Vacations in Warsaw and Vilnius
I am quite busy lately and can't get to write anything here. Now I reserved some time to catch up and post some info with pictures from vacations.
Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw
The first vacation was just a weekend in Warsaw in the beginning of February.
We met with Alina there, because it is a good meeting point for us, just in the
middle between Ostrava and Vilnius 
. The program for the weekend was to relax and also
to see any museum we missed last time we had been there.
Copernicus Science Centre is a
relatively new exposition not far from the Warsaw city centre. The thing of
being new had an unpleasant sideeffect – the looong queues. On the first day
we came there, saw the queue and left. On the second day we were prepared and
armed (with hot tea and sandwiches 
) and endured over two hours in the queue, despite
signs saying otherwise (see pictures). Inside there were lot of gadgets and toys
to play with, although many of them did not sustain the flow of people and broke
down. I'd like to see it again when the hype wears off and it is not so crowded.
More of the exposition is also going to be open this spring, so it is a good
opportunity to return. Comparing to the Universum in Bremen I favour the
Universum, because the exposition was better organised, it made sense. In
Warsaw, it looked more like chaotically placed together. Maybe it is just an
impression because of the big crowd we saw there.
The vacation in Vilnius was a „real one“, the whole week free. Although
I had some work to do, I tried to have a good time. Alina pushed me to go to
the Impuls sport centre on every weekday, so I did not just lie in bed and
sleep 
. It was very nice there, after some workout a large
choice of saunas, jacuzzi, water massage or swimming.
One evening we also bought a discount meal in a recently open Sushi place. It was only my second encounter with sushi, so I really cannot compare the quality, but since we had to wait two and half hours to get the meal, it did not really matter, because at that time I was so starving I could eat anything.
My „traditional“ picture from the Šilo bridge
After the sushi dinner we ended up in the Skybar of the Radisson Blu hotel. The view was magnificent, the prices better than I would have expected from such place. I even tried the „Lithuanian flag“ shot, which looked good, but the taste was an interesting mixture, that glued my mouth: yellow – Suktinis (strong mead), green – melon liquor and red – grenadine.
The vacation was nice, but although longer, it went away so fast…
Photos on Flickr
Recently I was looking through my photos and decided to assemble a collection of the best ones and put it to Flickr. The photos date back to 2003, when I got my first digital camera (Nikon Coolpix 2000).
Silvester in Lithuania
Christmas holidays were over and I was on my way to Vilnius, Lithuania to
see Alina and spend Silvester (New Year's Eve) there. We had really good time:
on December 31st Alina prepared a marvellous dinner 
and we went to watch the fireworks from the
nearby hill.
Cathedral Square in Vilnius
I also met Vilius (my former neighbour back in Denmark) and went for couple of beers with him. It is a pity my stay there was so short, but it was definitely worth it.
Long time no post…
It has been a long time since I posted something here. I have been busy lately and also little lazy and without inspiration to write something.
In the end of October I took a journey to Rybnik and Gliwice in Poland to
visit my fiends Barbara and Wojtek. Although Rybnik is not so far from Ostrava,
the trip is quite an adventure – two trains per day and price like for
several hundreds kilometers ride .
We had a lot of fun there, played pool, babyfoot and darts. I even tried to
practice my rusty Polish. It was a really nice evening there. Unfortunatelly,
because of only two train connections per day, I had to wake up very early. The
day light saving time change was the thing that saved me, otherwise it would not
be possible for me to wake up after so many Lechs and Tysikes .
In the middle of November I became restless that I have not been anywhere for some time and went to Vilnius to visit Alina. It was good to be in the city again even for a short time, I missed it (especially Čili restaurants). I would like to go there again as soon as possible.
Neris river from the Šilo bridge
Stroll to the Belmontas Mill
The last days' weather in Vilnius is very hot. During the day it is very hard
to stay outside for a longer period of time. Since sitting in the apartment for
the whole day is very daunting, we decided to take an evening walk to the nearby
Belmontas mill and have a beer in the restaurant there (that is always a good
motivation, isn't it? ).
We went on foot from our home and after an hour we reached our destination. The mill was very nice, I really liked that place. The food and beer were very good too.
The Belmontas mill
Our plan of going home was to take a bus, that would take us closer to home, but in the end we missed all of the buses (by a few minutes) and had to also walk back on foot. Fortunately there was another route and our evening walk changed to a nice 12 km stroll.
Verkiai Regional Park
The weather was very sunny lately and we used that opportunity to visit the Verkiai Regional Park, that is just few kilometres from our home.
In southern part of the park there is a Way of the Cross. The way symbolizes the journey Christ took in his last days. The locations of chapels exactly imitated the topography of Jeruzalem in the time of Christ. We walked the whole way (it has about 7 km), that is why you can see many chapels in the pictures.
Chapels on Way of the Cross
After finishing the way we took a lunch and headed back home.
Relax in Druskininkai
Last weekend we visited town of Druskininkai. We stayed there in Eglė
spa, where we had accommodation and three days of treatments (for action
price ). Treatments contained massages (normal and
underwater), mud bath, excercises swimming pools and drinking some sort of
herbal tea. It was fun and a good experience.
Mud bath. It was fun except the cleaning part .
I have to mention the food, it was just great: buffet three times a day, so we were almost permanently stuffed.
On Saturday afternoon we visited Grūto parkas, which is a large park with large exposition of soviet sculptures and artifacts.
Sculptures in Grūto parkas
It was a very relaxing weekend, maybe we will repeat it some day.
New HDR experiments
I made some attempts to make HDR tone-mapped photos. Comparing to the last one i made, these photos are composed out of three separate shots (-2 EV, 0 EV, +2 EV).
Neris river close to the Šilo street (larger version)
Postprocessing has been done with Luminance HDR. For the first picture I used Mantiuk and Fattal filters combined in Gimp, for the second one I used just Mantiuk.
Neris river in Verkiai Regional Park (larger version)
Lihuanian Energy and Technology Museum
During the week me and Alina used sunny weather and walked to the city centre to visit the Lithuanian Energy and Technology Museum. We saw many interesting things, old cars, motorcycles, parts of various power plants and a documentary about construction and decomission of the Ignalina nuclear power plant.
Some of the cars in the museum
The exposition also contained lots of gadgets and physical experiments you could try on your own. It was very similar to Universum in Bremen that we had visited visited last year. Although it was significantly smaller, the fun level was the same.
On my way to Lithuania
Right after finishing the meeting with my former classmates and a very short sleep I started my journey to Vilnius. First I had to take train to Warsaw, where I then had almost five hours to change to a Simple Express bus.
I used the shoping centre next to the central train station as a temporary
shelter and got a lunch. Then, to shorten my waiting, I wanted to fin wireless
and sit somewhere with laptop. I had no idea, what was going on, but in the
whole shopping centre I could not get to free internet anywhere, not even in
McDonald's, KFC and several other places 
. When I finally gave up, I went to walk aroung to
take some pictures.
Warszawa city centre next to the train station
In the evening I took a bus and left Warsaw. The rest of the journey went
quite smoothly, because I managed to sleep it though .