Best gifts from Lithuania when traveling

1. bottle of starka
2. lt ravioli (koldūnai)
3. obuolių sūris
4. saldus varškės sūris or just regular white cheese
5. bottle of 999 alcochol
6. brochure about lt/my town
7. lt chocolate
8. lt flag colored socks
9. šakotis cake
10. bread with dried fruits from RIMI
11. lt midus
12. some unique sweets like Rūta chockolate
13. buckwheat (lt.: grikiai)

Save trees, Slovakia, please

As we travel in Tatry on Slovakia side we see huge terrains cut from trees, just leftover trunks peering from ground everywhere. What a pity view. Corruption???

Mountain flying

My friend, if you like the idea of this tatry travel, but doubt your physiccal conditions, my advice is just go for it. Why? You can always walk up that steep ascents and fly by bike nice, at times up to ~30 km descents. So we did 2 days ago for 50 km downhill from Strba Pleso (beatyful train goes there). So if you are more a downhill lover (or uphiller optimist in enomic context of last spike years), then please pack into this nice train (or Prius-not less) and a nice long descent is yours. From Strba Pleso go 537 to Podbanske and then you may continue to Liptovsky Mikulas on route 18.

Please do not get too excited at 70 km/h descent as some 360 turns can make life nasty. Fortunately this part of road has all traffic signs so no surprizes...

P.S. I recommend for this part bike choice 1. trekking, 2. mountain, 3. sports.
Googles are a must!!!
P.P.S. I did it on sports bike - needs very careful handling and very good eyes for road surface.

Mountain phenomenons

First greetings from nearby Hungary - all is well, mountains done, crew is happy, Slovakia done.
Compliments to Lezak though.
Today was big 110 km day with few steep 20% ascents.

Last online time after I wrote couple last posts, uploaded and annotated all photoes it was 20 km left to be done, crew already waiting at destination.

I am not a big macho guy but with bike I am hard to myself. Imagine how upseting it was sseing an obvious descent and hardly able to climb it with low speed. I analysed all data: angle between horizon and the road, tree angle to the road surface etc - all saying it is a descent. Then checked the bike if it is broken. Finally I came to conclusion that this is some health issue and power is gone. So it took me ~2 hours to go to our resting place at Strba Pleso ~1500 m. high above clouds. There I discovered, that colleagues experienced the same phenomenon and also did all same checks. Since then we reclassified mountains into: ascent, descent, ascending descent and descending ascent. The core to this is do not trust what you think/feel/see - it maybe exactly opposite...

Was very hard to break through that...

Krakow area

Krakow is a beautyful city - academic capita of Poland with over 300 000 students in the area. Not everyone knows, that this intelect empire was built on salt. Or salt mines few kilometers south east from Krakow. At those mines salt was excavated for ~1000 years and at its peak was 30% of country GDP. You may ask why? Well, you know the fridge times have not always been here and salt was a good substitute for energy hungry times as people conserved all with salt and also used it in many other production processes.

We have been to those mines 130 meter under the earth and in total lenght of 300 km. Nice place and there is complete tourism industry now at this place - from big big cathedral under earth built entirely from salt, party place, hundreds of statues from salt etc. Nice exploration though especially in current energy savvy times.

I should by some salt when I am back.
Again please check out all photos at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/giedrius.balbieris/KrakowBudapestVienna20080701

Folks, Slovakia and Slovenia are two separate countries

Hi Folks,

Slovakia and Slovenia are two separate and different countries.
Guess which is called Slovensko. The first one indeed, huh correct?

We just came to this country today and indeed it feels different. I would bet country comparisons are always apples to oranges and thus would not dwelwe into that. It is different and I myself feel better on this side of Tatry. We just passed half of the Tatry way - another 2 days left to go. The rain is pouring all day long so it rather tricky to keep warm on long 5-12 km descents. Going up is not the thing which bicyclers love a lot, but this is a the second side to each long descent. At times when it is too steep we just walk up the hill and rest in between as on walk up other muscles start working.

The air does feel a bit less dense here so this is yet another component especially when going higher uphill and more horse powers (hence more oxygen) would be cool.

Some more pictures oes online:
http://picasaweb.google.com/giedrius.balbieris/KrakowBudapestVienna20080701

Prieš kelionę ...

Labas, dabar esu tokioj perėjimo būsenoj sunku įvardinti ramu/neramu. Antrą dieną palaidi viduriai, neramus miegas, dar savaitgalį pagrindinį serverį pakabinau betvarkydamas (ačiūdiev jau atkrapštėm). Priešakį laukia keletas iššūkių lyg šiol nedarytų - nauja kompanija, kelionė dviračiu per kalnus, nakvynės, vietinis koloritas su visom jo spalvomis.

Manau kaip į bet kurią kelionę yra kažkokie tikslai ir lūkesčiai. Kokie jie?
Bandau surašyti minčių srautą:

• pažvelgti į viską iš šono
  
• pagyventi minimalistinėmis sąlygomis su pora plastikų kišenėj
  
• pabūti kalnuose
  
• minti pedalus
  
• išbandyti įvairaus alaus
  
• numesti svorio
  
• įsitikinti, kad dar ne pensijoj ;)
  
• pasibendrauti su savim