Vilnius

After Cruisin' with Royal Caribean, Aya and I went to Vilnius and then Krakow. One of the most exciting bit was almost missing the bus from Vilnius. We had stayed for a couple days in the town, checking out some churches and monuments, visiting the Uzupis Republic and taking a twirl on the miracle tile. Not to cut Vilnius short, its a lovely town, but the best bit was the story of catching the bus. I am going to rely on my friend Brian's version of events, with a couple small edits, as he wrote about it later that day.

We arranged a ride w/ our BnB type place to catch our 7am bus and got to the bus station almost 20 minutes early. After a few minutes looking for our bus, and asking two workers that were entirely uninterested in helping us, we couldn't find our bus. So we looked for a ticket window for help. Roughly 5 minutes later we find out our hotel sent us to the wrong station. If we miss this bus, the next one is a night bus or the next morning so we would have to eat our €60 train tickets (we're connecting to a train in Warsaw) and a hotel night of about €100. (that's all per couple) At this point we have about 12 minutes to get across town but the lady at the information booth told us we can't make it bc it's at least 15 minutes away. So we run outside to find a taxi. There's one taxi but he speaks zero English. (fair enough, he shouldn't have to, but time was tight) We desperately try to get the message across that we need a different bus station. He seems to get it (and realizes that we're freaking out) but doesn't quite know which station, so that takes another minute or so and then we take off, speeding across town, to a station that MIGHT be correct.

Literally fast forward about 8 minutes and we have 1 minute to go an unknown distance more, and THEN find our bus. On top of that, we still aren't 100% sure he's taking us to the correct bus station. I looked at Kevin (Hurley) and said, "it's gonna take a miracle." (turns out we had about 3km more to go)

A couple minutes later we turn a corner, there's a hotel/mall complex and the driver points at it. Bet says, "how will we find the buses", I look and see some on the far end in the distance and tell her. Right as we all look to that end we see our bus emerge from behind the mall and it's pulling out! We start yelling to the driver "that's our bus!!" And let me take a moment to say that, in all my travels I've learned that 'desperation' is the universal language. I have to admit that I wasn't 100% certain it was our bus, but it was the one leaving and I didn't want to let it go. So our driver speeds up making a B-line toward where the bus is headed on the road.

I didn't know what his play was gonna be but I hoped he was a brave driver bc it wasn't a moment for meek suggesting. He starts honking his horn repeatedly and pulls in front of the bus and blocks the road w/ his car, easily the best thing he could've done. The bus driver looks mad for a moment but then realize what's happening and springs into action to get our bags under the bus and check our tickets.

So now we're headed to Warsaw, heart rates are normalizing and the first 10 minutes or so we break into relieved laughter when we replay the events that just unfolded.

While in the car, speeding across town I was trying to stay positive (bc Bet doesn't) so I said to everyone, "this was the day I was most worried about, logistically, and if we make this, we'll look back on it as a great experience" I didn't want to mention the flip side to that or acknowledge how unspeakably horrible it would be if we didn't. Luckily, we didn't really have a moment to dwell on it before it, indeed, became a great experience.