The Trip to Druskininkai: 140 km, 2 cars & 1 ticket

Sunday started off bad, real bad, but ended wonderfully.

Druskininai is a two hour drive from Vilnius. In order to transport everyone and their luggage, we needed to swap our rental car for a minivan. The minivan was delivered on time to our hotel at ten in the morning, however there was one small problem - it was too small for our needs.

We conferred amoungst ourselves, and agreed we would rent a second car to compliment the minivan. Gail would go with my father and most of the luggage in the minivan, and I would drive a fairly recent model Mazda with Eileen & Daniel. So off we went, only two hours behind schedule to Druskininai...

The drive south was very pleasant. Vilnius is around 140 km (100 miles) from Druskininkai. Most of the trip was on a two lane highway known as A4. There wasn't much traffic to speak of. Most of the land bordering the highway was dense forest. Every few kilometers the trees would open up onto a small farm - we usually saw winter wheat planted - and ocasionally a cow or two. In order to keep the animals safe, they would be tied to a stake or other object and would graze in a 20-30 foot circumference. There were a number of small villages - if you could call them that - that dotted the forest landscape. Most had no more than 5 or 10 houses, mostly made of wood. You could make out the successful farmers from their poorer bretheren from the paint job - some had recently been coated while others looked like they hadn't seen new pain since the last world war.

It was two thirds of the way to Druskininkai, and I was in the lead going around 75 mi/hr. My father was following about 10-15 seconds behind in the minivan. I saw a policeman parked on the side of the road standing outside and he smiled at me. I waved at him and passed him by. I watched however, in the rearview mirror as he pulled out a little stop sign and waved it furiously at the minivan. My father pulled over to the side of the road and got out to speak with the man.

I meanwhile stopped about 200 yards down the road to see what was going on. Eileen turned on the two-way radio we carried and buzzed Gail. She initially didn't know what was going on, but after a few minutes said that they were pulled over for speeding! After another few minutes she told us ominiously, "Don't back up, keep going forward, I'm turning off the radio."

Eileen & I didn't know what to make of that last communication, so we drove another half mile and pulled over by the side of a fishing hole that broke through the edge of the forest at this point. I didn't like the situation, but we both agreed it was better that he pulled my father over than me. At least he could speak Russian with the man, whereas I would've been at the mercy of a policeman I couldn't communicate with.

It took around 15 minutes, but the radio started to cackle. "We're coming out of the forest, continue going." I hopped back into the car and drove off - in the distance I could see the minivan coming towards us. I was very curious to find out what happened, and it wasn't more than 10 minutes before Gail squaked us again over the radio to pull over. We prompty did, and got the full sotr from both of them.

It turned out that I was speeding as well, but the policeman either didn't flag me down in time or started to as I blew by him so either way I wasn't pulled over. He didn't have any backup to go after me so I was safe. He did ask my father if he knew the passengers in the car that had pulled over ahead of them, and that's when he told Gail to tell us to hightail it out of there.

Originally the policeman wanted my father to turn back to Vilnius and speak to a judge about paying a 300 Lt ($110) fine. My father explained in Russian that he was on his way to Druskininkai to meet his son, and would rather pay the fine, er ticket, on the spot. The policeman started out demanding the same 300 Lt, but somehow Dad negotiated him down to 150, which included $20 in US Dollars. When the policeman protested that he couldn't take the dollars, my father said he had no more Lits and that any bank would easily change the dollars for him. The policeman released the minivan's registration and they were on their way.

After he finished the story I told my Dad, "Wow, you're very first speeding ticket in Lithuania - you must've been grinning ear to ear!". My father didn't protest, but he did say that since we both were speeding, I should've been fined as well. I thought about it for a second, then dug into my pocket and handed over 70 Lits. There was no protest from Prensky senior as he pocketed the bills.