Just a Little Run Around the World: 5 Years, 3 Packs of Wolves and 53 Pairs of Shoes. Rosie Pope Swale

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       CHAPTER 10 The World of Special So-called Ordinary People

       Lithuania, January 2004

      Girls with high cheekbones and hair dyed bright scarlet or green. Houses leaning sideways, after years of being buffeted by storms; firs bowed by ice, gales like moonstorms and people so full of life that young and old they seem to be dancing as they proceed along the hazardous icy pavements in the little towns. These are my first impressions of Lithuania.

      Life beneath the razzmatazz seems hard. As in Poland, everybody here seems to have a passionate determination that they won’t get bowed down like the trees in the storms. I run along a road parallel to the highway to reach the first town Marijampole, 19km north of the Polish border. I continue on many small roads leading north, though more snowed in every day. On New Year’s Eve I’m invited in by a charming family who I meet at a little village store near Kazlu Ruda. They are Lena, who is Russian; Artur, a Lithuanian; Elzbieta and Ivan, their children; and Babai the cat. The apartment has no doors. I think they’re too busy to put them up as they both have three jobs. A teacher only earns the equivalent of US$30 a month. Lena looks like a ballet dancer. She’s tall, slim and very beautiful with long hair and seems to prance and whirl instead of just walking around. The most precious object in her apartment is the washing machine her husband bought after being away on a contracting job. There are presents and extra celebration, Lena explains, because Artur has just been paid for the first time for a year as his employer needed to keep his workers’ wages to stay in business.

      Lena is imitated by her three-year-old daughter, who’s been given rollerblades and is trying out the prancing on her skates. She keeps falling over, but laughs and gets up again, going for longer every time. It’s happy chaos and much fun. The cat leaps out of the way as if wishing it had rollerskates too and is practising quick escapes in the small living room that doubles as a bedroom. Lena empties my pack, putting clothes, that still seem to have bits of the forest from several different countries in them, into the wash. The washing itself is like a fiesta. Then Lena grabs some salts she says are great for the feet and flings them into the bath, a rare boon. There’s no door here either. For modesty’s sake she hangs up a blanket and throws me some of her clothes to wear, so I can get mine off for the wash.

      After that we eat and eat. I’m so glad I bought sausage, cakes and chocolates at the little village store, but it isn’t much compared to what they give me to feast on. We watch the New Year celebrations on Lithuanian TV. Artur says that despite the show of optimism on TV, getting work is tough now. It’s not easy to get a visa to travel in most of Europe, and also they’re now required to have a visa for Russia, which they used not to need. They are proud that Lithuania in 1991 was the first country to become independent among the former Soviet republics, after much bloodshed through the years, but they also feel hemmed in, in a new kind of way.

      As midnight approaches, we head gaily out with all the others pouring from apartments blocks, to see in the New Year. Lots of singing, and fireworks blaze their path beneath the crescent moon.

      There is a dangerous river beyond here. I’m grateful to a man from the next village who tells me the river Nemunas has no ferries in winter, but that the ice isn’t yet strong enough to walk across on. I’m saved a long stretch of retracing steps. I go instead via a little place called Geariliavi. It’s cold, but I take my mind off it by eating Lena’s pasties that she’s packed in profusion to keep me going.

      I sink up to the waist in snow. It doesn’t get ploughed here. The wind’s howling and by evening the bivvi is frozen so hard rolled up in the pack that it’s all stuck together. I’m frightened that I can’t prise the opening apart enough to climb in it to get shelter. It’s painful and slow to break it open but I manage to get inside. It becomes an oddly shaped frozen igloo, smaller than ever as it has contracted and iced together. I have to take everything to bed with me, especially the shoes. It’s not enough to bring them inside the bivvi. They freeze so hard I can’t undo the laces and get my feet in.

      I try bypassing Kaunas, as the main road through is full of lorries flinging snow and slush over me, but I get lost, eventually finding myself in the centre of the city after midnight, and carry on into the side-streets. Everything is dark and seems asleep. A hotel I pass looks expensive, its door locked for the night. I’m walking, not running—actually I’m creeping along very tired with head bowed, when I almost collide with a wheelchair that has fallen over.