Hey guys!
This time we would like to give you a big of an insight of our stay in Lithuania.
The only city we properly stopped in in Lithuania was Kaunas. Why? Well, luckily I (Chantal) met this great guy from exactly this town during a sustainability project in Denmark and kept in touch with him. When he heard about our plans concerning this trip and crossing his country, he promised us that he would organize us a place to stay. And so he did. Though to mention that he didn't just organize us any random place, but we were actually allowed to stay two nights in an awesome climbing gym. It kind of looked like this:
But not only that we were sleeping in hammocks and were able to climb all night, whilst listening very loud music through a really good sound system - no. On our first night we also met three other German people who were staying in the climbing gym. That being said - we talked all night, did many riddles, climbed, played football with a gymnastic ball, drank some beer and wine and basically had the time of our life.
The next day would just be as exciting. Since Franzy and me are not really of the boring kind, we thought about a very special souvenir that we could take from Kaunas. What about something that literally lasts a lifetime? You might be able to imagine what we did. We got ourselves new tattoos. Of course we had done some research before and lucky for us was the fact that Kaunas had a great studio with lovely people, that not only were more than amazing artists, but also travelers just like us who were very excited to listen to our plan. They are even trying to make tattooing as sustainable as hygienic laws allow it to be. Awesome people. But I guess now you want to see our tattoos. They look like this:
So next question, what do they mean? As you guys know the motivation behind going to China by hitchhiking, bus, train, etc. was sustainability. Another part of this is mindfulness. These two things are really important to us, therefore we wanted to tattoo our "mindful and sustainable journey" in our own ways. Franzy (who actually changed the idea of her tattoo literally 5 minutes before she got it done) is now wearing "N:OW" on her wrist. Why? Well, because usually you wear a watch around that place and look at it to see what time it is. But rather then seeing some numbers, it is important that you live now. There moment right here, right now. Be happy now. Be present now. This shall remind her and the people around her to be truly there, now, in the moment.
My three leafs are covering the sustainability part of the trip. As you may now the typical symbol for recycling are three arrows in a circle. A circle doesn't have an end, there is no waste produced, because everything gets REused. This is basically what I try to remind myself of. Living sustainably. Replacing the arrows by leafs is to support the thought of living in the flow of nature. We are super happy with the work and are proudly wearing our new tattoos. The love for the new art we are wearing became even stronger through the great people working at the studio. They supported us every way they could and even now we still keep in touch with them. Here's a link to their website: https://santakatattoo.com
After we got that done, we continued to discover the beauty of Kaunas. With some advices from my friend and the tattoo studio people, we found some quite beautiful places. Just look at the following pictures:
I guess this should be impression enough about how we liked it in this city. To figure out how we made it to Latvia and how we liked this place - stay tuned!
Chanti & Franzy Take your Chanzy
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