Somebody from the college e-mailed telling us our address and describing our apartment. That makes the whole trip seem more palpably real. I have no idea what our neighborhood is like (though have looked at the google map--I like to click on the "satellite" view-- and google earth satelitte photos), but an address and a general location in the city allows me to conjure up all sorts of ideas, based, obviously on my previous experiences of foreign countries--our arrangements in Klaipeda have a strangely Hungarian, Chinese, and Kazakh feel to them.
Klaipeda is on the Baltic Sea (to the far left of Lithuania), not far from Kaliningrad (just south of Klaipeda on the same map), the Russian exclave sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland. Kaliningrad is among Europe's most desperate cities, especially by the comparison to the lifestyles in its immediate neighborhood. And for some reason, I'd like to go. I hope it's not for voyeurism ("Wow, look at how bad off they are. Let's go back now."), or to recapture some sense of the "bizarre" from my Hungary trip 20 years ago ("Yeah, this is bad just like when they were communists. Let's go back now.")
We also want to try to get to Minsk--part of Sandy's family hails from that area.
Well, we'll keep you posted on all that develops in the next month.
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