From SapfoFest it was just one short day to cycle to Kaunas. On Sapfo we had already met a lot of people from Kaunas, and it turns out there is a lot going on in that city!
We had been given a free campsite for two nights, which turned out to be a bit of field behind the official campervan site, underneath a busy motorway, but hot showers are always appreiciated regardless.
We pitched our tents and headed to the co-operatively run pizza place in the city, run by the same group as catered the SapfoFest. We all piled in an kept them busy with our 12 orders, but they didn’t seem to mind.
We also met with the Kauno Sp(i)auda, a radical collective that organise in the city, publishing zines on counter culture and anti-authoritarian politics, running an infoshop (unfortunatly not open at the moment, but hopefully again soon), and organising with other Lithuanian groups against the new labour code (a new law taking away all workers’ rights). In spring, together with people from Vilnius, they made national headlines by blocking the entrance to the parliament to protest against the new labour code.
We spent a lot of time with our friends from SapfoFest, hanging out on the river, in parks, in their house collective, and in the collective pizza place.
In collaboration with the local cycling association, we set up another bike fixing event next to a skate park. It was well-attended, and many people were interested about what we are doing. Cycle-touring was not unfamiliar with some people, who are planning to join an organized cycling trip through Estonia soon.
On the second day in Kaunas, we visited Creative Corner 360°. It is a located in a big warehouse building that is rented by a company trading with construction materials. The boss of this company made part of the building into a project where materials from the trash are collected and workshops how to reuse them are organized, often for school classes. We were invited to talk about our tour, he told us about his project, and we helped set up some things in the place.
In preparation for our visit there, we had a discussion about our theme “Out of Trash”, what it means to us, what we have done about it so far, and what ideas we have to do about it during the rest of the tour. A separate blog post will follow soon.
