Vilnius HC: A SHORT PUNK-GUIDE TO LITHUANIA

visas: some of you may need this fucking sticker in your passport to enter Lithuania, so take care.

border: be ready for greedy/angry/captious frontier-guards. they may not like your red hairs or nose-piercing. show your passport and it will cool them down.

transport: beware of sly taxi drivers! average price is 25 US cents per 1 km. public transport is cheap, but sometimes you simply can’t get in because it’s overcrowded. it’s possible to use it without a ticket, but beware of control (once impudent passenger was shoot in his leg when control lost his temper). usually it’s enough to say few words in real foreign (i.e. not Lithuanian, Russian, Polish) language to ride for free. public transport ticket costs about 20 US ct.

sleeping place: the best way out is to have few Lithuanian friends and stay with them, cos good place are expensive and cheap ones are shabby and dangerous. sorry, but no real squats.

macho-bullshit: always beware of them when it’s dark. if someone is asking for cigarette or what time is it in a secluded place - be ready for a fight. the most often they are russians. they can be recognized by bald heads, track-suits, turkish made sweaters and fucking violent eyes.

police: dressed in green, because of that they are called ‘cucumbers’. less dangerous than previous, but sometimes violent. usually they don’t like pissing and making noise in public places. appearance and money amount in a pocket are the most important criterions judging about a person. as with control (see above), foreign language often helps to solve a problem with ‘cucumbers’. bribery is almost always common.

food&drinks: you shoud break your tongue by pronouncing Lithuanian names, ‘cos almost nobody speaks English in shopes. it is cheaper to buy stuff in so-called “lariokai” - small kiosk, where you can almost everything, but quality may be poor. Lithuanian beer costs about 50 US ct. the best (and one of the cheapest) one is produced in port-town Klaipeda and it’s called “Baltijos”. vodka costs about 5 USD for 0.5 l. try local kind of brandy “Starka” - it kicks ass.

in general food in Lithuania is cheap. a loaf of bread costs from 0,5 to 1 USD. try Lithuanian sour-cream cheese. local dishes are very heavy, fat and insipid, mainly made from potatoes. it is enough 3-4 USD to eat in bar or café in the centre of a town. it’s even cheaper in province.