Let’s hit the road! The RoadTrip diary, part 1

Sunday, 7 am. 6 brave young people packed their things and went out of the hostel in Vilnius. Sleepy but happy, they said hello to a missing part of their team – THE BUS called Eleonor. RoadTrip Lithuania 2014 has officially taken off for a great adventure!

Our little hippie bus looks like taken straight from the 70s, and we surely felt like adventurous bohos, when we were travelling across Vilnius. What can be better than an early morning spent in a hippie bus, with a great company? The unwritten pages of our trip have finally started to fill up with new experiences. Happy, free, full of hope and without any worries at all, we surely didn’t expect that this worry-free state of mind will end that quickly… 

Weird noise, a bounce, and ‘guys, we have a situation’. Our Eleonor broke in the middle of a road, in the middle of nowhere. Problems? Of course not, those are only new challenges for us, impossible to stop our enthusiasm and creativity! The whole team started to hitchhike for a car with a rope, and when it was a need to find a rope itself, we didn’t hesitate to simply hit the road with big smiles on our faces and look for the nearest house, asking if maybe somebody doesn’t own one. Eventually we found one man who stopped his car and agreed to help us. It was a remarkable act of kindness – the Lithuanian couple who helped us, called Juozas and Danute, drove us all the way to Kražiai, despite of the fact that they had to change their own plans. It was the first situation when we could experience the roadtrip life, full of surprises and unexpected things, such as broken bus, hitchhiking in the middle of a road, hectoliters of rain pouring on us in the process, and finally – incredibly kind and nice people who offered their help. From this very moment we could imagine that our 4-weeks trip will surely be intense and unforgettable!

Of course our lovely bus didn’t stop on challenging us. On Monday we needed to figure out how to move without it, because it had to be repaired. Another perfect opportunity to train our creativity, flexibility and positive attitude! Even though it wasn’t the smoothest ride in the world from the beginning, we managed to get out the situations with humor and style.

Humor and style were surely ones of the characteristics of the next person we met – a man called Marius. He offered to show us his house and farm. Thanks to his unique personality and easygoing attitude, we quickly gave him his own nickname – Tom Bombadil, because he reminded us of one of the characters from ‘The Lord of the Rings’. Marius knows exactly where he belongs and what is his place in the world – he has a very wide knowledge about history, religion, culture and nature, and he was very eager to share this knowledge with us. He showed us his modest home, where he lives in a traditional, simple way, in a complete freedom caused by his own choices. He told us a lot of stories about the Lithuanian nation during the Second World War and about a very distant Lithuanian history, the origins of Lithuanian language, the balance with nature, old pagan rituals… Everything mixed with occasional songs and jokes!

Thanks to him we had a chance to try our strengths on horse riding; we also met his other animals and saw beautiful fields and countryside. Imagine a picture when 8 people from 7 different countries are playing with horses and dogs like little children - in the heart of a Lithuanian village landscape. Those were undoubtedly another unforgettable moments of our trip and we would like to thank Marius very much for his hospitability and kindness!

After this intense afternoon it was time to rest and sum up the day. We were staying in The cultural center of M. K. Sarbievijus. The place is simply amazing - very impressive and beautiful with its crude ascetic look, filled with history. We also had a chance to see the exhibition about this place, thanks to Lina and Jurgita who organized this activity for us. It was a great opportunity to learn more about Lithuanian history and culture, and we enjoyed every minute of it.

The RoadTrip journey never stops to challenge us with learning new skills! The next day we visited Perkūno strėlė and took some archery classes. Some of The RoadTrippers were really good! But soon 2 amazing days in  classes. Some of The RoadTrippers were really good! But soon 2 amazing days in Kražiai came to an end. We left this beautiful village and headed to another city, curious about another places, people and challenges.

Monday, 4 pm. 6 brave young people are getting off the bus in Šiauliai. Talking and laughing, they grabbed their backpacks and looked around new city. So, what’s now there for us behind the next corner of our great RoadTrip adventure…? 

A road to discover. The RoadTrip diary, part 0

Her name is Kamia, she is 18 years old and she is from the Philippines. She loves cinema. His name is Rogelio, he’s a 20-year old Mexican photographer. Her name is Cate, she is from Italy and she’s 23 years old. Her ‘thing’ is singing and art. His name is Zé, 20 years old, he comes from Portugal. A fan of film making and travel. Her name is Karo, a 23-years old Polish girl, who loves journalism and music. His name is Li, he comes from China but lives in USA. Who are those people? Randomly existing somewhere in different parts of the world, living their lives? No. They all came all the way to Lithuania to create an amazing team of the Road Trip project!

What’s that? Well, RoadTrip Lithuania is a unique project organized by the largest students organization – AIESEC, the Local Committee of Vilnius ISM. The goal of RoadTrip is to promote responsible tourism by impacting the local society and developing creativity. 6 young people from 6 different countries of the world will go across Lithuania in a classic hippie bus – exploring, discovering, travelling, meeting the culture and people.

Those are the cold facts, but what about what’s behind the scenes? When we arrived, we haven’t known each other before; we only knew each other’s names, nationalities and few things we included in our get-to-know videos uploaded on the RoadTrip Facebook fanpage. And we are supposed to spend 4 weeks in the same bus…? That surely seemed like a challenge. So the first day, when we actually met each other, was on Thursday, when I came from Poland at 8 am after 14-hours trip and saw 4 of my teammates in their…pyjamas. That’s because I picked them up from the Center Stay Hostel where they were sleeping that night. ‘Hello, I’m Karo’, ‘hello, I’m Kamia’… and so on. OK. Silence. But later, when we actually went on our first walk, we quickly discovered that we will not have a problem with team bonding.

Those first 3 days spent in Vilnius were amazingly surprising, quite intense, unexpected and incredibly warm (even despite of occasional rain pouring from the sky). We walked through the city with not 1, not 2, but 3 different maps (somehow a lot of people just liked to give us free maps!). But despite of being so well-equipped, we still managed to get lost. We were wandering around Vilnius, discovering its hidden places, graveyards filled with light and shadows, cosy art galleries and spacious green parks. We visited the Culture Night of Vilnius and it was absolutely amazing – starting from every gate when we could meet the street artist, through the fact that almost every inch of the main street was filled with the beautiful music played by very talented street musicians, ending with the general magic atmosphere of the whole event. The Vilnius Culture Night is definitely something to recommend to anybody who wants to explore this artistic city. And the ‘silent disco’ thing in the middle of the street, in the middle of the night – this is definitely something everybody should try at least once in their lives. Plus, we got to know many Lithuanians, who were always surprising us with their kindness and friendly attitude. We even managed to have our own ‘group grandma’!

Between those walks and talks with Lithuanian people, we had a chance to get to know each other more. How? Well, I can recall moments like a loud group wondering about the fact that a lot of people were carrying flowers (it’s because of graduations, as we discovered later), waving to every dog or cat we saw on the street, reading the Užupis disctrict constitutions in our languages, eating lunch on the stairs of the City Hall… It took us only one day to decide that we have to make a ‘family dinner’ – which we did, on Friday night, when there was the Italy-Costarica FIFA Championship match. We cooked our traditional dishes, talked about our countries, we even invented our own nicknames. We also had a chance to get to know the ISM Local Committee of AIESEC – we were invited to their Local Committee Meeting, where we met other interns who came here to experience their exchanges. The atmosphere of more than 20 people from all around the world, sharing the same vision, working in order to have a positive impact on the local society, and having loads of fun at the same time – that was just an amazing thing to watch and be part of.

Now, we are just about to meet our lovely bus and hit the road. We are excited, we are prepared to meet the unexpected and we have tons of ideas how to showcase our experience. We are Kamia, Rogelio, Cate, Zé, Karo and Li from RoadTrip Lithuania and we already love our trip before it started. So brace yourself, the RoadTrippers are coming!