November 14.

Are you enjoying Jerusalem old town? Of course. I walk around and meet a lot of good people. Patricia who is working for Save the Children in Gaza tells me about her mission as we stroll along on the defense walls. We have a delicious lunch together, and exchange contacts, than she does the free tour and I get lost in the narrow market streets. I stop at one stand to talk to the shopowner because he asks me to translate "final sales" in German. He has to give up his shop because he needs cash to buy an 8000 dollar hearing aid for his child, his story runs. He sells crafted blankets, the profit of which would go directly to the women weaving them. I tell him that sounds like a good cause, and can I take some pictures of those women? No, they are very shy, comes the anser. Just give what your heart tells you. The money is not important. I understand, but I can't justify a larger donation to my sponsors, I counter. I can give 100 shekels (about 25 dollar). He looks puzzled. They are worth 900 dollar, he cries out. Are you bargaining aid? he goes. Suddenly, I am a bad man. Praised just a few minutes ago, and now despised because I am being rational about the aid I give. He pushes the blanket in my hands. Here, take it for free. You don't know how to help people. I put the blanket back and nod my head. Sorry sir, this is getting too tense. I want my card back because you are insulting me. I walk on, saddened by the misunderstanding of the shopowner. I can't rule out the possibility that he had been lying to me from the beginning.

I ask for Al Aqsa, and they send me in the right direction. A child who helps wants a coin and it makes me angry. You are a friendly human being goddammit, not a vile coin begging machine. I walk off and my temper is not good. So I enter the compound where the Wailing Wall is, checking the decency of my clothing and smiling at the guards. I put a little carboard hat and fix it with a dogbone shaped paperclip I have in my pocket, then I gaze at the religious jews and their gentle movements as they proclaim the Torah. One man resembles Dostojewski, with an old cloak over his shoulders, and he is shouting loud and trembling as he says his prayers. I hear him exalting "Abra-haaam, Isa-aaac, Jaaa-kooob" and observe this strident religious extacy. More formally dressed jews look at him. I decide to stick a note in the Wailing Wall myself. So I take a Charity Travel card and write on the back

"If there is a God let it be a God of goodness"

in several languages and then stick it as fast as I can into the wall. I pat the stones like a pal, and feel a lot better so. I walk back to modern downtown Jerusalem, have a good meal, and look for some coffee place to work for the night. I meet some Israeli girls on the street, and they offer me a place on a balcony that later, probably as a result of my social skills, transformed into a comfortable couch. Good night.

Are you enjoying Jerusalem old town? Of course. I walk around and meet a lot of good people. Patricia who is working for Save the Children in Gaza tells me about her mission as we stroll along on the defense walls. We have a delicious lunch together, and exchange contacts, than she does the free tour and I get lost in the narrow market streets. I stop at one stand to talk to the shopowner because he asks me to translate "final sales" in German. He has to give up his shop because he needs cash to buy an 8000 dollar hearing aid for his child, his story runs. He sells crafted blankets, the profit of which would go directly to the women weaving them. I tell him that sounds like a good cause, and can I take some pictures of those women? No, they are very shy, comes the anser. Just give what your heart tells you. The money is not important. I understand, but I can't justify a larger donation to my sponsors, I counter. I can give 100 shekels (about 25 dollar). He looks puzzled. They are worth 900 dollar, he cries out. Are you bargaining aid? he goes. Suddenly, I am a bad man. Praised just a few minutes ago, and now despised because I am being rationale about the aid I give. He pushes the blanket in my hands. Here, take it for free. You don't know how to help people. I put the blanket back and nod my head. Sorry sir, this is getting too tense. I want my card back because you are insulting me. I walk on, saddened by the misunderstanding of the shopowner. I can't rule out the possibility that he had been lying to me from the beginning.

I ask for Al Aqsa, and they send me in the right direction. A child who helps wants a coin and it makes me angry. You are a friendly human being goddammit, not a vile coin begging machine. I walk off and my temper is not good. So I enter the compound where the Wailing Wall is, checking the decency of my clothing and smiling at the guards. I put a little carboard hat and fix it with a dogbone shaped paperclip I have in my pocket, then I gaze at the religious jews and their gentle movements as they proclaim the Torah. One man resembles Dostojewski, with an old cloak over his shoulders, and he is shouting loud and trembling as he says his prayers. I hear him exalting "Abra-haaam, Isa-aaac, Jaaa-kooob" and observe this strident religious extacy. More formally dressed jews look at him. I decide to stick a note in the Wailing Wall myself. So I take a Charity Travel card and write on the back

"If there is a God let it be a God of goodness"

in several languages and then stick it as fast as I can into the wall. I pat the stones like a pal, and feel a lot better so. I walk back to modern downtown Jerusalem, have a good meal, and look for some coffee place to work for the night. I meet some Israeli girls on the street, and they offer me a place on a balcony that later, probably as a result of my social skills, transformed into a comfortable couch. Good night.

Tallinn #2

The next day I had a lot of coffee and I managed to write a lot. I also began to take this blog seriously. Then I walked through the Old Town, which is really impressive. Enclosed in medieval city walls, there are a few square kilometers of cobble stone roads with beautiful houses. I walked town to the Town Hall Square, which is depicted here.

Riga

The night was short. John took an earlier bus to Riga. I stayed in my bed until checkout time, and went to the bus station at one PM. I missed a lot of the beautiful scenery on the way to Riga. I still was really sleepy and the driver had to wake me up as we had arrived at the large Zeppelin buildings. I quickly found the hostel John recommended, and got a bunk bed in a twelve people dorm.

Then I went out exploring the old town of Riga. Suddenly I heard a familiar whistle - it was John, of course. He was playing on a square, and a few disciples gather around him. It was a nice little scene. A Russian guy played Elvis on John's guitar, and we clapped.

I was very hungry though, and went back to the hostel, where I had a few sausages for dinner. Checked the Internet, took a shower, and went to bed.

Vilnius #3

So the next morning we walked around again, enjoyed the beautiful old town. We bought something in a supermarket, again, and I cooked a little brunch for John. He took his guitar and showed me how to play "Blowing in the Wind" by Bob Dylan with just three chords. As I fingered around on John's twelve string guitar, a Turkish guy who looked pretty upset entered the room.

Vilnius #2

My second day in Vilnius began with a simple breakfast together with the cleaning ladies. They were really working too hard, vacuum cleaning the community room several times, and doing my dishes, despite of a paper on the wall that read

Your mum doesn't work here,

so wash everything you use by yourself.

I pointed at it, or at the Lithuanian translation of it, and earned a proper smile.
In our hostel was a young man, more like a boy, who was using the internet all the time. He looked a little bit strange and it annoyed me because I wanted to work on the computer he was using.

I went for a walk again, explored more of Vilnius' Old Town, saw some beautiful churches actually. An interesting aspect was the blend of styles. There was a church with gothic as well as Byzantine elements that looked like a fairy tale building. As I went inside an old woman gave me strange looks - because I hadn't bought and lit a candle, I discovered soon afterwards. The lord wants to be worshipped, and that means to be paid for.

A cafe engulped me shortly after that, and I wrote a couple of pages under influence of very good coffee. Later on, I went back to the cafe I had been the other day and ordered the soup of the day again. At the table next to me, an illuster trio had an interesting conversation. An older Russian with a grey beard, a middle aged Lithuanian man that looked a little bit like the killer in No Country For Old Men, and a little fragile lady, sitting between the two literary colossae and asking them about their opinion about the play they had just seen together. The Russian talked about the impossibility to translate Tchechov, and the younger man about the plays he had staged recently, and that the youth was spoiled of course. They had a funny term for it, vidiots, ie. idiots watching only video, with an ever narrower frame of concentration.

My own concentration dropped below productivity level, and I left. Back in the hostel, I ran into an older and balder man. He introduced himself as John and repeatedly added "Hallelujah!". He carried a guitar with him and sang enthusiastically for Jesus. We walked through Vilnius together, in search of something small to eat, and we ended up in a 24-hour supermarket where we found nutella. For those familiar to it, it makes you feel really good...

Vilnius

The overnight bus took me all the way to the Lithuanian capital, where I arrived around ten. I went straight to the "A" Hostel, a place which was cheap and functional. I slept in a Japanese pod-bed, that is a tiny cabin per person, ten in a dormitory. I threw my backpack on the mattress, paid the bed in advance and went for a walk. It was a short walk to the Old Town, and from a Belarusian woman with beautiful shining blue eyes I learned about a 'cafe de Paris', and decided to go there that night. I went to some cafe, opened my notebook and wrote a couple of hours.

When I became hungry I went back to the hostel, cooked some noodles in the water heater, and mixed them with peanuts and crab stick I bought in the supermarket. The result was a real calorie rich meal that I enjoyed in solitude. In the background the BBC analyzed the current financial crisis on a large flat screen TV, I learned about the near bankruptcy of the country of Iceland, among other things.

In the evening I went to the French cafe and had a glass of local cider. Always go for the local products, they are more affordable, they taste better, and the have a smaller ecological footprint! I studied a magazine with a few articles offered both in Lithuanian and in English, but got not far. I joined a group of female students in a conversation about nothing special.

The night was quiet, and I must have spent it looking fascinated at the breaking of the light in the bathroom.

Gdansk/Danzig #2

The day began with a large breakfast, the same as ever. I went out with Kathryn, and we had lunch in a famous local restaurant called Turbot, where they claim to serve all food that is mentioned in the novels of Günther Grass. That kind of rounded my experience of Gdansk. The restaurant was really great. In a quiet sellar we sat on high chairs of incredible design, and ordered the offer of the day: cucumber soup and gulash. We expected a bowl with a brown hot substance, and when the friendly smiling waiter brought us two plates that were arranged in a haute cuisine fashion, we were surprised. And it was delicious!


After lunch we walked through the old town, and enjoyed the classical townhouses with their tapered roofs. We visited the National Museum, where we found an interesting collection of Renaissance painting, as well as pottery and porcelain. My favorite painting was by a 17th century Dutchman of which I could swear, after exploring his stroke technique, that he was similar to Van Gogh. A lot of the paintings had a (from a secular perspective at least) pretty boring subject: heaven and hell. Burning drunkards and screeming sinful people on the right hand side of the panel, pious people with their hands folded together and their hands bend town before Peter on the left.

Back in the hostel, I wrote some postcards. I recall having put the Polish stamps on it, but not posting them until Vilnius, where I had to buy new stamps. Anyway, there was a young Korean girl called Kyong-Mi, who was very nice, and whom we would go and have a beer with later. In a hazy Irish Pub we had a few beers together (which we had to order in Polish). A group of American-Polish students joined us.

Danzig/Gdansk #1: Günther Grass

Arrived late at night, behind the train station (where KFC en MD are impossible to miss - I really don't get how they managed to get their ugly neon logos onto this traditional building). I walked around in the old town, eventually asking some very polite Polish girls where I could find affordable accomodation. They took me away from the old town, to a house alongside the main road with a hostel in it. We woke up an American girl, who was actually an escaped cube slave, as I found out later, and a giant Hongkong man, who were both traveling alone. Silently, lit by my LED-light (O I love those little energy savers!) I sled into my bed and was away in minutes.

The next morning, I took a hot shower (showers were mixed in the hostel, so there tended to be a little gender confusion), ate breakfast, which they kindly offerd but consisted mainly of hardboiled eggs and bread with honey. Together with the coffee, it got me started though, and I walked into town to look around. What to see in Danzig: 1) something referring to Günther Grass, the native nobel prize novelist, 2) something referring to Solidarnosc, the union that made Leck Walesa famous and symbolizes the first steps of the collapse of communism. Well, for 2) the docks with the large cranes nearby and a few logos were all I needed. Instead of the Solidarnosc museum I walked to a small square where Oscar's Bench was located. And there he sat, the little feller from The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) proudly drumming with his bronze drumsticks, next to two old Polish ladies that had a conversation. I sat on another bench observing the scene, which was really cute.

I walked back and took a tram to the old town. I walked around, bought a Polish-German language guide which I planned to study in reverse, and went to the tiny street where they sell amber, the product that gave Gdansk some economical importance. Finally I settled with another cup of nerve-broth and did what I like best: writing. Time went by quickly, and I managed to pen a few pages full (I was working on a German story).

Back in the hostel I chatted a little with the aforementioned escaped cube slave, who was very kind, and a really experienced traveler. I wrote a few more lines and then I went to sleep.