Last blog!

Hello!

This is our last blog! I can’t believe it’s already over and done with! Our journey has gone so incredibly fast! I really cannot believe that we are taking a plane tomorrow eve to head back home..

It has been an amazing journey, but of course, we still have to visit the capital of our last country, Vilnius! Vilnius is the largest city of Lithuania and therefore the capital. It’s a very pleasant and beautiful city, probably because it displays a variety of architectural expressions. In 1994, the Old Town of Vilnius was listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, we expected something like that seeing you get a sense of the interesting history throughout the whole town. In 2009, Vilnius was also the European Capital of Culture. However, we noticed the city still has to grow concerning tourist attraction. We saw a lot of advertisements for its festivals, we crossed several churches and buildings in different styles because of its many occupations,… but tourists are hard to spot. A shame though, Vilnius is truly a beautiful city with a lot of things to discover and very kind people who live there.

If we look at the city’s business development, we can be surprised by its quick growth, the whole wide world can be surprised actually. Sophie also mentioned in her blog that poverty is almost non-existing in Lithuania and you can very much see that with your own eyes, even when you go to the ‘less fortunate’ neighborhoods of the city. It seems Lithuania is the perfect country to start in if you want to do business in the Baltic countries.

Seeing we only have a day and a half to visit the city (we lost a couple of days along the road), we chose our things-to-see carefully. We started with the Cathedral Basilica and Bell Tower. When we entered the Cathedral, we were overwhelmed by St Casimir chapel, it’s an old baroque chapel with beautiful drawings. Once we came out the Cathedral, we went up Bell Tower, a symbol of Vilnius from which we had an amazing view over Vilnius city.

The Cathedral and Bell Tower are located in the middle of the Old Town. It was a bit hard walking through the town because the small streets bended and they went up and down, but we managed. Shredding through the streets we passed squares, churches, monasteries and synagogues. We also found lots of little shops where we could buy souvenirs and artifacts made by hand. The Old Town is small, but really lovely to walk through, it’s like a postcard.

Last but not least we visited the President’s Palace which is located near the Vilnius University. It was the residence of bishops and many General Governors. The palace has a beautiful yard and a wine cellar which we visited. It is still used as a home and a workplace to President Valda Adamkus. Also, many delegations from foreign countries are often received in this palace. When we walked back to the hotel, we saw some people protesting against nuclear power near the Prime Minister’s office, more detailed information we found in an article of which you can find the link below.

Tired of this day and (a little) happy to be going home tomorrow, we went to sleep in one of the many hostels in Vilnius. Tomorrow we are going to have a walk around town, visit the nearest lake for a last swim, pack our bags and take a taxi to the airport. Around midnight we will arrive in Belgium again!

Thanks a lot for following our blog, you guys! See you again in our next blog (when we saved enough money to organize a similar trip) Bye!!   

Sources: 

http://www.vilnius.com/

Article: http://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/28596/

Our last country to visit

Finally, we arrive in the last country to visit, Lithuania so we tried to make the best of it. Later on we will be visiting the capital, which is Vilnius.

First, some more information about Lithuania because it is important to know the country was first part of the Soviet Union, later on they were the first Soviet republic to declare independence. Nowadays, it has one of the fastest growing economies in the European Union. Moreover Lithuania has a high average income, only 2% live in poverty, also the country has a well-developed  modern infrastructure of railways and airports. Lithuania has 99 kilometers of sandy coastline. The tourism is very important to this country too.

I read an article about Lithuania in which they say that Lithuania is a phenomenon in various ways. As I said before the tourism is so popular among the local population, because of that prices have gone up and Lithuania became stronger and stronger. The article even mentions the most popular activities in Lithuania, simply sauna and beer tourism. You can find the link of the article at the end of this blog.

Enough about that, over the years Lithuania surely developed a lot. When we were visiting, luckily it was warm weather the entire week but I heard that during the winter the temperatures can be more than -20°C. The most extreme is -40°C! Gee, I would not like to visit Lithuania during the winter.

During the week we took the bus a couple of times because we had been taking the metro in the last countries so we wanted to try something else. When we arrived some more in the centre of Lithuania we were so hungry we bought something that is called zeppelins which are meat filled potatoes based zeppelin-shaped. You do not want to be a vegetarian in Lithuania because pork is used in almost everything. 

Lithuania is also a country that has a lot of different beers so we tried some to see if they were better than in Belgium. They were actually quite nice, but I can’t say I like them better.

We were very tired at the end of the day but we were very lucky when someone offered us a place to sleep. They must have heard we were tourists and that we were looking for a hotel. Apparently home stays are typical. The next day we had a typical Lithuanian breakfast!

That day, we visited a city called Kaunas. We have seen several churches, even a forth that was used as a defensive fortress once and some museums too. We really enjoyed our stay, in other cities there were botanical gardens, large shopping streets etc.

To end with an interesting fact, basketball is the most popular sport, they have a lot of success on an international level. Another fact is that the ‘Strongest Man in The World’ lives in Lithuania, he has won so many competitions during his career as a strongman.

We are almost out of money but we still have to visit Vilnius, by train we are heading to our last city to visit. 

Sofie Van Laeken

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuania
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attractions-g274948-Activities-Kaunas.html

Article:

http://www.propertywisebulgaria.com/article/lithuania-flourishing-rural-tourism/id_655/catid_6

Four girls and the city called Brest

Hello everybody!

We are still visiting Belarus, our last country before we arrive in Lithuania. I’m a bit sad because the end of our fantastic journey comes very close.

After visiting the capital of Belarus, Minsk, we are moving on to another city called Brest. It’s not the most famous city but let me convince you that it is really worth a visit.

 

First, some background information. In 2010, there were living 310,800 living in the city who is situated at the border with Poland. It’s the capital city of the “Brest voblast”.

Since World War ll, Brest became a principal border crossing thanks to its orientation on the main railway line connecting Berlin and Moscow. Nowadays, it connects the European Union and the so called Commonwealth of Independent States, a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics.

Because our trip is almost over, we did not want to lose a lot of time so we decided to take a shower and start exploring. We started off with a relaxing walk by the Naberezhnaya river. The riverfront has a lot of willow trees and there are a lot of ducks swimming in the river.

The next day, we took the bus to visit the Fortress of Brest that preserves the ruins of a massive fort built in the XIX century by the Russian Empire. An interesting fact is that it achieved “Hero Fortress” status during World War II. Walking the grounds of this impressive fortification is an unforgettable experience that gives a good sense of the poverty faced by the forces that were caught there.

The Fortress also owns a museum where you can learn about battles between attacking Germans and defending Soviet. We also saw there was a small part about Polish defenders who were attacked earlier by Germans and Soviets. Trust me, the history of Brest Fortress is complicated but if you are really interested, I am sure it is worth learning.

There is also a patriotic war film called: “The Brest Fortress”. You can visit the following link if you want to know more about this movie. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/dec/24/russia-spies-kremlin-backed-nationalist-film?INTCMP=SRCH

On our last day in Brest, we decided to do something very fun! We went ice-skating in the Ice Palace. Nobody of us was really good at this sport so it was quite hilarious. I am sure I will remember those moments forever.

Thanks for being with us today!

Lies Descheemaeker