Lithuania part two

Kurt, an american, working on a new
set of stairs in a Russian  building
in Lithuania via Work Away.

The last part of our visit to Lithuania was quite in contrast to the first part. We hardly took any photos as there simply wasn't much worth taking pictures of. The photos in this post are mostly from our very positive first part. The second part was a bit of a disappointment. Quite unexpected really as the first part had been so positive! The traffic played a part in it as riding in a wall of trucks isn't much fun, but it was more than that. The landscape itself wasn't inspiring either. In fact the most inspiring part was the home-made cheese Daiva gave us in the morning!

Something in the back of my mind said there was something wrong with the picture I saw. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was though. At first I thought it was just the many many trucks, but it was something else. It wasn't until we stopped at a huge shopping centre that I realised what it was: there weren't any old cars on the road. This may seem an unimportant observation but when you think about it, it's quite remarkable. Imagine a country that has been ruled by Russians for decades. The decades of the motorcar and yet there weren't any motorcars form those decades to be found. Like the whole motoring history of this country prior to 1990 had been wiped out, completely.

Lovely mushrooms, fresh from the forest. In Lithuania people are picking mushrooms everywhere!

The shopping centre and town we were was weird too. We had been driving through pretty much empty landscapes for hours and suddenly there was this huge city. Like it had been trucked from somewhere else. The single lane highway was suddenly a triple lane one. Suddenly there was a huge shopping centre… It felt weird and I couldn't help but thinking about the poor people that live just a few kilometres away from here.

From Kaunas, it's only a short ride into Poland. Quite frankly I was quietly hoping Poland would be different. More mountains perhaps and especially quieter roads…