When is a green man not a green man?

The answer is... when you're in Lithuania and people are allowed to turn right/left over your green man. Hazardous mostly because I've been automatically looking right as I cross the road, and the approaching traffic comes from the left! A few hairy situations so far! I have made a Croatian friend who has decided that she is to be my road-safety guardian angel.

Today started with a 1:30am knock on the door. I foolishly ignored it... I was quite scared but I have no idea what I thought it would be!! Unlikely that a threatening person would have entered the hotel and even less likely that it was a polite thief who wanted to knock first. So I closed my eyes, and a few minutes later my phone rang. I answered it...'he-l-lo..?' but no-one said anything. I hadn't set an alarm as I don't have one, and I don't have a watch either so I couldn't check the time. I peered out of the window in case I had slept in so long and they were calling me for breakfast. I tried to remember if I had requested a wake-up call. Outside was very dark. Still, it stays light very late here. Maybe that means that 9am is dark. This sounded very feasible inside my still-asleep head. The knock came again. Twice..

This time I managed to drag myself out of bed and there was standing a hotel member of staff and a girl with a suitcase. So, I had a competition room-mate and no-one had told me! An example of the great organisation again

My room-mate is called Lela and she's lovely - she's got an American husband so as well as being able to speak English, she understands all my little comments. I met the rest of the girls at breakfast (why are there no boys in this competition?) and lots of them have been in the same competitions before - there seems to be an International (or at least European) jazz competition clique. I think I've just joined it!

Lela and I did some sight-seeing today... well, I use that term loosely. The main sight in the town is our hotel.

Our hotel

My excellent guide book did us a wrong today, tempting us to a Blacksmith's Museum which promised 'a real working forge combined with a museum... hot and sweaty, glistening gentlemen at work.' Really? The forge was abandoned and we were greeted by two ladies eager to take our money, but offering an empty till with no change for a 200 LT note. They scrambled together something which may have come from their laundry money tin. Something seemed strange here until I realised my guidebook was written in 2007. Unfortunately, none of the exhibit labels were in English, so we got by by assessing the German words and discussing the artifacts. I wonder if we were the week's only visitors.

The next museum was the old castle, which had English labels, but the same number of visitors.

Klaipeda is an interesting town, but not a great one. Evidently, from the 13th to 19th centuries, it was burnt down repeatedly by war after war, and has never fulfilled the potential it has by being in such a stunning location. By rights, it should be the country's capital (Lithuania is the only Baltic state with its capital inland), but the fate of Klaipeda has been one of resigned failure over the centuries. Even as the only port in Lithuania, in the 1500s it was being visited by only 20-50 boats per year.


It was occupied immediately by Germans in 1939 - Lithuania put up no fight in giving it away to German occupation - and by 1945 the entire city had been abandoned.

Now it is a mixture of elegant buildings (which all look closed - even the museums had no signs on the front doors, and required a lot of effort to get in), crumbling yellow bricks, and hotels. I wonder what the people do here.