We're off to ...Lithuania!!

For those of you who have been wondering (yes, there is more than one of you who bother to read this blog, apparently!), no, Ants won't be going back to Warwick castle this summer. We could blame the rubbish remuneration, the long commute, or the 'working outside in a crap English summer' factor, but in fact, the biggest reason is that he has much better things to do this summer, and this year I get to play them too!

This weekend, our antics with the Company of Chivalry are taking us to Lithuania. Yes, really.

So let's start with a bit about the (none of which I knew a week before we left). Having read Lonely Planet and every other website I can find, I'm not sure whether to expect an amazing country of fairytale castles, lakes and forests, or a heavy dose of Soviet interference with 20 storey concrete bunkers posing as accommodation blocks at every turn.

In centuries gone by, it was the political powerhouse of the region. Its heyday (happily for us) was in the 13th-16th centuries, before one region and then another was gradually broken off and swallowed by poland and russia. Like many baltic countries, independence came, briefly, in 1918, but it only lasted as long as WWII. Lithuania was the first of the former Soviet countries to declare and achieve independence, in 1990 ad 1991 respectively.

The only other thing I know is that we're going to a place called Trakai, about 30kms from Vilnius, the capital, where four of our boys (includingAnts) will compete at some kinda very big deal tournament...

I'm so excited though, I could burst!!