Another transit day today. These should be boring and stressful, but I kind of like them. There’s something to do but nothing to debate, we just go through the motions of getting from point A to point B.

Nick woke up this morning feeling way better. Still not 100% but able to function. We’re back baby! After packing up all our stuff we stopped by the stolpersteines again so he could see them. It felt a lot less emotional the second time around.

We flew out of Dortmund because the plane tickets I bought were €25 on an airline with the highly trustworthy name “Wizz Air”. If it sounds too good to be true, it’s because it is. These budget airlines then add on fees for bags, having a boarding pass, and breathing on the plane. But the point is, we drove to Dortmund and had a couple of hours to kill. We found a playground with a cafe beside it. Europe remains unmatched for playground and cafe offerings.

Millie got this horrifying blue milk which translated on the menu to “Smurf milk”.

We arrived at the airport. I think I often romanticize Europe as being better (more civilized and organized) than the US, but the Dortmund airport was a dose of reality. People were smoking inside!

Our flight went smoothly and we landed in Vilnius, Lithuania at 6pm. It took approximately 18 hours for us to get our rental car, but we got it eventually and then drove to our Airbnb in old town.

We were all starving so we walked down the road to a traditional Lithuanian restaurant. The vibe was Lithuanian grandma, and therefore perfect.

I don’t know if it was the hunger or the clouds parting after sickness, but the food was so good. Nick slurped down a salty, tangy sauerkraut soup with pork ribs and said “I literally feel like this is healing me”. He also ordered a potato sausage, which was gnocchi-like, in the shape of a sausage but with chunks of smoky meat throughout it, and a sour cream sauce. I ordered something called “grandma’s plate” because I couldn’t resist. It had pork meatballs and beets.

At the end of the meal he ordered an Acorn coffee, which was like a nutty and slightly chocolaty tea. Everything just felt like exactly what we needed.

We walked back at 10pm and the sun was still setting. Millie tipped a street accordion player and when he heard we were American he serenaded us with “America the beautiful” all the way home.

Two unrelated things I want to document:

• At the Viking museum all the way back in York, they had a skeleton of a woman that they know used a crutch to walk throughout most of her life because of her bone structure. This story has embedded itself in Millie’s brain she has been telling us most days that she dreams about “the woman with crutches”. No matter how much we explain that the woman was just a normal nice person who needed some help walking, she is terrified of her. It has also sparked a million questions and conversations about fake legs, wheelchairs, blind people, walkers, and all sorts of other disabilities and body differences. She is obsessed.
• The most ubiquitous logo has to be the Yankees. More so than Nike or Adidas, everyone everywhere wears Yankees hats. Was it always like this or has there been a giant push to export Yankees gear in recent years?