The Curonian Spit. Between flat tires and sandy beaches

One of our other major destinations in Lithuania was the Curonian Spit, a very narrow coastal strip in the Baltic Sea that looks more like a sandbank on the map than a real island. Half of the coastal strip belongs to Lithuania, the other part to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. You can only reach the Curonian Spit by ferry and the access with the car costs an extra 20 euros in the summer months, which may seem like a lot at first, but upon closer consideration makes sense, as the nature is really worth protecting, there is no good infrastructure on the island, and more cars would only ruin everything and also destroy the special atmosphere. So we took the car ferry from Klaipeda to the Curonian Spit, where we had lunch at a beautiful viewpoint, enjoyed the sun and the special view (sea on the right and left). Then we continued to the Amber Bay, where there are now great wooden figures in the water and formerly a lot of amber was extracted from the water. There at the parking lot, I (Anne) already noticed a very slight hissing sound from the rear tire, which we did not take seriously under 'Oh, the sun is so hot today, maybe it's just the air expanding'. So we drove on the only road of the island to a beach where we continued to sunbathe, listened to the sound of the waves, and talked about this and that. When we came back to the car and I took a closer look at our rear wheel... Lo and behold. It was flat. And so were we. We probably tore our old tire on a metal plate while driving onto the ferry. With helpful assistance over the phone (Thanks Dad! :D) and the skill of FloH, the spare wheel was mounted fairly quickly and the journey could continue carefree for now. Well, almost, because it was stupid of us to rely on there being many gas stations on the island. Of course, that was not the case. There was exactly 1 gas station and it was naturally at the Russian border, about 40 km away from us. With a dangerously blinking fuel gauge and the thought that the engine would probably stall any moment, we just managed to make it and could now look for a place to spend the night, which we found in a parking lot by the sea. Pretty exhausted, we just wanted to quickly have dinner and then hop into the car bed. Unfortunately, as soon as we got out of the car, a long-forgotten insect plague hit us: mosquitoes. ENDLESS mosquitoes. The whole forest buzzed and at first, we couldn't believe that this noise was produced by the tiny creatures because it was so loud. Fortunately, the Baltic mosquitoes were not as clever (or simply more vegetarian and pacifist-minded) as their Scandinavian counterparts and could not manage to sting through the clothing.

The next morning, we had breakfast right on the sand dune at the beach. Then we went to Nida, where we also visited Thomas Mann's summer house, and slowly made our way back to the ferry that took us to Klaipeda, where we had to take care of new tires first.