. . . and saw more Lenins and Stalins than you could shake a stick at.
The son of the current mayor of this town decided to do an 'Up Yours' to the Soviet repression of the Baltic states in general and Lithuania in particular. So he's collected lots of statues of Lenin, Stalin and other Soviet luminaries and erected them in the forest at Grutos Park, about 5km from here. You walk through the forest and there are glades containing the statues and busts, together with pix of their original location and biographical details. All the while, patriotic Soviet music blares out from watchtowers, interspersed with 40s and 50s dance music. The chap pokes fun at all of them. Apparently there are a number of people opposed to what he's done, so there's one glade containing small wooden busts of them in caricature.

I decided to stay here another night as it's such a nice place, the weather is gorgeous, the beer is cheap and I have plenty of time to get to the Russian border next Friday.

Had an interesting chat with a Swedish chap last night over pizza and a decent Chianti - his company (www.expleo.net) makes 'hard parts' for BMW, Audi, Merc, Volvo and so on and he's trying to establish a factory in Lithuania but having rather a hard time.

NB no USB port on this machine that I can find so the Lenin pic will have to wait.

And for the GPS anoraks, the Leninhenge is at
N 54 deg 01,517
E 24 deg 04,812

And yes, Phil is right, I missed the 1 so it's 1300 miles, but I did explain about the strange keyboard. I can't get the 'at' sign from any combination of keys so I had to cut and paste it. Still, not as difficult as the Farsi version of Netscape I had to contend with in Tehran. Oh, and I'm now 2 hours ahead of you. Looking at the map, there'll be some rather bizarre things in Russia: the time zone boundaries are very wiggly, so at one point I go back and hour then forward again, and at another place I go forward an hour and then again 100 km later. Hey, jetlag on an ancient G/S.