Graptolite - Silk Purses and Sow's Ears

Graptolite's Sailing Log
Martyn Pickup & Heike Richter
Tue 25 Jan 2011 14:46
44:04.61N 012:34.35E Grapto is wintering in Rimini, Italy. The skipper is in
Vilnius, Lithuania, Monday 24th Jan 2011

We flew to Vilnius, Lithuania via Riga, Latvia, last week. Obviously January
in the former Soviet Union Baltic States is a little off-season but there
was a bit of a business reason for being here.

Anyway, Vilnius is an interesting place. The streets were full of snow and
ice but there was only a little leftover Soviet brutalist architecture and
most of the old town is stuffed with pastel-coloured Baroque churches and
cathedrals and is really quite pretty.

The food in Lithuania is well known to be on the stodgy side and we kicked
off with some fine examples including a large pig's ear and peas;
"zeppelins" which are like a couple of potato dumplings the size of a pair
of shoes and stuffed with meat and we also had a sausage which was
essentially a pigs intestine stuffed with mashed potato. Mmm.

Driving west from Vilnius we visited Trakai with its red brick fairy-tale
castle on an island in the middle of a frozen lake. Then it was off to the
seaside at Klaipeda on the Baltic. The next day we were on the car ferry to
the Curonian Spit which is a sort of barrier island of dunes and pine trees
which separates the Baltic from the Curonian Lagoon. The lagoon was mostly
frozen over with a lot of vodka-fuelled fishermen crouched over holes in the
ice. We got down to Nida, the most southerly Lithuanian village on the spit
and there's a smell of smoked fish was everywhere. Just south of Nida there
is a border post which leads to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. On the
Baltic side I tried looking for a few bits of amber on the beach for
souvenirs, but only for about ten seconds, as the windswept beach was mostly
covered in little icebergs.

Driving back to Vilnius today we stopped at The Hill of Crosses which is a
bizarre place with over 40,000 crosses jammed on to it. Don't ask me why.
Lunch nearby was more pig's ears and zepellins and some kind of coca cola
made from bread. Apparently.

Back to Dusseldorf now via Stockholm. I'm going to Gran Canaria in a couple
of days but more of that anon.

M