Lithuania

We stayed at a place about twenty minutes outside Vilnius but had a van available for transport. However, there was a mix up with our scheduling. A big time YWAM speaker was in town doing a conference so people couldn’t attend the seminars we had planned. Instead, they had us attend part of the conference and filled up the rest of our schedule with sight-seeing.

Lithuania had been the first Soviet republic to declare independence a year before the formal break-up of the Soviet Union in January, 1992. There were still barricades around the old parliament building in Vilnius to stop the Russian tanks from taking over.

I was taking pictures in a beautiful church when my flash began to act up and then one of my cameras. Then the camera stopped working all together. I had two cameras. One was borrowed and one was mine. Fortunately it was mine that went down.

Next day we went to Trakai, a town built on islands on a lake. One of the smaller islands is filled with a beautiful old castle built in the 1400’s by the Duke of Lithuania. You get to the island by a long wooden walkway. There were a number of wedding parties taking advantage of the beautiful location and weather.

The following day we went to Kaunas, the second-largest city in Lithuania and one-time capital. Unfortunately it was raining and, as it was Sunday, all the stores were closed. But we looked around a bit before going to a small church in the middle-of-nowhere for a concert.

The church had been unused during the communist era and had not, as of yet, been restored. But they still used it for concerts. There was a pianist and a woman singing opera. I’m not partial to opera but something about this cultural experience in a newly-freed, European, former Soviet republic in an old, disheveled church in the middle-of-nowhere made for a very enjoyable evening. I’m just glad she didn’t sing that Christian song that the lady off her rocker in Hawaii had sung, otherwise my PTSD would have kicked in. 

The physicality of our travel was getting to our leader, Jean with her canes. She decided to fly back to Warsaw instead of taking the train. Some of the others decided to go with her. The rest of us wanted to save money. The flight cost about $100 US and the train was about $31 US. The train was going to travel through the former Soviet republic of Byelorussia which was going to cost another $20 US. But $51 is still much cheaper than $100.

In the end, we didn’t even have to pay the $20 for Byelorussia so we ended up saving $69. That’s what I’m talking about and we got to see more of the countryside and it was the nicest train of the trip. The train tracks were different sizes between Byelorussia and Poland so we also had the fun of waiting for them to change the wheels on our train at the border.

Back in Warsaw we saw the Wallets again before flying back to London for a night and then on to Hawaii. Laura flew into Honolulu a few hours before me and we spent a couple of days in Waikiki before going back to Kona.

The team was going to do a presentation at the university campus about our trip so there was no time to relax. I had to get all the negatives developed and print hundreds of pictures. I spent a lot of time in the dark room. Towards the end, as the presentation got close, I had an all-night session. With the mixture of exhaustion and the chemicals I began to feel sick and get dry heaves. I made it through though and the presentation went well. Afterwards I printed and sent all the pictures I had promised people along the way during the trip.

Family get together back in Waikiki


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