July 20, 2013

July 20, 2013

Today is a travel day.  We leave Warsaw bright and early heading northeast in our motor coach.  I did not say bus. Motor Coach is the first class of bus travel.  We sit in big comfy seats with enough legroom for the tallest of passengers and listen to Chopin concert music while we watch the Polish countryside roll by.  Poland is mostly flat farmland intermingled with thick forest.  It is  boring except for the many black and white Storks feeding in the fields, and nesting in enormous eagle-size nests atop utility poles.  We also see several roadside stands with locals selling berries and mushrooms they find in the forest.

  

In the late evening we cross the border into Lithuania and stop at our hotel in the capital, Vilnius. I always like to learn a few words of the local language when I travel.  It keeps the mind stimulated and makes the locals laugh at my feeble verbal skills. My resolve is being severely tested on this trip.  We are going to visit nine countries speaking nine very different languages. We finally got proficient with Polish, a Slavic language, and now we must switch to Lithuanian, a Baltic tongue.  This one may actually be easier for me.  I learned that Thank You is Aciu (pronounced Achoo, like you are going to sneeze). Now if I can only say it without laughing every time.