Friday 13th Auigust mileage 5290 Kaunas Lithuania

Woke up this morning and my body is now shouting at me that I was foolish to have done the Tarzan experience.  Aches in shoulders, biceps, stomach, and calves, and experience tells me it is going to get worse before it gets better !!  Rest of me still working ok.
Sat and had usual breakfast in hotel, cereal, juice, coffee, eggs, bread etc. Hotel has a sumptuous dining room.

As I sat digesting my meal supping coffee and orange juice it came to me with a resolute unforgiving forcefulness that the reason I was aching was not that the Tarzan course was hard ( which it was!) but that I had tackled it with the body of a sixty year old and not that of a teenager, and with that sudden realisation I recalled the picture on the tree trunk at what I had found to be a particularly hard part of the course.  There is a standard symbol for a man opr woman, and it consists of a circle representing the head and then a triangle below this.  If the triangle is pointing down then this represents a man with broad shoulders and slim waist (like me) and if the triangle is pointing up it represents a woman in a dress.  At this point in the course there were two options 1) a straight rope climb labelled as "hard" with the triangle down symbol, and alongside this a rope with wooden blocks knotted at neighbourly intervals labelled "less hard" and with the triangle pointing up symbol.  It was the triangle up option where I had one of my knee wobbling muscle spasming moments!!!

My thoughts then moved on to accepting that I suffer from the ability to see the world around me in almost microscopic detail but often fail in so doing to see the big picture right in front of me !!! 
In gazing out the window it also came to me that it is poverty, depravation and oppression that make people steal or turn to crime or undertake extreme acts.  I'm sure gypsies in Romania are not born with a stealing gene, the Lindman's didn't want to live in the forests in Estonia, and Romas Kalanta didn't want to die at 19 !!!
Later I sat at Miesto Sodas a square in the centre of Kaunas where Romas took his life and was reminded of pictures of budhist monks who had done similar acts and also the little girl running from the napalm bombs in Vietnam!  I wondered how he must have been feeling as he walked up to the spot where there is now a sculpture depicting the burnt pages of history and a stone for each of the 19 years of his life.  Was he resolute and determined despite the forthcoming pain, or ignorant of the pain and naive or in depression?  The russian authorities apparently tried to suppress knowledge of the event and tried hard to revive Romas so he could be properly punished by the state for his crime!  He died one day later......
The monument to him was unveiled 30 years to the day he died.  They say everyone in Lithuania knows the name Romas Kalanta. 

This was all at the time of the general uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and the other soviet states.  It wasn't untill the late 80's that glasnost, perestroika and Mikhail Gorbachev opened up the soviet state and allowed the individual countries independence.

There are other memorials to the Jews slaughtered in the holocaust and other percecuted people from Lithuania.  This is the monument with an eternal flame burning and then I'm off to another where thousands of Jews were collected together and killed at a place called Fort Nine

I sat in a cafe having a pizza and two police went past on segways.  I couldn't believe it I jumped up grabbed my camera, but only got a shot o0f them as they were departing.

The Ninth Fort is an incredible experience, and amazing piece of architecture and symbolism rolled into one.  I am blown away by the beauty of the place and the irony that the russian state should construct a truly magnificent tribute to the Jews who were collected together here and killed by the Nazis and yet they themselves persecuted thousands of Lithuanians who didn't agree with their occupation.  The place was quite difficult to find there are no great sign posts directing you and when you eventually get here it is almost deserted, with just a few couting couples looking for somewhere private and youths who were practicing their climbing skills (which were not inconsiderate) with an apparent unawareness of the messages behind their convenient climbing wall.  Truly this is one of the graet things I have seen, and although only constructed in concrete it in it's own way measures up almost to the beauty and statements of the Taj and Pyramids.  It certainly looks like it will be around for 1000's of years to come unless some idiot state decides to pull it down in another act of symbolism.  You cannot help but be moved by the vision and thought of what has happenned here.  The monument is made up of some 3 jagged shapes thast burst out of the ground like a forceful crystaine structure, with hands, fists and faces build into the structure.  Here are a few of the shots I took.  To get a feel it is about 30-40 mtrs high at it's peak.

 

The irony seems even greater because I just seemed to come across this place by happenchance in choosing Kaunas instead of Vilnius as a place to visit.

So after an emotional day I cocked my leg over my symbol of male masculinity and headed for Poland.  The border is just some 100Km away so may choose to cross or if tired stay another day in Lithuania.

Stopped at the Polish border, very humid, storm coming, decide to sit it out, cups of tea and soup very nice.  Set off into Poland and after just 3Km there was a traffic jam where a lorry coming the other way had jack knifed into the embankment. Fortunately the cab was in the open side and not buried in the embankment.  Decided to stop at a town about 30km from the border called Suwalki.  Went into the centre thinking it was getting quite late at 8:30 to keep travelling. Found reasonable hotel and as I was checking in noticed the clock on the wall said 7:30, so Poland is 1hr different to Lithuania !!  Bike in hotel secure parking (an extra 11Slty).  Wasahed and showered and decided to go into Suwalki to see what it had to offer.  Storm now started and went into restaurant /bar to shelter.  Talked to barman/woman for a while, then after sampling two kinds of beer decided to go back to hotel.

Writing the blog in Warsaw on a computer that is very slow so although I have extra blogs to write am having to go.  Getting access to internet in Poland is hardest yet !!

Thanks to Argo for his comments !

TOR