16th of August 2019

¨Nida is beautiful, but we shall not talk to loud about it, so that the world won´t find it, in desire of its peace, which it will destroy¨

Thomas Mann – German Author and citizen of Nida

This is how Nidas most prominent member – the German author Thomas Mann – described his summer-residence. And when I walked among the colourful fishing houses, through the peaceful, somehow mystical, pine-forests and the wide magical dunes, I understood why he fell so in love with this place, which seems like one of the last refuges of the busy, fast-paced environment, the world around us is increasingly transforming into. Time goes differently in Nida. 

But before I arrived at this refuge of peace, I felt the pains and headaches of the ¨real world¨ with full force. 

When I left the hostel in Vilnius I was sad that I would already leave this city behind. It also got me a lot more excited for my stay in Tartu though, hoping I would experience a similar atmosphere over there. 

Felix and me left Vilnius around 9am and I was hoping to be able to come back to Europes G-Spot in the future. 

After around 4 hours in the bus we arrived in Klaipeda (the former German town of Memel, which still has a lot of influences of its German past – seen especially in the classical German old-town) from where I wanted to go further to the Corunian Spit (the island on which Nida is located, which is a long stripe of land infront of the Lithuanian coast but only around 400m wide at some points) and my destination: Nida. 

This should be harder than expected though, because apparently no busses would go there anymore before the next day. Even though I looked up the bus times in advance, this surprised me because I thought so strange times must be a mistake in the system. Eventually I decided to take a chance and take the ferry on the island anyways (it also just takes 10 minutes) planning to hitchhike the 50km towards Nida if necessary. 

When arriving on the other side I realized that this plan B would not be necessary, since many shuttles and buses actually brought hundreds of tourists over the small island. My intuition proved right, however I was also a bit intimidated by all the tourists. 

In the shuttle itself I met two interesting Lithuanian guys that told me more about their country and Nida itself. So I found out about the story of a moving dune which apparently swallowed a village whole a few hundred years ago and might swallow Nida at sometime of the next centuries. Apart from that a lot of Lithuanias history is actually unclear and has a lot of gaps.And the Euro made everything more expensive but most of Lithuania is still glad their country joined it. 

Talking about those stories, we eventually arrived in Nida and I went to the hostel I booked, only to be greeted by a nice cat. 

After around an hour the owner arrived as well and I spend the rest of the day working on the Blog and making some food for myself, already settling into the laid back atmosphere of my home for the next four days.