Day 17. The Belarusian Embassy

(A tainted retelling of Franz Kafka’s Trial)

Here heralds the beginning of a beguiling week of wonders, of tearing around the nation on a series of misguided misadventures, joined by prodigious journalist and comrade, Tripvan Lavalamp.
Though this awkward mismatch of nouns is not the man’s real name, for the sake of not running him through the nefarious mud of his devilish deeds, or exposing the world to his criminal leanings (he said he was only taking them out to the woods for a picnic, and remains innocent until proven otherwise) we will let his rejoices be told under the T9 transcribing of his truthful moniker.

Getting on with it: Tripvan passed down through the clouds and screeched on to the dusty tarmac of Vilnius’ gravel excuse for an airport, sporting a head full of expectancies (and possibly paranoia painkillers) for what was to fall upon him, during his stint staying in this land of moose meat and minstrels.
If he’d known that within days he would be forced to cough bribes, be eyeballed by knifers and attacked by various bears (all of which comes later, later, later…) perhaps he would have double checked his itinerary.
But, somehow, I believe he would whirl through this rotten rotor all over again.

To slash this introduction short, to cut to the meat of it, it all began following an unfortunate idea- handed to us by a mousey brunette obviously filled by some malicious scorn to send us off on an unpassable mission-
-Us the brain damaged duo, tried to travel to the soils of the closed communist neighbour of Lithuania, Belarus.

Between the borders of Belarus, Lenin likenesses linger, monolithic block buildings line the horizons like dominos, and the currency is worth less than life in Libya. The whole show is run by some despotic neuroses case whose hand is on the buzzer, waiting to blare it against any intruder stepping foot inside who might blow his cover and show the whole world he’s just some nutjob named Martha who wears bikinis under his bathrobe.
Minsk is the capital city, and like a couple of deluded honeymooners, we thought we’d ramble out there for a jaunt to scope out the scenery. Easy done.
Problem was, this necessitated Visas. Which in turn necessitated patience. Which in turn necessitated for life to roll round and round through a series of hierarchical hurdles- obstacles which never lead anywhere- tumble drying us back to the end of a long queue which we were just at the head of an hour earlier.
Old wack-job McMartha wasn’t going open her country’s legs too easy, it appeared…her checkpoints needed coaxing, niggling, numbing.

We checked our chances. It was all a bizarre chaotic experience which nearly cost us our sanity, cost me fifteen bucks and probably cost us the opportunity of ever entering Belarusian airspace until the end of time.
Probably had we snuck in between her commie knees, and skipped around the joyous playgrounds of her innards for a day or two, we would never have escaped.
Probably it’s all for the better. But without further cryptic elaboration, here, by the embassy gates, our story starts.

*


Dressed down in thongs and summer duds, we travailed the streets toward the embassy like skipping on the breeze.
“No troubles man,” I assured Tripvan. “We’ll be in and out faster than a fornicating fifteen year old.”
Realising my error, I spun about, searching for some wood to knock on, but all too tardy. I had jinxed us.
We were approaching the gulag dressed down as an embassy, when we noticed what looked like a silent riot winding up the road.
“Are all these people trying to get in or stay out of Belarus?” we pondered.
Jabbering broken English to a Lithuanian copper, we managed to manifest ourselves as high-flying Western Pigs, and skipped the line for entry. We were in.
For the first time.
We sauntered through the door as if on a Sunday stroll. An unmanned metal detector bleeped at us, as we passed on in unnoticed.
And we weren’t the only ones; bedlam was taking place all around.
Soviet stooges were cramming through the detector, unnervingly setting the red cross lights blazing and beeping, and sparking images of pocketed uzis and grenades a-popping through our imaginations.
For a country which had experienced a suicide bomber attack on its main train station just weeks prior, you would think security would be relatively imperative…but at least the lack of checking seemed to make it all roll faster.
Faster and faster to the point of absolute rampaging anarchy- cougars in leopard spots were pushing passports in front of the jaded official’s weary fingers, cons were comparing prison tatts as their wives whited out records from application lines, winos dolled in garb stolen from the set of Schindler’s List bundled and shoved in all directions, and nobody had a clue what the hell was happening.

Tripvan and I took it as a laugh, found ourselves some visa application forms and jumped into filling out the particulars as bogus as could be believed.
Jobs?
Artist and sports writer.
Reason for entry?
Holidaying in Minsk (Tourism).
Accommodation during stay?
In a hotel.

A good few infinites later our parchments parading as forms were finished and we bumbled our Australian arses to the front of the only line where the counteress knew a skerrick of our language.
At first, she seemed to be on our side.
A grim giggle, she was ours. Visas coming up.
Suddenly, her voice grew hostile.
“Which hotel you stay in?”
“Ahh, it says there. A Hotel.”
This minx from Minsk was not in control of her vocal regulator as her voice-box began to fluctuate rapidly.
“YOU MUST LEAVE, AND BRING PAPER WHICH SHOWS YOU ARE RESERVED IN A HOTEL. OTHERWISE, NO TOURIST VISA.”
Right. The Trial begins.
Back on the broken footpaths, the pair began to formulate.
“We can do this. We just find a computer, book into the dingiest hostel possible, print out the reso and presto.”
Presto was not so simple. Running treadmills in a shopping centre like mad cats, we eventually managed to purloin a printer from a perturbed media-shop owner, who I am sure to this day has been skimming leisurely through my debit card account which I think I left on his desktop.
Already shaky by now, we ventured back into the heat, still blinded by the sweaty optimism we would be ‘Holidaying in Minsk’ by sundown.

Back to the chaos. Surrounded by a corridor filled with pistol packin’ commies, how could we know it was to be us cast out for villainy in minutes?
We crept diligently back to the desk of our rabid wench. Her hair was cropped in a short, sixties bob, with spirals acting as sideburns. A white Grace Jones with predatory peepers. Over-boiling.
We waited for a stocky cougar to finish flirting her dyke arse back into visa-town, growing increasingly impatient and doubtful.
Finally, history flash-forwarding, World War 1, World War 2, then now, we had reached the front of the line, handing over our registration gently so as not to upset the fragile balance of our bitch.

She looked it over. And over. And over. Then she shot us the glance.
“Where are your names?”
Ohhh.
“No, it’s only our reservation number. That’s all they put on the print-out,” I protested weakly, truthfully. “We’ve already paid a down deposit.”
Goodbye down deposit.
“I NEED YOUR NAMES, OTHERWISE, NO TOURIST VISA!”
She was percolating. And I pushed it.
“Hey lady, please, we’ve already gone to so much trouble to get this reservation.”
”I NEED NAMES!”
It felt reminiscent of a KGB interrogation.
Then, it tumbled out of my tongue like an internal A-bomb. It was all over.
“Ah, you’re crazy!” I told her straight up.
She shook like a Ren and Stimpy cartoon, close-ups of purple veins pulsing out of her neck.
“I’M CRAZY?? I’M CRAZY?? NO TOURIST VISA FOR YOU!!”
She slammed her booth shut.
Shit. The honeymoon was doubled over.
Tripvan tried to ask for one last chance, when a big bear of a previously non-existent guard (where was he for the pistol packers?) grizzled on over mumbling unfathomable threats in Russian to usher us out of the embassy.

A final nail was hammered in when a tiny, caged bird-like creature, wearing a pink blouse and shadowy brow, was told to come out of her connecting booth and speak;
“when embassy in bad behaviour is, must out go you must.” Then she disappeared back behind a doorway, as if out of a subconscious scene from a David Lynch film.
“What? I don’t understand.” I continued to billet us, but the Bear continued bidding us outside…then another A-bomb slapped from my hatch.
“Ah, fuck you all.”
Tripvan shot a startled glare at me. I gulped heavy.
The bear guard lowered his head, as if computing. It appeared he knew at least one English word. He began to shiver.
“Fuck you? FAAAAK YOU?”
His shoulders humped, his neck crested, his fists balled. We were on the verge of being obliterated by a KGB monster.
He marched us out to the street, uranium texturing his face in fury.
We waved apologies and assurances as he began spieling to a policeman.
We scooted on out of there as fast as our thongs would carry us.
“Shit man.” We looked at each other, shook up and bleary hearted.
“Maybe we should try the Russian embassy to go to Kaliningrad?”
*
If we’d followed through with this secondary debacle, rather than immediately hitting the nearest bar and exploding into laughter, I can logically infer that we would have been blotted from the face of the earth. Down into the ditch with the cleaver, is how ends The Trial.

Instead, like all rampaging tornados, this was just the beginning of its warpath. Like the mad Don Quixote told his (even madder) squire Sancho, "If last night Fortune shut the door which we were looking for, and deceived us [...], it is now opening wide to us another, better, and more certain adventure," and off they rode into the burning sunlight, doomed to their insanity and guided into the palms of the world.

Day 16. The Soviet Bunker Experience

When John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote the lyrics, “Back in the USSR, you don’t know how lucky you are, boy,” they had evidently never been held captive in a Soviet bunker, situated six metres underground, in the middle of a Lithuanian forest.

Though the author of this article can claim differently; on an overcast Easter Saturday afternoon in 2011, the April winds ripping at the sides of the car, myself and another journalist were delivered to what was potentially the most freaky, hilarious and just slightly sadistic tourism event currently available in Lithuania, possibly Europe; 1984, The Soviet Bunker experience.

On the outskirts of Vilnius, out passed the rural hamlet of Neminciene, lies the extraordinary site of this reality-themed survival drama. What occurs out there is a three-hour long torture, sorry, tour, of what life was like in the times of Soviet occupied Lithuania.

Not simply life on the street though. A group of talented actors, (including a well-trained wolfhound) who seem to relish their roles as Soviet foot-soldiers a little too much, guide you into the labyrinthine maze of a former hidden TV station, which for all dramatic purposes becomes a Soviet bunker. Visitors to the fully interactive show get to live through the exclusive experience of being kidnapped, threatened, interrogated, scientifically prodded and fed sausages, in the depths of a KGB hostage facility. And all this comes over twenty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Some might say, “Well isn’t that why Communism was abolished? So we don’t have to live through such unpleasant ordeals?”
Indeed, the question must be asked. Why dredge up such horrendous real life events, and replay them over and over to audiences of school kids, Spanish tourists and Litho locals who received a ticket as a booby prize on their buck’s night?
“The Soviet Union was a horror. But it was also absurd and funny,” told former Lithuanian television producer, and creator of the attraction, Ruta Vanagaite. “The absurdity of the system: you wouldn’t have believed it existed, that people could survive in it. I think in this show we have a perfect mix of the horror and the absurdity of it.”

As we drove out to our destination in Miss Vanagaite’s fairly fancy four-wheel drive, she explained to me how the show was designed to illuminate the terrifying events of the past, an aid to preventing them being pushed underneath the education systems rug.
“Teachers who bring their children out here, they praise it. They often say the realties of the Soviet Union should be taught more. Children come here in school groups, unknowing and laughing, then they are surprised at how scary and ferocious it is. They say, ‘We are so lucky to live in freedom and independence.’”

As she pulled off the main highway out toward Neminciene, I began to gulp in trepidation of what was to come. Scary and ferocious? Was I so wrong thinking I would be writing a light-hearted story recounting an offbeat and wacky tourist attraction? Possibly, especially as I watched how Miss Vanagaite’s eyes shone with surprising glee as she described how visitors have reacted toward the show in the past.
“We had one man, from Belarus, who went totally hysterical. He called the local police. When they asked him, ‘So how did you get here?’ he said, ‘I bought a ticket!’” She laughed contently while I shook in my seat.
“People come out of it saying, ‘it was horrifying.’ They say, [the actors] were shouting at me, the dog was barking at me.’ The dog is our best actor,” she nodded, apparently envisioning the gleaming fangs of the prized wolfhound, and then added, “In every single group, we have had someone fainting.”

It must be said, she has pulled together an authentic troop of players for the drama. The actors, a small but dedicated motley crew of shaved heads and intense glares, come from various backgrounds as well as theatre, including professional policemen, and actual interrogators from Soviet times.
“They know all the tricks from KGB era,” Ruta claimed. But she was tight-lipped on releasing the names of all of the Soviet Bunker actors, as she believed it would counteract on the play’s authenticity.
If it was to be one hundred percent realistic, down in the cell of the Soviets, would the actors then be Russian?
“The Russian actors would not appear, as they think it (the play) is too anti-Soviet. I approached the entire cast of a Russian drama theatre, and they all refused,” Miss Vanagaite lamented. “But it is not anti-Soviet. We are not recreating the Soviet Union. We are just recreating the hell.”

A hell which many people would rather, “forget than revisit it,” as she put it.
Few Lithuanians of older generations choose to come to the Soviet Bunker experience, as the reality behind it is just too raw and real to for them to laugh about.
“I have Lithuanian friends who have said, ‘no, we remember it all too well’. They would not come here,” she said.

As she continued to roll out the horror tales of peoples reactions from being down in the bunker, (almost as if they were a prerequisite for entrance; like hearing spooky ghost stories before stepping foot in an abandoned house) I realised the village setting had all but diminished, and given way to towering birch trees. We were arriving at our destination.
“It’s only psychological,” she went on, “The bunker can cause claustrophobia. That’s why it’s very easy for people to break, and for their will to be broken. It’s because, once you’re down there, there’s no way out; just like in Soviet Union.”

As we veered from the forest road, into what looked like a concrete relic from Chernobyl, I began to wonder if perhaps these tales were simply scare tactics, aimed at the naïve journalists.
If at this point I had known within a few hours I would be slapped about, prodded, asked to remove my shirt, had a bag of (albeit, phoney) drugs planted on me, and forced to write a confession by a KGB operative who looked like a henchman from The Sopranos, I would have reconsidered.

The building itself was a remarkable find on behalf of the Soviet Bunker creative team. Constructed during the Cold War and completed in 1985, the bunker was kept as a secret, out in the woods, 25kms from Vilnius. Its original purpose was to house a secret backup TV station, to be used for emergency broadcasts if a nuclear attack ever erupted from the USA.
“The bunker was built near railway tracks and near the water, so in case of a nuclear war the workers out there had everything they needed,” Miss Vanagaite informed.
Officially named “Dom tvorchestva” (or, “House of Creation”) in early blueprints, the bunker was run by Lithuanian Film and Television and supplied employment for up to fifteen people, including plumbers, electricians, cleaners and guards. Yes, out in the middle of nowhere, the bunker still has hot water and electricity. This was a major reason for the Soviet Bunker team to choose the location, as there was no need for outside generators to be brought in. The Bunker team only rent the location though; the site is still owned by the state. So how does its real estate value look? Could the bunker potentially be sold off by the state?
“What would anybody do with this concrete monster, six metres under the ground?” Ruta questioned. Utilise it as a fake KGB stronghold to scare school children perhaps?

The crowd of the day’s tourists were bustling in, exchanging amiable glances and drinking down cups of the complimentary barley-ground coffee on offer (on the way to the bunker, we had stopped at a petrol-station where Miss Vanagaite had warned me, “Better get a coffee here. At the bunker, it’s only Soviet coffee”).

Sitting around sipping on hot mugs, sounds of Russian balalaikas strumming from the speakers, an uneasy peace took hold of the room. This was too calm. Though the paraphernalia adorning the walls- the metallic casts of Lenin and the severe black and white poster of notorious Lithuanian Soviet first secretary, Petras Griskevicius- gave you a grim inkling of what was to come, everything was still in a state of quiet.
Scanning the room, the ceilings mould-bitten and the lights flickering, I realised we had slipped into a time warp. The clock hanging above the Union flag still ticked, but otherwise we had become part of a frozen movie set, unmoved since 1984.

Seeing the dazed state of their guests, staff of the attraction swiftly thrust pens into their hands. A document was held out in front of us, demanding signage before we were allowed entrance into the bunker. A document which specified, among other rules, “In case of disobedience participants may receive psychological or/and physical punishments.”
Gulp. Staring at the world map on the wall which displayed the Baltic region in a uniform green, distinctly lacking in borders, I began to feel we were about take a glimpse into a life where many brave independence fighters had gone before us.

Before the ink was dry, the Soviet guard (played by revered Lithuanian actor, Irmantas Jankaitis) marched into the hall, a look of deep disdain, mixed with the remnants of a possible hangover caused by Lenin’s birthday the night before, across his face. The star wolfhound, muzzled as he was, entered alongside him, and immediately began wincing and barking, yanking on his leash held tight. The guard opened his mouth and let forth a torrent of Russian orders. You knew the event had begun.
“From once you enter, you have no rights,” Our translator, Ignis, relayed to us from what the guard was yelling. We were then sworn in as citizens of the Soviet Union. As soon as the red flag was raised, we were in; marched off by the actor/guards to meet our pretend fate in the bowels of the Soviet bunker.

As of being taken down into the bunker, I won’t explain everything of what happened. It would be too much to fathom, the depths of which they went to recreate this Soviet hell. At over three hours, the actors performed marvellously, miraculously even, as they melted into their roles, screaming, jeering, poking, and taking evident relish in it all.
I will of course say a few things; firstly, about the madness and the monotony reflected of the Soviet era. We, the inducted citizens, were forced to run through a maze of corridors, up and down stairs, and seemingly round in a loop again. We were trained against nuclear disaster and war, by placing rubber gas masks over our faces, which made us look like a group of disfigured elephants. We were forced to carry piles of trash from one bench to a second equally useless bench, and then back again, as the Soviet bunker team bid to convey to us the pointless trivialities of past Communistic ‘work ethic.’ And of course, the outrageous slurs continued to rain on the paying guests, by the seemingly omnipresent guards.

The irony of the expedition began to sound itself in all to true a form; the idea of a Soviet prison as a venture for reality tourism. People chose, in their own wishes, to enter and be trapped in this zone, a place in time which for so many years, people had been trying to escape from.
In a dimly lit subterranean room, the smell of old tobacco engrained in every corner, a KGB interrogator (and a wonderful actor) worked his paranoid scare tactics upon the people. As this was going on, a deep melancholy sunk into my mind.
I had suddenly recollected the photographic image of a man I had never met, a Lithuanian man who was held prisoner and eventually killed by Soviet forces in 1954, named Jonas Zemaitis.

For anybody who has visited the Museum of Genocide Victims (often known as the KGB museum) in Vilnius city centre, you might have seen a photo of Mr Zemaitis hanging upon a crumbling wall in one of the cells in the building’s basement.
Zemaitis was an important figure to Lithuania throughout the Soviet occupation of the country. He was a leader of the post-World War Two resistance movement, and “the most outstanding commander in the guerrilla war,” explained an extract taken from a book about his life.
Mr Zemaitis lead the battle for the independence of his country, established the pivotal ‘Lithuanian Movement for the Fight to Freedom’ (the LLKS), in 1948, and was, among many other things, a personal friend of my (then young) grandmother, Lithuanian immigrant and writer, Elena Jonaitiene.
In 1953, Zemaitis was captured and arrested by Soviet forces. After a year of interrogations, a Baltic military tribunal sentenced him to death by shooting.
In court, when he was allowed to make a final statement, he said, “I, like all like-minded people, consider that the Soviet Union intruded upon our country by force. I consider this step by the Soviet government unlawful.”

And there we were, in a basement replica of the horrors forced upon Lithuanians during the Soviet Union, learning, watching, amazed that this atrocity could have ever taken place in real time. At the end of the three hours plus in the bunker, weary though happy, we were given a bite to eat and a certificate stating we had made it.

Everybody was given a Soviet souvenir, and we made our way towards the exit. As the iron gates clanked open, the wolfhound docile now, a burst of late afternoon spring sunlight washed over us like water.
In the car driving back towards Vilnius, the sun setting around our vista, a cheery Miss Vanagaite, who would be spending Easter painting eggs with family, asked me, “And how does the freedom taste?”
I could only sit there and contemplate how lucky we really were; and how about now, it would probably taste something akin to a nice, cold, capitalist beer.

(Unedited version of an article which appeared in The Baltic Times on May 26, titled "Trapped with no way out.")

Day 15. No Master for Margarita

The Tale of the Eternal Breakfast

Dangling booze puppets hanging on tangled strings, as can well be imagined, the Swedes and I arose hungover and hobbling.
Ringing through our heads, the strobe-like recollections of misspent nocturnal mischief; returning to haunt us from the eve now gone.
Our lives were reverberating on thin and shaky lines, though somehow, our general demeanour was cheery, rambunctious, and above all, hungry.
We had awoken collectively, though in far separate beds, in our home away from homeless;
Paid-for, ready made for the brain to lay beds, at the sleepy hostel with the princely moniker of The Trouble You’re Inn, or something equally ominous.
The bunks, steel soldered to the walls in rows, were lined like army barracks; and the resemblance brought something of the psychotic soldier to Broken Bjorn’s behaviour.
“Come on, you cretinous creek walkers!” he marched the aisles wearing half a full metal jacket. I slid back under the womb of my covers as he continued his bombardment, “Let’s go get some breakfast! This ain’t no Mickey Mouse show!”
“Those Swedish certainly aren’t neutral.” I decided as the bombs went off in the basement. “Those bastards are hooking me into their own holocaust.”
And I was right.
In a seizure of synchronous teeth shaving, pant putting, and combing the lice from our eyelashes, the trio were instantly ready to hit the hub for breakfast.
Two Swedes and a Seed.
But we had to start somewhere, and the reception bar seemed the likely outlet for any advice opportunities.
“I know a great place.” Our hostelian suggested optimistically. “Margarita works there this morning. Remember her?”
In a flash of red hair, sparkly teeth and summertime all over, we all recalled in bliss.
“Yeh, yeh, I think we do. So how do we get there??”
Without a hint of the doom she was encasing us in, our master of disaster drew a line for us on a hostel map. It appeared to be a normal map.
It was more technical than a winding, gaping freeway leading beyond the crust of the earth, but it may as well have been- or just a spiralling arrow which looped around and around and a-yep, you guessed it-round.
Because that was the destination we were heading to.
And man, were we getting hungry.

Finding the restaurant was no real issue. A couple of backward steps, a mountain of Swedish slurs, but nothing abnormal in a mid-morning fast breaking search party.

And there it stood, beckoning: sucking us in, the gravitational beacon of the black hole of an art gallery limb, which sprouted flower-potted tables and lulling Lithuanian music, all in the guise of a friendly, folky establishment.
It didn’t SEEM like a bad decision. Just yet.
We took our place between the corpses and the sky, scraping out chairs to wait for a waitress. Waiting for a waitress. Waiting. Waiting.
And the clock hands began to crumble.

“What outta earth is Margarita doing? I asked for the coffee twenty minutes ago, I’m about to disintegrate!” The Swedes had already begun to combust.
And then she materialised; robed in a backless dress, and harbouring a mindless smile, Miss Margarita shot us a sorry.
“I didn’t get enough sleep last night. I’m making up for it now.”
A stunner on regular occasions today something appeared askew.
She was pretty in a clueless way, clueless in a demented form, and demented in a format which made me wonder if the menu I was reading was not my own last will and testament. For to ask Margarita for an omelette this morning, seemed like offering her all I had left.
And the numbers spilled from the face of the clock, splitting in a racket against the linoleum.
“Pleeeeease Margarita, could we get our juice now? And where are those omlettes? We’ve been sitting here an hour!”
Margarita filled our gullets from strawberry juice, to help sweeten our raw deal.
But it was all too late.
The atmosphere had solidified. We could pick at it, fumble it around and reassemble bits of the thickened air.
The Swedes were swapping heads to wile away the infinite.
“LOOK! I CAN SEE MY WORDS!” They floated stagnant in front of my frightened brow, as I tried to pick at them from dire starvation.
A distant amplifier droned an endless single cymbal crash.
The Swede had kept his promise and was inhaling toxic vapours while in mid-disintegration…when the rebel red-head burst her head back in the bubble.
“Hey! Your salad’s ready-edy-edy….” her echo sent the mystifying statement bouncing around the walls of our time cavern.
“Salads?? Margarita, we ordered omlettes!”
“It’s all part of the procedure-edure-edure…” and she faded to invisibility, all but for her off-centred smile, a cheeky Cheshire kitten.
“This is ridiculous! We’re going to miss the pig racing!” Of course, it was my complaining which was ludicrous, as a thousand hogs painted in the Flags of the World glided past, whimpering Napoleon bareback jockeying the leader.
A giant clam pulled them into its jaws like a succubus.
“Wow.”
The Swedes had completely disassembled now, their goatees wavering on parched brick, while their arms smoked cigarettes in puddles by their panting tongues.
“Oh, birds.”
I too had succumbed, shattering into lego blocks, levitating one by one in the image of an arc.
The clock was but spew dripping down the window now, burping out spontaneous ticks and colossal tocks at random intervals which each made our molecules quiver.
“Hey, sorry it’s taking so long!” Margarita stuck her embarrassed features in through the time curtain.
One of the Swedish issued a squelch of his ear against cement in retort.
I simply started bleeding from my belly button.
“It’ll be here in a minute! It’s taking so long because it’s made with love.”
At this comment, a Swede burst into flames. I was seeping at the sockets, and a feather boa was all that remained of our third.
Suddenly, a tiny door upon the ceiling creaked open. In a shudder, a vacuuming cave wrenched everything off its bolsters, tables, legs, fur coats, underwear, it all flew into the doorway like confetti, the universe swept into it, suck, suck. And spat it all out to nowhere, the middle of vacant space, the twinkling void- all there which could be distinguished was a laughing mouth, and red hair, all else gone and twisted into obscurity…
“Here are your omlettes! Sorry they took so long.” She thrust the circles with the food lying on them upon the rectangle carpet zones nearest to each of us, equipped with cutting utensils, to which we could reach from the stools we were perched on at a restaurant.
Omlettes.
Well, they don’t look so great…but it’s alright Margarita. Just keep up that summertime smile and I swear the universe will restore itself after all.
But do you have any salt?
”Yeh, of course, I’ll bring some back in a second.”
And the clock hands curved into caterpillars, and snuck off together through a crack in the concrete.

Day 14. Back to the Boogaloo- Devil Days in Kaunas

In Lithuania, the Devil is a symbol of luck.
They even have a museum dedicated to the pointy-tailed little trouble-makers.
In living rooms of hamlet homes across the countryside, you might find the common crucifix, or painted icons of the Big J-fish shafted to make room for his tireless enemy-
The Diabolical El Diablo.
Surrounding yourself with demons is believed to actually defend you from evil forces, protect you and bring you prosperity through your toils.
If so, after last weekend, I must be the luckiest man alive.

Wandering neck-deep through the maze of a medieval circus, the festival known as Hansa Days, wading through the mayhem to grab a snapshot of this silversmith, or that gallows slave, relishing it in raucous fun, I suddenly realised it was all too much.
It was time to get serious.
Or, at least get down to some serious paint gargling.
Turps tasting.
Tipping down the slippery cylindrical sewers.
Time to get rockin’ down to rock bottom.
So I hid the camera and wiped away any stains of professionalism from my lips, and sauntered out to take-on the sins of the city.
And who else to help me, I figured, than a couple of Swedes I had recently acquainted.
“We just flew here from Stockholm. We came to watch a football game. We know nothing of this country.”
“Is that so?” I questioned the couplet, Swedish to their stereotypical goatees, “well, we’d better get started then.”

Cleaning our brains free of memory, we began the bender in the afternoon.
Moods were perky, each of us an island, soaking in the sights, solitary though collectively enjoying the scenes passing by.
Two beers sank in like massage oil.
Four slipped in like sandals on butter.
Ten crashed in tolling like the Titanic.
Speech patterns were speeding, slowing, ebbing, rowing, as the Swedes began conversing in what appeared to be Tongues.
Nightfall was whipping upon us, and we could hear the panpipes picking up from the park.
Busy digesting a mixture of potatoes, bacon, sour cream and mystery mush, the neat meat ovals of the national dish, known as ‘Cepelinai’

(which translates roughly as Ded Zeppelins) we lost count of the beer tally as it juggernauted into double digits.
Already by this point, I was becoming aware of those pitchforked little dragonflies buzzing around my scalp, whispering, waiting…
But I didn’t care.
“Come on, let’s find out where this music’s comin’ from”
We skedaddled our sloppy selves out to the park.
Orienteering past pods of Middle Ages maidens, safely cushioned by our own Age of Darkness, we found our way to an opening.
Fairylights or fireflies, stage lights and cigarettes, wheeled through our vistas as if from a long-exposure photo.
We focused our three dououblle viiiisions upon the centre stage.

Spiders in your eyes
Plotting to catch the flies
Build a bed
Of wicker net
And catch them by surprise

“what was that??” I span to ask the Swedes- I forgot they had left to discover the country one portaloo at a time.
I was alone.

Bouncing on the trampoline
Trying to see above your dreams
Rip the net
Break the bed
And douse it all in gasoline

“WHO IN THE HELL KEEPS SAYING ALL THIS??”
I was teetering, wavering from angle to gangly angle, with not a soul in my periphery.
Suddenly, the Swedes swept in out of the night. Bjorn was shaking his hands in disgust of the amenities, and the other laughing at something else entirely.
“Man, are you watching this band?? They’re incredible!”

Medieval Rammstein were hammering away upon a gong. Four tattooed bagpipers couldn’t work together to make the instrument look tough. But yet, somehow, their screeching hornet cacophony wielded some kind of eerie semblance to the Darth Vader death march...
I scoffed, about to resound some no-doubt redundant commentary, when-

The desperate silent chants
Of the drowning, helpless man
Breathe the bubbles
Curse your troubles
And reincarnate as an ant

My eyes roamed around savagely, searching for any enemies.
“Dude, you look concerned about something.” My friend Bjorn consoled me. “Have summa this whiskey and shut up.”
Ahh, whiskey. The devils maple syrup.
Splashed upon the pancakes of my mind, I figured it was worth it, if only to let HIM worry about anything else tonight.
Ggggglug…
I went to pass back the bottle, but horny Bjorn, the greedy Swede, had begun serenading another maiden.
Well, another sip should stop these badly written sonnets shooting round my skull.
Ahhh. And as I held the bottle up to my pursing lips, draining a slug, all was okay, then—slip a dee do da, turning, spiralling, what, sinking, PUSHED BACK INTO MY SELF, consciousness changing, ripping off into nowhere, out unto the backroads, WHA- AAAAAhhhhhHHHHHH….*

(A ream of technicolour puke burst from his oesophagus. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his flannelette shirt. When he craned his neck back into normal position, a ghastly glow had come over what used to be his face. He had left the building. Jimmy Blue smiled and struck a match)

“Dude, pass that whiskey up!” Horny Bjorn demanded. “Dude, what’s goin’ on?”

Jimmy Blue gazed absently at the brooding Swedish chops in front of him.
A smile flickered on to his hairy gob like the Grinch.
“You know what’d look good on you? One a’these!!”
Jimmy Blue threw a vagrant right fist to rendezvous with Bjorn’s golden jaw.
Bjorn staggered backward, clutching at his face.
His nose had begun to piss blood, and he called out in confusion;
“Who the fuck are you??”
Jimmy Blue tap-danced an Irish jig- then went up close to breathe his whiskey bedevilled breath into Bjorn’s defenceless nostrils.
“I’m Jimmy Blue. You know that movie, ‘The Mask’, with Jim Carrey? Well, for Jimmy Blue, the mask is booze,” he snatched the whiskey from the Swede, and hopped upon his shoulders, shouting, “AND JIMMY BLUE WANTS TO RIDE THESE SWeDISH SLOPES!!! YEEEHA!”
Here he jumped down, and bounded off into the crowd.

(For documentaries sake, the last scenes of violence and shoulder hopping did not actually take place. But Jimmy Blue did appear [for reference as to who is Jimmy Blue, and what he wants to do to you, check Day 12], and to prove it, here are snippets out of his conversations until the end of the night)

“Who’s sitting here? Your boyfriend?
“What town am I from??” spit “CZECHOSLAVAKIA!”
“How many flowers are on your blouse?”
“One thousand? You say ONE BILLION?”
”Are you calling her fat? WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME??”
“Seventeen? Hell, that’s legal.”

And so on. Black spots revisited- Again.

And once again, again, again, before the dawn raised its gruesome mug, Jimmy Blue vanished, leaving me with the dirty sandpaper mouth I deal with today. The Devils I tells ya- THE DEVILS. It had absolutely nothing to do with innocent old me.

Day 13. Hanseatic Daze

As told by the nameless, homeless coma patient, waking up years before he was born.

My eyes shoot open to a coffee-coloured ceiling.
What is this? Something smells like diarrhoea.
Around me are scattered obscene torture devices; poles, magnifiers, banners, clamps.
What year is this? The sounds of yodelling drift in through the wooden window.
My dozy eyes begin to focus, and I cast my pooling gaze round an archaic settee;
Blinds of twine, sheets of bramble, a whole gallery of hocus-pocus medicines and a glass jar of leeches blocking the door as a choc.
Is this still Lithuania?
In stiff exertion, I rip the IV from my arm, the catheter from my arse.
Blimey! Slimy.
Leeches gather, sucking squeakily on the edge of the jar closest to me like tiny tadpoles.
They are watching.

Turning myself off my side, my body creaks like the opening of an ancient sarcophagus. How long was I lying here? Crumbly, off-smelling bandage around my forehead, I lurch like a mummy over to the window frame, and lunge my head outside.

Oh dear.

Either I’m in a sanatorium for severe delusions, or I’ve awoken in a different dimension.

Skinny cattle wander by unsupervised, sun shooting between their legs like the flickers of an old movie projector. Bovine belches and permeating odours suffocate the scenery, but I can’t shut my foggy eyes. Beyond the farm animals, turrets of smoke cough their way into the air, the chaos caused by smouldering barbeques. Around these fry-ups dance a collective chimera of weirdos; battalions hiding beer-bellies in suits of armour, slaves screaming from metal stocks, pelt salesmen happily bargain hunting with the whores, jolly jesters pestering a priest.

Judging by the clothing, the headgear, the gastrointestinal drifts in the air; I’ve woken up in either the Middle Ages, World War Six, or some breed of costumed fair.
The afternoon’s shadow is stretching its way out along the cobblestones; I lean out to try and decipher the situation more fully lit, then flip! My wonky hospital bedded body flops through the frame, and plonks me out on to a scabby patch of grass between the mud and the daisies outside.
I pick up my bones and assess this new world;
The plucking of lutes, boiling pans of goose meat, coquettish damsels coveted by cocky princes, potatoes sizzling to the side, and a town drunkard yells dirty proclamations.
Some kind of village festival is turning these peasants into crazed rabble!

Arms were uplifted, clutching torches, pitchforks and digital cameras (?). The crowd were circulating around a hubbub I could only hear, but not see a wink of...
Clashes of metal on metal.
The wild cries of hogs in pain.
Squeals from the bowels of bagpipes.
Fearful bellowing in Lithuanian language.
“Maybe the euros collapsed their economy,” I thought logically, “Maybe it’s not what it seems…”

I climbed a background mound, forehead throbbing behind disintegrating bandages, to gain a proper vantage point.
“ENCHANTMENT!” I yelled it, willing the cease of my hallucinations, these unstoppable scenes before me. “NECROMANTICS!”

Not a soul from the crowd turned to look at this wacko on the hill. The vision for them, two knights in full armour, clanking it out against one another, silver sumos with swords, facing off and spraying out sand, as a jester ran amok, spitting limericks, was apparently more than enough.

Members of the rabble, hob-nosed and pecan-eared, swore unfathomable curses for the destruction of whichever valorous hero their bets were lodged against.
In a 2:1 clean sprawl, it was a clear gambit; I had to escape.
But to where?
I snuck through a sewer pipe, nostalgically reminding me of long nights in London, until grimy and slime-covered, like mornings in London, I burst unto the daylight, which streamed over the city walls as if from a waterfall of liquid quartz.
In stealth, I hurried up a makeshift path, perplexed at where to turn.
A clip-clop of horses trotted toward me, yet unseen. I slipped down a side street, the vibraphone thump of my heart nearly giving it all away.
The gutters skirting my fateful alley held me tight within them, bouncing me along like a ball in bumper bowling.
Upon the fortress wall, a giant mosaic of Medusa, or a hippogriff, or some medieval monster, face twisted in a gruesome growl, startled me to my knees.
Donk- They hit against the cobbles, ricocheting, crick-crack, like a couple of eggs, so long had they been strapped and dormant in the hospital bed.
A pained yelp burst from my guts, betraying me.
Movement sounded from both directions; I had been caught out.
The feathered codpiece of a guard appeared at one end of the alley- and as I span to run toward the river the other way, a platoon of the rat-mothers blocked me off.
I was done for.
Suddenly, I caught her reflection in Medusa’s glare;

A bountiful maiden, combing her silken hair, perched atop her second story balcony. She beckoned me to her sultry side.
Her locks of brunette unfurled, cascading down into my awaiting claws- and as the flurry of primped-up mercenaries prepared to maul me, I scrambled up the locks like a nimble squirrel, up up to her scalp upon the balcony.
Puffing gritty lungs out to the maiden, I raised my shaky digits to thank her-
And her face turned the texture of a scouring pad- she HISSSSSED; her eyes redder than the pisspots of Mars. As I felt and looked for the silken locks between my fingers, I cried;
“SNAKES!”
Cobras were stretching out around my broken body, coiling into my soiled pants and parts. In a flop and a flash I dived from the balcony, into the army of the awaiting guards.
They carried me like a corpse between their codpieces, back to the festivities; and this time, I was the central show-piece; with my neck locked into gallows.

An executioner bit down on a two-by-four, splitting the plank into a shower of splinters.
I was sweating out meatballs.
He drew closer, raising his glinting axe blade to the grimy sky; it flew toward me.
I slammed my eyes shut and dreamed of the pretty maiden, before the snakes, and of all the pretty maidens back on planet earth…
SLICE.
In movie special effects, the sluicing, juicing splitting sound, the quick click of a paper cut, of a dropped melon, of a burst balloon, is what would have been heard.
My head rolled out into the basket positioned underneath.
The crowd erupted into glee, their hungry teeth gnashing in yellow unison, as my basket was carried away.
The bandages had slipped off me now, exposing the ditches in my forehead.
Lobotomy chop-marks?
Maybe it explains it all…
Then, in a blur of colour, I could feel my basket tipped; I was tumbling, rolling headfirst, and headonly, down the rivulets of a corrugated rooftop, along with another couple of curious decapitants (Swedes, I figured), until the three skulls plopped into the compost of an animal trough.
The executioner craned his neck and exposed his malformed tonsils, cackling up to the great new moon.
He pulled back his leg, and in one final insult he kicked me like a porcupine.
I flew up through the air until finally smacking down into a pile of pig-shit.

From here I could watch what would surely be my last;
A pair of muddy piglets, racing toward me, fear in their beady eyes- as a couple of gigantic (human) beasts chased them to the pen where my head lay, waiting to be devoured.
Closer, closer they tore, until they were feasting upon my scalp, tearing it to pieces with their tiny piglet teeth, chomping and gouging and ouching every centimetre of what was left of the already banged up head… and a curtain came over my vision, ‘that’s all folks’, and off I beggared, descended into a dreamless sleeping infinity.

*
As morning rose once more, I grappled for my neck. Still connected? Yes, just! Margarita and the Swedes (of who we will hear more later.) were looking sheepish, straggling and conversing in the hostel reception.
“Did you see those pig races yesterday?” I cracked into peals of laughter, nearly splintering my jaw like the executioners two-by-four, “Damn near thought we’d travelled back in time.”

Day 12. Press Play

The Rumours are True, about Jimmy Blue, and What he Wants to Do to You...

Wow. In Vilnius’ veritable harem, Play, you’d better get yourself a hallpass, because there is something going on. If you do, and are also equipped with proper credentials such as no sense of shame and a bad set of sideburns, then clamber down the stairs, and let the show begin.

This is a story about a guy, if you can call an abominable creature a ‘guy’, I can claim to know, named Jimmy Blue.
Jimmy Blue is a late-night howler, who storms around the valleys of vice with a brainfull of mixed nuts.
Jimmy Blue walks, gawks and spaces out just like I do. But he is not me.
Jimmy Blue occupies the hours when I am sleeping, shelved away in the backroads of consciousness, where my jars of morals, routines and sensibilities stand collecting dust on the bedside table.
Jimmy Blue likes to smash these jars when I am not watching.
Jimmy Blue is a vandal.
The things which Jimmy Blue says and does cannot be repeated in the presence of God-fearing folks- so that’s why I need to tell you.
Jimmy Blue is a viper.
The only times I meet Jimmy Blue is when I awake with the headache he left me. Here we have crossed over; he passes the baton and expects I can carry on a productive day, after our rendezvous has levelled me to the mattress.
Jimmy Blue has a sickness which cannot, by means of medical science, be cured.
His symptoms are as such; a rising feeling of frenzy when guitar lines begin to grind. A loss of inhibitions, motor functions and wallet inhabitants once green lights start to lume. A giddy greed for sipping Sooey Ciders as the midnight moon dips into tomorrow.
Jimmy Blue is a masochist.
And Jimmy Blue likes to say, “The party’s jeeest getting started…”

Last night, Jimmy Blue went out walking underneath the neon rainbow. His jacket, leather, was zipped up to his dingo’s grin and his beady, iridescent eyeballs.
Jimmy slowed his pace- what was this sound he was hearing?

Bump, bump, bump.

Jimmy covered his mouth with his putrid palms. His sickness was coming on.

Bump, bump, bump.

The bassline was as heavy as a slave’s iron chains. Jimmy started to writhe and giggle.
Suddenly, the doors flew open! Out paraded a bevy of exquisite Baltic booties, all gung-ho on turning Jimmy’s mind to liquid.
His mortal enemies.
Jimmy knew fate was against him. His teeth were chattering.
He outstretched his quivering hand-
“Do you mind if I bum a cigarette?”
“Sure!” Her grape-lacquered fingernails were decorated with tiny fish.
Pulsating fantasies were swimming through Jimmy’s skull.
“And what do you do with yourself?” He managed to spit out in a moment of lucidity.
“I’m studying to be an interior designer.”
“Oh!” -started a shell-shocked Jimmy, doing his best to block himself from mentioning anything to do with designing her interior.
He hurried away from the subject.
“I like your earrings.”
“Thanks! My friend made them for me. See, one’s a boy, and this one’s a girl. They’re sheep!”
They were indeed, the shepherd’s boon themselves.
“Remarkable…” Jimmy Blue had transformed into an astro-physicist, so deeply was he entranced in studying the two sheep, and the quizzical blonde brow which lay pleasantly stretched between them.

Bump, bump, bump.

“Say, that sounds like my song!” -lied Jimmy Blue. “Shall we? Let’s go deck out this interior.” He held out his bony arm, breathing heavily.
“Okay!” She grabbed his outstretched appendage and guided him through the pinball machine maze of black stockings, knee-high boots and tank-tops, and in through the flapping door- a couple of moth monsters to the dance-floor flame.

Bump, bump, bump.

The door swung shut behind them, nearly smacking Jimmy’s arse as he entered- and the less said about what went on behind closed doors, the better.

All I know is this; Jimmy Blue stumbled outta there at dawn, dejected and depressed as his name suggests, and hobbled on up the long lonely hill home.
I haven’t caught a glimpse of him today, but if I do, I’ll beat the bedbugs outta him, for leaving me with this horrible hell of a hangover.

Day 11. Kalvariju Markets (as Captured by the Eye of the Fly)

Out front the crumbled yellow gates, a haggard old lady stands bagging radishes from a bucket. Her offsider, a narrow, coily character suckles on a thin cigar.
A wheelchaired cripple, legs vamoosed, stumps before the kneecaps, tries his chances on the charity of passers by.
Upon entering Kalvariju, an odour of raw meat slaps you in the jaw like a fish.
A multicoloured umbrella shading a dispute over a bag of onions nearly falls, and in a tsunami the bulbs tumble out on to the asphalt, and roll their way to pooling puddles.
An ancient face carved into rivers of wrinkles approaches you, begging incomprehensible, or asking inane queries, and another, a Roma, smile gilded by a golden tooth, selling plastic bags, begins searching for a surcharge.
Beastern European men, shotgun blasts resonate from out their stares, wily fashion criminals, coated in army camouflage, stained shorts, questionable morals, storm troop around the edges.

Pumpkin salesmen and shoe repairers quibble, to sell or to fix, which?
The elderly women in headdresses- headscarves of electric pinks, plum purples, fresh painted fence whites, tied tight around melancholic expressions, hiding the crops of grey follicles underneath, sell fruits of various qualities and ancestry.
Leather jacketed couples meander by, sniffing at the pastries cooking on the boiling hot plates, tempted, suspicious, onwards.
The clouds are pestering, thumping a passage of rain on the ramshackle tin, a raisin coloured dog snuffles around footfalls, and ponds of water splash in a sloppy symphony.
Hooded raincoats of luminescent green appear. Slapdash baskets filled with plants and potted meat swing about all over, held tight in clasped grips.
Mouths masticate bargaining chips, down tambourine alley, teeth stained, but symbolically happy, curved into crescents.
The broom salesman stands tired, her arms unmoving, her face an old butter mill, always churning what’s inside.

Housing block homesteads filled from these possessions; mouldy computer keyboards, Russian records, Snoopy dolls, wooden spoons, candlabras, Albanian push-up bras, plastic toy racecars, race-tracks, fish tanks, cups with cracks, a beard, two curious eyes peering out, filled to the brim with a portion o’ port, which hovers forcefully by his side, guiding him, claiming reason with a clamp.
Dangling strings of mushrooms tied one by one like necklaces of Arabic jewels, sapphires, emeralds, fungus, hang spooling from stall lattice, all swaying in unison to the weather, as if shuffling to a samba.
Bundles of flower buds- and a deflowered darkness; a heavy-built man shouldering a heavier-built sack, hearty scars indenting his brow, hard-luck stories one over his nose, two on his chin, tales of blood and deceit. Walking laps, one, three; stops; now inter-coursing with a thin, long-haired sheepherder, a rustic, biblical one, riding a rusted bike.
A meeting of brown shoes and grey jacket- He picks up her shopping bags and plants a kiss unto her furry cheek. Another pair- A hug- One carries candles, the other pink violets. Combed wig wanders past, silver Elvis in a plaid spangled sports jumper. Overweight straw seller giving the crow’s eye to a creepy couple, still the broom salesman stands dormant, shade falling over her features- maybe she is wandering into slumber.
Colourful Chinese spinning wheels turning at velocity as the wind rises a gear, long legs upon high-heels, dimples, a sea of denim flashes by, whoosh, jars of beetroot, the smell of cooked chicken, an argument, the fish salesman and his protegee discuss sturgeon over sandwiches.
World’s Biggest Melon for loan, 200 percent off, skin sagging over the eyes of the depleted.
Brown leather- all the rage, perhaps machine-gun warehouses nearby?
Toothless grin, lettuce leaves flutter as a jet roars above, the frau with the tickling ponytail, swish in pink headband and blue umbrella, pointy as a sickle, the pigeons, feeding, the puddles, breeding, cigarette butts like boats in their floating quietness. And there! The meeting place of the equally disenfranchised, a collective lighter lit, laughter, but no photos.
The purple parka bursts through the mob, pummelling along to the meat man. Who will finally buy this huge pumpkin? She looks shocked nobody wants to fork out for her phoney merchandise, her lumps of lacy undergarments, people want radishes, potatoes, not randy robes, the pastry chef smokes fat cigars, coughing throughout, a Roma woman bellows ‘PRIMADONNA’ and her sidekick in woollen vest giggles approvingly.
All the sunglasses on the shaky rack reflect grey skies through their missing pupils, a fart like a warthogs honk, licks upon the air, women are gathering faster than the pigeons now, squawking, the man in a cream cap pulls out a fresh Soviet-style smoke, sucks it down, embers redhot, matching the caskets of tomatoes marching past, the multicoloured umbrella folded now, put away in tight tarpaulins, the stick salesman, her headware purple, plump cheeks a similar shade, sold not a stick today, the pumpkin, unbought? Crates of strawberries shoved into bigger boxes and into trucks off to feed granny’s grateful children by dinner tables under low wooden rooves, as daddy accepts the thought of getting back up early to hock the potates, to waver out underneath the bonnet, tomorrow dawning, beat the rush before eight, never too late, and the smoke from his quietly noble cigarette leaps to the evening like an exhalation of phantoms, out to meet their fate.