Next, to Vilnius. Back to cycling (legally..) on the roads!
We first camped in the back of park in the centre, but it was quite exposed – it was below a tourist viewpoint, and now the scruffy cyclists with their tents, small dog, and giant pots were the newest tourist interest. We also got woken up by Italian segway tour guides with megaphones.
The next day, whilst half the group huddled under the tarp from the rain (apparently it had actually followed us from Belarus) another person in the biketour met a friendly local who offered us space in his flat! Suddenly we managed to pack everything in a quarter of the time it normally takes us, and went to somewhere dryer.
In Vilnius there is no bike kitchen, so we picked a random park beforehand (and by coincidence, the flat to which we got invited is right on the edge of that park) and invited people to come and fix their bikes with us. A lot of people were reached by the event on Facebook, and in the end 6 or 7 turned up.
From the park we moved to a former monastery where Algirdas told us about his organisation Spikis. Every year, he invites people to cycletour with him in a far away country, such as India, China or Mongolia, and makes a movie about it. Together we watched one of them, Cycling The Himalayas.
We also visited Technarium, a huge collective workshop space for wood, metal, ceramics, electronics, sewing and many other things, which is used both for professional and private purposes.
One evening we had a short workshop about how to behave in queer spaces, as our next stop will be a queer festival.
Of course some sightseeing was also part of the agenda for some people.
