Yerushaláyim - prologue

All those dummy tourists, wondering around, making pictures of those buildings they have no idea about, buying “made in China” souvenirs – they all come back home and share their impression. Usually it’s either “awesome” or “nothing special”, and if you are lucky and your friend is not an average, but maybe an advanced dummy tourist you may also get some extra guide book definition. But that is it. The truth is that’s all what you can get from a dummy tourist – an opinion based on emotions. I’ve seen that, cause in fact I am the same dummy tourist. And all the places I admire are the places I visited with bunch of friends. Sure, it is important who you are with, but if it is, eventually it may be not important where you are… And some places simply don’t deserve it.

After 1.5 years since I was fortunate to visit Yerushaláyim (that’s how Jerusalem is pronounced in Hebrew) I realized it deserves at least respect. Otherwise, you are not able to understand what you see. I had a guided tour, which my cousins arranged for me. And trust me, in some places even a guided tour is not enough. I was guided around and told about places and characters I have never heard before. After I came back, my cousin told me I should have read a little before my trip. He showed me a book in his dad’s library – a huge book among millions others. I took it as a joke, even though I knew it wasn’t.

I won’t be able to explain you

what Jerusalem is like. But still, I’d like to share my sketchy impression about Yerushaláyim – The City of Peace.

There is a big chance that you are not familiar with The Master and Margarita, a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. It is considered as

one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, published 26

years after writers’ death. The novel begins with Voland (the Devil) visiting Moscow in the 1930s, joining a conversation between a critic and a poet arguing about the existence of Jesus Christ and the Devil.

When you are walking on the 1st century street it’s your right to believe or not that Jesus Christ may have walked the same street more than 2000 years ago. It is also your right to believe in any God you want or none of them at all. I’m not a believer, but I have to admit that there has to be something what made those stories survive and those people believe in them…

Finally, history is the same stories, just with some proofs, and here the whole city is one huge proof of all those stories, believe it or not…

Knock-knock-knockin' on Fanø

You stand on the beach and taste the salty smell of the wind that comes from the ocean.
And inside you feel the warmth of never ending freedom,
And on your lips the bitter, tear-soaked kiss of your lover.

– I have never been to the ocean.
– That can't be true! You have never-ever been to the ocean?
– Never-ever!
– Both of us are knocking on heavens door, drinking tequila, we are biting-the-dust experts and you have never-ever been to the ocean!
– Never-ever!
– Don't you know how it is when you arrive in heaven? The ocean – in heaven that's all they talk about. And the sunset, how fucking wonderful it is to watch that big ball of fire melting to the ocean. And you – you can't talk about it with them, since you have never been there! You will be a fucking outsider up there!

from "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"

I have no idea how it sounds originally in German, but those, who know Russian, won’t deny, that it sounds more beautiful in it, than in English… Americans have oceans, so probably in American heaven they talk about ocean, not sea... And if you know the movie, you probably also know that it was Baltic Sea they were going to.

What’s so special about the sea? It’s just a huge amount of water with no people there. That’s right – “no people there”, that’s what is so special about it! Sea is like Christmas presents, which gives you those seconds of anticipation and a smile, which no doubt appears on your face in the moment you see it.

For me, all the places I have visited, where I could see the open sea, were special. I haven’t seen a lot of them and I can’t choose one I love most of all. It’s 300km from home to the Baltic Sea, and it’s impossible to imagine it without childhood holidays place Šventoji, usual Baltic weather – “shaking in the morning, swinging in the evening”, sighing pines, white dunes and chocolate ice-cream. I’ve also seen Mediterranean Sea from Spanish, Turkish and Israel coasts, and it always comes with a lot of sun in the first place, and my favorite food in all other places. And I also had a chance to see the sunrise in front of the Dead Sea.

My temporal home country borders both the Baltic and the North Sea. First time I went to the North Sea in the middle of August, second – in the beginning of October. Less than 2 months between the first and the second time, but both completely different and unforgettable.

It is possible to see the open North Sea from Esbjerg, but if you will be there you must take the ferry to Fanø island! A Round-trip costs DKK40 (about 5 €), takes 12min and departs every 20min.

In August we took a bus to get to the beach – perhaps it was a clever idea… The bus itself goes on the beach, what seems strange, but it makes sense, when you realize how huge those beaches are. The sea is not deep and will remind you Baltic Sea in Lithuania – just here, if you will try to swim a little, you will walk to England instead of Sweden…
The other thing which may bother you will be jellyfish. A lot of them on the beach and in the sea, and no one know, what they are thinking of… So basically in August I and my Askov friends had a very sunny and truly lazy day on one of Fanø beaches.

But not in October. In October I went there with Sina, and believe me – it is impossible to use word “lazy” and Sina’s name in one sentence… After feeding deers and walking to the “Man Meets the Sea” in Esbjerg we took a ferry to Fanø. The weather wasn’t promising from the early morning, but it wasn’t raining yet. There was no bus, but we weren’t looking for it.

People from the ferry disappeared and without much thinking we went towards 3 windmills in the North of the island. First hour went quite fast and we considered that we are not that far from the sea. After some time it became clear that those peaceful windmills perhaps are not that peaceful and you are not allowed to go close to them… So straight way to the sea slowly became a zigzag and no people around was a very “promising” sign as well. We crossed the forest, crossed weald and finally we saw… no, not the sea!
We saw the dunes! And usually it’s a good sign, but not in Fanø, here it meant nothing.


And when we almost reached them another problem occurred – to reach those “promising” dunes we had to cross the stream… It was impossible to jump and the only idea I came up with was to take off our shoos and walk through it, cause I was sure we will get to the sea in any minute and will be able to wash our legs there. Barefoot walk in October was the only option we had until Sina noticed a metal balk about hundred metres away from us. And we reached those dunes, unfortunately there was no sea beyond them. There was literally nothing beyond them… It looked like a desert.
We noticed a “little” ship, what probably was one of those Esbjerg – Harwich ferries with over 600 people on board… It looked like it goes through the sand, but even if now everything looked possible here, that was not possible! The sea should have been somewhere there! After 2 hours walk to the “desert” we started walking on it. And than we realized it wasn’t a desert, and it wasn’t a beach, it was the bottom of the North Sea… I bet you heard about ebb-tide phenomenon, but have you seen it?!

We were going towards the point, where we’ve seen the ship, but after some time we noticed the buoy, lying on the ground… Are they suppose to lie on the ground? Next question we came up with was “How fast the water comes back?” following with “Is it safe to go there?”. And we turned… After more than 2h walking we haven’t reached the sea… We went along the sea, or better to say along the horizon over which the sea probably was.


Finally somewhere more to the South of the island we reached the sea, than walked 5km more to the ferry during the rain, which finally started, and came back to Esbjerg.



We weren’t expecting to see anything like this. Actually, I never thought that something like this exist at all. But, choosing wrong direction sometimes can turn to a very good surprise... You never know what you will see when you come closer to the sea.

København mix

With a list of “what to see” and extra list of “what to see if we will have time left” we didn’t have what to do after just 3 hours of sightseeing.

If you are the one, who is interested in visiting museums and entering all possible touristic attractions or simply spending your holey coins in the restaurants, you would find what to do for at least a couple of days. But if you are not interested in something particular and mostly you are interested in putting a tick on a long European capitals list you have visited – 3 hours will be more than enough.

It’s not a big city, not bigger than Vilnius. What makes it special is the water around it, the same thing what makes it windy and less pleasant for the long autumn walks. In the beginning it felt like I was back to Vienna. It’s a perverse feeling and sometimes you just can’t get rid of it.

We started our sightseeing day walking down the Strøget, the world's longest pedestrian street. In my opinion it’s not that long, it’s a simple shopping street, which looks the same as Kärntner Straße in Vienna.

Surprisingly fast, considering the fact that it suppose to be the world's longest pedestrian street we reached Nyhavn, those who’ve been to Amsterdam (not me) will probably find some similarities with the Dutch capital city.


Not so far from Nyhavn we’ve found the winter home of the Danish royal family – Amalienborg Palace, which looks like St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican, just 134 years younger and built in the different architectural style…

The next place we visited was Kastellet, a fortification constructed in the form of pentagram. Now it’s a public park, but still owned by The Danish Ministry of Defence. I would say it looks better on a map and there is nothing interesting there unless you owe a helicopter… Unfortunately The Little Mermaid was visiting Shanghai, so we went to see the Rosenborg Castle built in XVII century, which was not visiting Shanghai, but was covered from the tourists for some kind of renovation works instead…

We passed Copenhagen City Hall and the Round Tower, but skipped an idea to visit Freetown Christiania, a self-proclaimed autonomous neighborhood famous for its open cannabis trade.







Slowly short sunny sightseeing turned to a long windy rambling and disappeared with Sina in one of those InterCity trains leaving Copenhagen.

Copenhagen definitely has something from a lot of places, but nothing what would make it the city I would like to go back.

80 days in Denmark

What can happen in 80 days? Well, according to Jules Verne you can travel around the world in 80 days.

Nowadays it takes less to travel from point A to point B. It took exactly 1h 35min to travel from Vilnius to Copenhagen. And Copenhagen airport was that point B where my emigration started.

A little everyday makes a lot at the end… That’s not my case – so you are going to get this 80 days wrap-up instead, and actually there is no need in doing “blog job” everyday due to my addiction on facebook’ing almost every day of my life.

When you are as unorganized person as I am you have to deal with one thing, and I got used to it –
you don’t sleep before the flight, especially if the flight is early in the morning. Of course it was the same with this flight… And everything would have been perfect if everything had gone like it was planned, but, let’s face it – it never goes as it is planned…


But, no planes were missed and train I took went to the right direction, so considering my luck – I was pretty lucky on my first day in Denmark. On the same “lucky” day I walked around the train station 3 times searching for the bus stop, carried my 20kg + 8kg luggage 3km to get the keys from my new “home sweet home” and spent 18 euro on a taxi journey (4km) back. My “home sweet home” looked as I expected with NO furniture in my room at all, so I went to IKEA, bought 15kg mattress, brought it to my room and fell dead asleep.

The next 3 days weren’t that fascinating. Acclimatization process wasn’t hard – I just needed to understand that Lidl is the only affordable shop and eggs are not the cheapest protein source in Denmark.

The reason I came to Denmark in the beginning of August was my Danish language courses. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that 2 weeks will be a sufficient time to reach beginner’s level, but I couldn’t expect that all I will be able to say will be: “Jeg kan ikke tale Dansk”, what means “I don’t speak Danish”. If you are interested in what Askov language school was like, I would say it was an all inclusive holidays with people you admire, 3 meals per day, sport activities and entertainment covered from the moment you arrive to the time you go back. The problem was I wasn’t going back, I was going father. Technically I was going back to Odense, practically there was nothing there.

It all started very quickly, a huge amount of international students, greeted by Her Royal Highness Princess Marie, chose 3 courses and started 2 years way towards their Master’s degree. And here my first plan failed – I wanted to study Finance, but after a week of classes I understood that I don’t understand a thing there. Socrates would be happy with this, but not me – I changed Finance to Strategy and Organization. I can’t say I am happy now, but after Finance it’s a relief.

At the same time the 2010 FIBA World Championship was going on, and I can’t not mention that Lithuanians finally reached semi-final and after loosing only one game to USA brought World Championship bronze medals home. That was one of the happiest days for the whole Lithuania and for me as well.

Second failed plan was finding a job. After visiting all hotels in Odense and submitting dozens online applications it became clear that it’s almost impossible to get a job without knowing Danish. At this point you can reread about my astonishing “success” in learning Danish and figure out that I am still unemployed.

My third plan was to go to the seaside and to see the lighthouse. That one I failed partly. I reached the sea quite easily, but turned wrong and haven’t seen the lighthouse on my first trip. But, there were 4 trips to the sea, twice to the lighthouse – and I can tell you, that those 80km trips are worth every km.

On the 1st of October the best thing since I came happened – Sina came to spend a weekend here with me. She spent 3 nights on my floor, saying that she hasn’t slept that good for a long time. She left from Copenhagen train station, and that was one of those moments, when you want to be the one, who is leaving, but not staying. Well, technically I left to Odense, practically I stayed in Denmark –

in Denmark – the happiest place on Earth...