We left Kiev yesterday around midday and headed back to Warsaw. Had another relatively uneventful flight with Ukraine International Airlines, where yet again, passengers clapped when the plane touched down safely – over the years I’ve seen this in Turkey, Pakistan, Argentina, Peru, now Poland and Ukraine, and it still weirds me out. We were just transiting through Warsaw this time, so didn’t spend any time there.

We picked up a rental and yale set the GPS for Vilnius and off we went. It was a bit of a long drive – but when you’re from Australia, it doesn’t seem that far.  Not like trying to get to Festival in a day or anything crazy like that.  We passed through some pretty little towns on the way of varying sizes and modernity.
Some cute churches, and everything all sweet and fabulous…  Until we encountered kilometres and kilometres of trucks all lined up in a dead stand still. For a while we thought it might be some sort of rolling blockade protest – people around here seem to be constantly protesting something.  Or perhaps they were all lined up waiting for a weighbridge station, given how politely they were all lined up on the right and letting the cars pass them.  We then came across this – the lane we had been travelling also at a dead stop of cars. Bugger, we thought – it was obviously the queue for the Polish/Lithuania border. So we pulled up behind the blue car in the photo below…  At this point, one of the truck drivers (most of whom were not in their vehicles) came over and told us to drive around.  He pointed to the licence plate of the blue car, Belarussian, and he gestured for us to go around (our vehicle obviously had Polish plates on it).  So we dutifully went around and ended up at the top of the queue: Whereupon it became obvious that we were in the middle of the military checkpoint to enter Belarus!  Which meant we were miles from where we were supposed to be, and well and truly inside the borders of Belarus! Fark! Now we knew when we set out that there were two routes to get us to Vilnius, one of which was slightly shorter and chopped through the corner of what is effectively the dictatorial presidential state of Belarus and the other which went only through the border between Poland and Lituania.  Now, guess which route yale somehow programmed into Wayz…?

The border guard came over to our car and asked us where we were going, “Vilnius,” we replied. He then asked for our passports walked away.  Then came back for the rental agreement on our vehicle walked away.  Then came back for the registration papers for the vehicle and then he walked off again for what felt like an age. While he was gone, I was Googling looking for real-time info on any known delays at the Lithuanian and coming up empty. Now because we couldn’t read any of the damn signs anywhere, it was only about this point that we realised we were at the fucking Belarus border and not the Lithuanian one!

Eek… we had no idea what was going to happen here.  We totally weren’t supposed to be in the middle of this border complex, we had no visas for Belarus (they’re difficult to acquire and expensive), and these guys obviously have complete control over what is effectively a no mans land.

Eventually, he came back.  Handed us our passports and all the paperwork and said: “You have to go back.”  Well, thank fuck for that. For all we knew there could have been serious penalties for attempting to illegally cross the Belarussian border?!  We were laughing with relief as we turned the car around and drove off… and then we got to take a bit of the scenic route through some tiny villages as we made our way back to the route we were supposed to be on in the first place if yale only weren’t ‘the reason we can’t have nice things’. The countryside was simply stunning though – there is a beautiful quality to the light here (once you get out of the cities). Honestly, I grabbed these shots out the car window as we sped past and they have not been altered or had filters added or anything. Stopped at a servo for a fortifying something something after our little run in with the Belarus Border Force guys. WWII memorial in a little town on the way. Oddly, the Polish/Lithuanian border was far more like what we had been expecting – almost non-existent.  Being both part of the Schengen Agreement, there is pretty much borderless exchange between the two countries.  We did see some guards in a jeep on the side of the road, but they weren’t doing anything at all. The delay set up back a little arriving into Vilnius, but we arrived found our B&B and got settled pretty quickly. The B&B is in an old building with massive oak beams, exposed brick and stuccoed walls and old chunky furniture, right in the middle of the city.   After our adventure just driving here today, we decided to try and find some local food for dinner.  yale scoped out this place on Trip Advisor and it had the two most desireable elements we could have asked for, 1) great reviews and 2) mega close proximity.  Because it had been a long day already. We walked in and there was a wait for a table. The restaurant didn’t appear to be very big so we were a bit disheartened and I was considering looking for other options, when it became apparent that there must be more space off to the side of the entrance and perhaps downstairs as well.  We didn’t have to wait too long for a table and were led downstairs through a veritable rabbit warren on cosy dining spaces.First things first – a drink!  This place does paddles of brandy tasting so we thought we’d give that a go. From the left, very drinkable with cherry flavours, quite sweet with honey overtones, something akin to metho, disgustingly strong liquorice shit, and slightly less strong but equally disgusting liquorice shit!  Still, most of it went down just fine.
For entrees, everything looked really good on what is an extensive menu.  We ordered a few plates to try – fried cheese with bell peppers (effectively jalapeno poppers – which seemed odd for Lithuanian cuisine, but my knowledge there is quite limited).Next we tried the ‘thick and creamy wild mushroom soup’… which I tried and exclaimed “I hate this place! Best mushroom soup I have ever had, and it’s in bloody Lithuania!”
yale also ordered a second entree of meat dumplings served with sour cream and some sort of nutty soupy broth stuff.  It was very tasty – somehow just the right amount of salty.We had finished the brandy tasting paddle and the beers etc, so yale ordered a couple of meads and a homemade vodka. On the left honey mead, the vodka (average, but we may have been spoiled of late) and some god awful herbal mead shit that was 75% alcohol! Man that stuff is strong.
Dinner consisted of venison meatballs served with spinach mashed potato, loads of beetroot and a cranberry/blueberry sauce.  Delicious. And yale had some enormous dumpling things filled with mean and drowning in a thick mushroom sauce. After dinner (and all those strong drinks) we barely managed to find our way out of the hidden tunnels of amazing foody goodness. We want to get a full day to check out Vilnius tomorrow and both of us have laundry that needed attending to so we head back to the B&B for what was supposed to be an early night but it is already getting close to midnight.  Again.

Looking forward to checking out the G-spot of Europe tomorrow.  😛