Joint email from Night #5

Here is the second joint email from traveling companion Amy and me. Still edited for additional content and also capitalization this time (Amy is more relaxed about such things than I).

Hey folks,

So we've just finished a couple of cups of tea at our new hostel in Vilnius - VB Sleep Inn. Today we had quite the adventure. We left Riga in the morning on a bus to Pasvalles where we took another bus to Birzhai, or so we thought... [quick remainder: Birzhai is the home of Amy's ancestors]

We were tricked by the very large, old-looking church and the exodus of fellow passengers. And the welcome to Birzhu region sign. Unfortunately, Birzhu and Birzhai are not the same thing, one is a region and the other a city. We walked into the very large, old-looking church, peeked in to the gorgeous sanctuary and peeked out when the older woman by the door gave us curious looks. Then some more churchgoers showed up, and Amy asked a man first if he spoke Russian - success! and then where the information center was. Turns out it was 6km down the road.

6km hike later, we reach Birzhai - the city, and home of many churches, but no temples. Locals (docents in the castle turned museum/library - not as cool as it sounds since it's all in Lithuanian) informed Amy that there are one to three Jews remaining in Birzhai.

Also, most things were closed being Sunday and all. Post office (gone were our dreams of mailing postcards!), restaurants (we ate dried apricots and cashews on a park bench for lunch, which resulted in very cold fingers), and even the tourist information building, but Amy tried the door anyway and it opened! There was a woman cleaning it, and she shoved more maps at us than we could shake a stick at (including one in German... helpful?).

Today we further appreciated our growing language capabilities. Most people in Birzhai do not speak English, but Russian worked out just fine. And it's really wonderful to be able to talk to people and not just point at things.

Hannah really needs some sleep, as one fellow traveller at the hostel already pointed out to her.
"I need a cup of tea," she said in answer to someone's query.
"You look it," an Aussie commented. "That is to say..."
Her eyes are quite droopy at the moment. Thank goodness she has Amy along to help her make her European bed with the comforter-sheet-envelope that confuses her so (Amy got special lessons from Tatiana [her host mom] AND has worked in a hotel).

Tomorrow we are looking forward to seeing Vilnius in the daylight, and bundling up warmly - it's so much colder here than St. Petersburg, who would have thought!?

Cheers!
Amy and Hannah