nearby, where I eat each night, which does brilliant chilli, very hot, with sweetcorn and thick chunks of beef and flights of mescal and/or tequila! Perfect!

Augustow

Lake Necko

Big Skies

Road to Vilnius

Strobe lighting

Vilnius: Bell Tower

Cathedral

Those are actually tea-pots embedded in the wall opposite

Old Castle

I spy cheap beer

Why settle for tequila..

...when you can have mescal as well?