I Followed a Trail to the End of the World and All I Got Was This Horse Without a Head

It was a split-second decision, a flash sale: a return flight to Palanga for 42€. Where even is that? I wondered, and booked it. A resort town on the coast of Lithuania, a 20€ room in a sprawling resort complex seemed a steal, until I realised it was a 30-minute walk through a thin strip of coastal forest to Palanga. I laughed to see a familiar white-blue-white trail marker painted on a pine tree; this was the far end of the Baltic Coastal Hiking Route, the same trail that ran straight past my apartment in Paldiski. I could have walked here. I mentally colored in a two-kilometre stretch as completed. Only 1,417 kilometres to go!

On the morning of my departure, I planned to follow the trail south for lunch before getting a taxi to the airport. But the airport was north; I’d be walking in the wrong direction. What if, instead, I followed the trail north and collected a few more kilometres of the hiking route. A sign enthusiastically proclaimed that it was just twenty kilometres to Šventoji, where I could experience a bridge, a stone age sculpture park and a mysterious eddy that was once believed to mark the end of the world.

It was six hours before my flight. I knew that I would not make it 20 kilometres walking through the forest dragging my luggage behind me, but I could walk until I got tired, taxi to Šventoji for lunch, and then taxi back to the airport for at most 20€ in taxi fares and the chance to explore the end of the world.

I followed the trail for about three kilometres before getting sick of dragging my suitcase through the pine needles while the gathering clouds threatened to become a storm. I sheltered under a chestnut tree and called a taxi.

He arrived eventually, a good-looking and outgoing Lithuanian man, to find me looking miserable under the chestnut tree. I’d barely got in before he launched into a tirade about construction not shown on the GPS, which had meant he’d had to drive all the way around, which is why it took so long. He pointed at the GPS, showing me the construction that wasn’t there, and explained that we would have to go all the way around again to get to where I was going, even though it didn’t say that on the GPS. Where was I going? Šventoji?

He paused for breath and I managed to get a yes out.

“Why?”

“To look around,” I said. I hadn’t expected to have to explain.

“Look around Šventoji? There’s nothing there.”

“There is!” My mind went blank. “There’s… there’s a bridge.”

“There is no bridge,” he told me. Baltic men have an uncanny ability to vocalise gloom. “It is destroyed.”

“The sign said…”

“There is no bridge. A long time ago, yes. Maybe 50 years ago or maybe 100? Someone put stones out, like so.” He looked back at me and patted the air with both hands to show two parallel lines of stones. I nodded quickly, my eyes on the fast-moving road.

He put his hands back on the wheel. “Then they lay wood across the stones. That was the bridge.” His tone made it clear that he did not think this was very much of a bridge. “And now, the wood is gone. So there is no bridge. Just the stones.”

“But…”

He cut me off with a gesture. “And you can’t go on the stones. They are…” We struggled together for a moment to find the word he needed: slippery. “Yes, slippery. I went walking on them once and I fell and broke my w–”

“Your wrist, my god!” I said, having gotten too used to filling in the blanks for him.

“My watch,” he said, a bit embarrassed. “I broke my watch. Anyway, there is nothing there. You should go somewhere else. Go to Klaipeda.”

I blinked at this unexpected demand. “I can’t; I’m flying home today,” I said, by which I meant I am going to Šventoji but somehow what he heard was this is negotiable.

“What time is your flight?” 

“15:30.” I immediately cursed myself for answering.

“That’s not enough time to go to Klaipeda.”

I agreed that this was true.

“What about Habėha?” I had no idea what he’d just said, to be honest. It didn’t sound very Lithuanian.

“Where?”

“Habėha! It’s a little village. Very interesting.”

“Um,” I said.

“It’s closer to the airport too, just five minutes by car.” He paused, not wanting to mislead me. “Well, maybe ten.”

“Um,” I said again.

“You can look around there!  At least there is something to see! There are houses and a forest trail and horse riding, but no horse riding today, it is too wet.”

It was time to admit defeat. “And restaurants?”

“Yes! Restaurants, very good lunch, traditional Lithuanian food. My wife and I, we go there. Much better than Šventoji.” He looked out at the drizzle. “And you can sit in the restaurant and not in the rain.” Another glance back to see if I was paying attention. “A very good restaurant.”

It was very tempting to exclaim But the bridge! one more time, but I restrained myself. “OK.”

“OK?” He looked amazed. “You will go to Habėha?”

“Yes. Let’s go there .”

He paused at a junction. “We must go right here to go to Habėha. Are you sure?”

Now I had to convince him? “Yes. Let’s go there.” I still hadn’t understood the name, couldn’t find it on a map, but what the hell.

“There’s nothing in Šventoji,” he said again as he turned right. “This is better.”

He seemed to want to justify this all the way there. He pointed at a spa hotel and told me that it was a spa hotel. He pointed at a restaurant, paused, admitted that it wasn’t very good. He pointed towards a cluster of trees. “Over there are three flat lakes.” I didn’t know lakes came in any other configuration. “My wife likes it there.”

We pulled into a massive, empty parking lot. Three cars, possibly abandoned, were huddled in one corner. A big brown sign said HBH in a fancy font. A statue on a hill seemed to depict a horse with no head. A restaurant faced the parking lot. The entrance was piled high with stacked chairs.

This was HBH Palanga, which at least cleared up what he’d been saying this whole time. It was blatantly some sort of entertainment complex and equally blatantly deserted.

“It’s out of season,” he said, apologetically. “Everything is out of season, not just here.” As if I would hold HBH personally accountable for not having tourists in October.

The drizzly rain continued. But it would equally be raining in Šventoji and I equally did not hold HBH responsible for this.

I could just get lunch and head for the airport early. I looked at the restaurant with the piled up furniture. He followed my gaze.

“The main restaurant is definitely open.” He gave me detailed instructions: go straight until the crossroad then turn (he paused and pointed left) and keep going until I saw the trailer and the goat (I wondered how he knew “trailer” and “goat” but not “left”) and then it would be a little further and I would see the restaurant which was definitely open. It would be obvious, he promised. Yes, because it would be the only thing open, I didn’t say.

“Great!” I opened the car door.

“Really?”

“Really.” At the very least, I wanted a better look at that horse statue. I got out of the car and walked to the back to get my suitcase. He joined me there, suddenly full of remorse, and offered to take me somewhere else. “But not Šventoji…”

“… there is nothing there,” I finished the sentence for him. “This is fine! I will explore!”

He pulled out my suitcase. “Maybe… maybe for the airport you should call for a taxi early. It is out of season, maybe not so many taxis.”

I thanked him for saving me from Šventoji, leaving a generous tip on the app even though I hadn’t asked to be saved, and slipped into the complex before he could change his mind again. The place looked like a funfair after the apocalypse: tarped rides, claw machines blinking like hungover slot junkies, tinny carnival songs from every direction competing for dominance. The billboard-sized map of the complex offered no helpful You Are Here. There was no here, only the echo of where fun had once existed. I turned in a circle, trying to get my bearings. The taxi was still in the parking lot. My only Lithuanian friend got out, looking suspiciously like he was going to come after me and abduct me to some other place. I waved like a lunatic and bolted the other way.

There was nothing to see. This was not a village. I continued off the edge of the complex and onto a working farm, which looked both very muddy and like I might be chased off by an angry Lithuanian farmer with a shotgun.

I returned to the parking lot. My taxi driver was gone.

The headless horse statue was, in fact, a horse that had lost its head in what seemed like a rather violent fashion. Steps led to its saddle. I briefly considered swinging myself onto its back, but I was afraid of witnesses.

Besides, the drizzle was turning into an angry rain. I walked back into the complex and followed the directions. The trailer was a small rusty wagon on the edge of a courtyard. The goat, climbing a haystack piled high with pumpkins, had been freshly painted in bright orange. A very large building, the only one with lights on, was clearly the restaurant.

Inside was a massive dining hall with low lights and benches for seating. A family at in the far corner, as if to ensure no one would sit near them. I chose the smallest table I could find, which would seat six at a pinch. Mariachi music filled the restaurant, sounding oddly familiar despite being in Lithuanian. They say that Lithuanian is the language closest we can get to hearing Indo-European as it was spoken five thousand years ago. I tried to channel that energy, envisioning a mariachi message from my ancestors. Suddenly, the melody clicked into place. It was the 1981 hit from Men at Work, Down Under. (Sometimes people question whether everything I describe is true. I am not making this up.)

A friendly but harried young woman with minimal English appeared, looking like she couldn’t believe this lunch time rush and was I ready to order yet? Under pressure, I quickly pointed at coffee, a half-liter of beer and the first thing I managed to focus on in their hundred-page menu: pork belly steak with sauerkraut and potato wedges. I regretted my choice immediately when I saw Zeppelins on the following page, large potato dumplings filled with meat, and then Yesterday’s Zeppelins, the same dumplings, cut in half and fried.

Alas, I was not successful in calling over the waitress and explaining that I wanted to change my order. Faced with the very real possibility of receiving both pork belly steak and yesterday’s Zeppelins, I gave up and signaled that everything was fine. She hurried over with my coffee, clearly in hopes that I would suddenly remember how to speak Lithuanian.

I pulled up the HBH Palanga website to find out more. This was their About Us page.

I don’t usually pick on language issues but the phrasing sounded oddly inviting and yet inhuman, like a trap set to lure humans to the complex to eat our brains.

The waitress cleared the table without any apparent interest in my brains and handed me the novel-of-a-menu, opened to the dessert page. It was a list of three.

I considered whether I could ask for yesterday’s zeppelins and then wrap them up to take with me, although they did not look very transportable. The young woman presumed I was struggling to decide among the many options and said “chocolate lava cake” in perfect English.

“Yes?”

“Yes. Chocolate lava cake. With ice cream.”

Today was apparently my day to be dictated to by Lithuanians. “OK.”

It was the right choice.

The rain had stopped and my time was up. I wandered back to the parking lot and ordered a taxi. Three minutes later, a man appeared with a smashed face and one eye swollen shut. His t-shirt said “I have a friend who smokes weed.” He looked like he needed friends who shared. He bundled me and my bag into the car and off we went.

“Airport,” he confirmed. “Are you going to England?”

It seemed a reasonable guess as I was speaking English. “No, Tallinn.”

“My wife is going to England,” he told me.

I wasn’t quite sure why he was telling me this and struggled to find an appropriately Baltic response: interested without straying into personal matters. “Is it a direct flight?”

He shrugged.

A brief pause. “I was in Tallinn,” he told me.

“Yes?” I was confused by his insistence that we have a conversation.

“Yes. I went to hospital.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes. One nine nine three.”

“Right.”

Another pause. Apparently still not feeling he’d contributed enough to the conversational attempts, he tried again. “I had Estonian friends.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. I was in the Russian army. It was one nine eight four.” He looked thoughtful. “Or one nine eight six.”

“Right.” It didn’t seem sufficient. “A different time,” I said.

“Yes. A long time ago.”

“Yes,” I said, wondering how much further it was to the airport.

He turned and pulled up in front of the terminal. I breathed a sigh of relief. It had taken six and a half minutes.

“You will have a good trip,” he told me.

“OK,” I said, willing to accept one last instruction from a Lithuanian stranger.  But the truth was, I already had.