Exploring Cinque Terre

This is my second day of my vacation in Italy, but the first when I'm doing more vacation than transportation.  I'm travelling with my friend and a colleague - three girls in Italy for one week - sounds great!
Yesterday we flew to Milan and after two hours there we took a train to La Spezia. Three and a half hours of torture. The seats were great, but besides talking, eating nuts and candies we got nothing else to do. Just sit and watch the landscape which was not so bad. But we survived and our airbnb host took us from train station to the appartment we were renting. After doing so much sitting we wanted to stretch out our feet - two hours in La Spezia having no clue were to go - but it was Saturday and the city was live with music and few young people. It is not scary at all to walk in the dark - we are three and we are Lithuanians.
So, La Spezia - might not be familiar to most of you, but is a very convenient spot to stay when going to Cinque Terre - it offers a lot cheaper accommodation options. And it's a seven minutes ride with train from there to Riomaggiore.
It was a first village on our day trip. We spent a good hour wandering there in the narrow streets/stairs. One reason for this was because a road from there to Manarola was closed. Manarola is really similar to Riomaggiore, and a road to the next village - Corniglia - was closed too(or at least we were told so). It was getting rather crowded at the train station, so when we arrived to Corniglia, we decided to go to the very last village - Monterosso al mare and do a walking from there.
But after seeing Riomaggiore and Manarola, Monterosso was rather disappointing. Yes, it has a beach and lots of overpriced restaurants(we were not expecting anything to be cheap in any of those five villages). But it's beautiful to look at only from a far. So, we took the hiking route.
First, we were optimistic and affected by stunning landscapes. Then the stairs were getting steeper and steeper. They were resembling less stairs and more large pieces of stone. It was getting rather hot, because of the physical workout and because the sun decided to come out of the cloud. We felt our sweat dripping from our faces and backs. One moment girls wanted to go back and take a train....
But we didn't and we were climbing even more higher the paths where sometimes it was hard to pass for two persons, and most of the time there was no railing to hold on. No joke if someone has vertigo. But with every step we were getting closer to Vernazza - probably the most beautiful of the villages of Cinque Terre. We were feeling a little bit out of place - dusty and sweaty, and tired. But still, we had a pizza with tomatoes and pesto sauce.
So, Corniglia was our last stop. When you arrive there with a train(as we did), you can walk or take a bus up the hill to the village center. The ride is included in train pass. There if you get before sunset, you get to see really stunning views of the sea. So, we were lucky with that too. But while waiting for a bus to come pick us up to the train station, we missed one train and the next one was only after an hour. Then the bus came and the driver said that he won't be going down anymore, and we will have to walk.  It was rather dark, but the stairs to the train station were lit up first, but then we had to use mobile flashlight. This journey to the train station was quite adventurous - we missed the turn to the station and ended up on the dead-end seaside walk. But we had plenty of time before train. And we had our supper already prepared - sort of, we bought fruits and a bottle of Rosso wine in Corniglia and we got a focaccia with cheese for free (there is a tiny thought suggesting that while we were doing our shopping, we missed our bus). All we had to do is to get back to our appartment and have a feast there.

3 years job anniversary

Today is my 3 year anniversary of working in my current job. The company, that I went to work for, was 3 times smaller than it is now. The office in Kaunas occupied only one floor of two big rooms. Now it occupies 4 floors of entire building and there is a new office in Vilnius as well. Surely, the company has grown more than I did in those 3 years. I worked on bigger projects. I even learned totally new technologies that I never dreamed of (ok, they were there, but I couldn't imagine myself of using them someday). Many things, that I did experience, happened because I met new people in this company. It doesn't mean that I wouldn't have experienced them if I didn't come to work here - probably, I would have, only the path would have been different.
But I do feel a lot more confident at my work now than I did 3 years ago. Sometimes this confidence and comfort is frightening - we tend to become lazy and sleepy. I hope I have new challenges coming my way soon.

A walk not in the park

It should have been an easy walk of 40 kilometers. But only easy ones were first 10. By every ten more I was reaching certain psychological and physiological points of my body - wanting to talk to anybody, not wanting to talk to anybody, wanting to sing out loud. You can train your body to walk more, but psychologically it's hard every time. Once I walked for four days 40 kilometers every day and actually I forgot how hard it was.
Not getting into details why I agreed to do this hike, I was woken up by my alarm clock at 6am. Not too much of packing was needed, but I had to have breakfast to fill me with enough energy for the most part of the day. At 7am I left home to gather my ride mates to Alytus. These hikes in Lithuania mostly are organised by battalions and the starting points are at military bases. Therefore you get to listen to army orchestra, watch some army vehicles, taste soldier's porridge (at the end of the day, though), and can walk into areas where you are not usually allowed to. And you get to walk areas you usually won't be going to by yourself. And then you discover local landscapes, structures. Yesterday's discoveries are:

 A mound of Alytus

A light at the end of the tunnel

Entrance to tunnel

A very dark tunnel somewhere in the woods - it is somewhat 60 meters long, it was built in 1887 for a river(Motertis), which was endangering a railway. And it appears to be a geocaching spot! Passing it was really cool experience - you can see it's entrance and exit, but at some point you still feel in total dark and have to turn on your flashlight - there is a tiny river flowing there, so, it's wet, and there are 10 steps you need to mind.


Coca cola factory in the suburbs of Alytus, clouds of tiny annoying flies.

It's been a while I walked into such a small village shop. You could buy there all the things that one might need: batteries, jar lids, buttons for clothes and various kinds of beers. Besides the variety of the beer, I felt like stepping through time machine portal.













Luckily, I could step out of it too. A lot easier than walking those 40 (actually 42) kilometers. But besides the all kinds of pains in all kinds of parts of my body, it was an interesting journey.

First symptoms of autumn

You sense that it's autumn when you try out all the different teas at home and can find more than two lemons  there. Your suspicions become even more real, when you put on the second pair of socks and cover yourself with two sweaters. It's really there, because tissues are your best friends and you actually stay at home. If you would go outside, you couldn't tell that it's autumn - 26 degrees by Celsius in the evening(!) - but your nose tells you otherwise.

Celebrating programmer's day!

Today is the 256th day of the year and in the world of programmers, it's their day of the year. What makes me worry is that in google's home page there is a baguette picture and clicking on it points to the history of it. What the ... ? I have nothing against it, but as an IT giant, shouldn't google be celebrating programmer's day instead of baguette's 22nd anniversary of official recognition?
I must admit, I haven't written a single line of code today and there are two reasons for this. First - it's Sunday. Second - it's a Vilnius marathon day and I was running my modest 10K run. I haven't been doing proper training (except insanity workouts) and it reflects on my results (which even in my best condition is something so unimpressive, that I won't share it with you). Few years ago, even 5K run was a big challenge for me, but now 10K doesn't frighten me anymore. Sure, I want to up the ladder of the distance a little bit more and run a half-marathon. It's doable in my current condition, I think, but it's a huge physical impact on a body - so, I won't do it unless I feel totally prepared for it.
The main reason for this is not the fact that one of today's runners, being in healthy condition, has lost consciousness and died in the hospital. Although that kind of perspective doesn't fascinate me, ending up with less serious traumas and injuries will still affect how I move after that half-marathon. I think being prepared mentally isn't enough. Simple as that.
And finally... This picture below isn't a photoshop (you can tell that from the bad quality)! This was a real sight I was awarded after running 10K, walking 6K more and meeting with my friends at Vilnius old town after that. (And now I know a place where I can stuff myself with delicious doughnuts with cheese filling in Vilnius!)

Hot air balloons in Vilnius Old Town, no, Vilnius Old Town on hot air balloons!

Autumn is here

You notice that autumn has started when you put on the socks in the morning and find a mist on your car's windshield. And although it looks like a summer on the days when it's not raining, you know that it's not anymore. Soon the green trees will lit up with yellow, orange and red leaves - a final show before getting rid of them. This colorful fiesta is the main reason why autumn is my favorite season. Not because of all-soaking rains washing off the colors from the nature and freezing gusts of wind tearing off every little leaf. There is some poetry and beauty in this destructing(and depressing) process, but you wouldn't stand it for long.
This year autumn was very punctual! On the first days of September it switched off all the heat and turned on the curtains of rain (while the nature was begging for it all August!). And just like that I started looking for my long-sleeve clothes, sweaters, socks and scarfs. This week I even took out shoes which are more suitable for this kind of weather. But besides these small inconveniences, the sunsets are still spectacular, and you don't have to wait for them too long. And soon I'll manage to get up with a sunrise - let's admit, I won't start getting up earlier, only the sunrises will adjust to me.
As a kid, I had more reasons to hate autumn (because of the school), but I still didn't. And now tt just gives me more reasons to take out my camera.

Dark cabaret, Canadian coffee and 5K

Today while looking for music for milonga's cortina I stumbled upon an interesting genre - dark cabaret. And while the music itself sounds not very dark (rather cheerful), the lyrics are somewhat disturbing. For example: "... sitting in a stack of skulls" (from the song "Rattlesnake" of Caravan of Thieves). Combined such lyrics and rather ungloomy music - I can't picture a statistical person listening to this music... Who would it be? Goths, emos, morticians or funeral service owners... Someone who doesn't understand lyrics, but enjoys that style of music.

It's been talks and promises for years for Starbucks coming to Lithuania, but no, they aren't there yet. And I doubt they'll ever be, because local coffees would be a tough competition. So, no! No Starbucks! But today I found out, that there is Canadian coffee place opened in Kaunas - Second cup. I'm not sure about their coffee, because I quit on that habit - year and eight months ago, but the chai latte is as good as in Lithuanian coffee chains and they do have very nice paper cups.
I did want to try out the London mist flavored chai latte, but they didn't have one. When I asked what is the taste like, I learned they never received one yet! Ok, it takes a while to ship a London mist from Canada... I hope that they won't hurry - I don't want to see any London fog on the streets of Kaunas, it's sad enough that the autumn is already here. But on the other hand I still want to try out that taste...

Today I took part in a local running event for a short 5K run. Now that I look at my current result, I remember that my first attempts at this distance took me 8 minutes longer to complete! And I was afraid I'm not gonna make it to the finish line then:)