How to spend your weekends on a budget

Everybody sits back as today we are going to talk about some ideas of spending your weekends with a budget less than 15 euros. University has you all wrapped up (I mean, when you’re not hanging out with your newly made friends) but sometimes you feel like you need to sit back and have some time for yourself. There are plenty of options you should consider. First, beware of the fact that Lithuanians absolutely don’t care if you want to hang around just by yourself at a coffee place or a restaurant. Really, they just don’t care if you do so. I know that some places I’ve been to in my country and some others, people might give you some intrigued looks if you just randomly decide to go have a coffee and watch something on your laptop. Not in Lithuania though. Lithuanians are all cool with everything as long as you’re not being intrusive to their private space or such.

Coffee Shops

There are various reasons why I love Lithuania but one of them is that Lithuanians have a very good sense of interior design which they fully explore with their coffee shops, restaurants, cafeterias etc. I have not been to a single place which didn’t look nice in Lithuania. They have a specific kind of charm and only when you’ll get back to your country you’ll understand what I’m talking about. And it’s perfectly common to see an astonishingly nice girl just getting off her bike and getting inside a coffee place for a regular Americano with extra sugar. So if you want to get away from everything that is going on in your apartment/dorm, you can grab a book/kindle or your laptop/tablet (alright, whatever you have, you got it) and just go at one of these places. Go there, get a discount card (don’t forget the discount card, otherwise you will be paying around 1. 50 euros for a regular Americano, instead of 90 cents like a true Lithuanian with a discount card). I used to have the suckiest suck up schedule of all on Mondays where I had around 3 free hours in between my classes and I used to just go somewhere and watch The Walking Dead (cough cough Coffee Inn, cough cough Caif Café).

Also, there is the most amazing place on earth downtown Vilnius, which is an Italian bakery I fell in love with so so much. The prices there are medium I would say, but you can get a tasty focaccia for 2. 5 to 3 euros. Just to get an idea, a slice of pizza is around 3 euros. You can get there by walking down the street from the university main campus and then turn right at the first intersection, walk 5 to 10 meters and you’re there. It’s a lovely place and the employees there are so nice. You can get a focaccia and a nice limo you can have for free and you will be feeling like you are on a holiday in Italy. I checked them on their Facebook page and their recent activity included the visit of the Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite. She definitely knows her bakeries, because this place is just so cool. And there is also this Books & Coffee place which I regret not knowing of earlier, which is really awesome.

Museums and some other stuff students might do once in a while

Also, you can go see a play at the national theatre or at any theatre. Sure, you probably won’t catch up a complete phrase during the play, but you’ll still have fun trying to figure out what is going on. I went to see ballet at the national opera and ballet hall and I loved it. Now I regret not going there more often because the price for a ticket is ridiculously low. For students it's 5 euros for most of their spectacles with the ISIC card. And the place is right next to the bus station and in the city centre of course so you can go all fancy one night if you want to and just go at the opera and then go have some pasta (and rodonas vynas or baltas vynas I’m not telling you what to drink) and it will cost you around 12 euros for everything. Speaking of which, you might want to go to some museums while you are in Lithuania. The ones I found the most interesting were the Genocide Museum in Vilnius and the Military Museum in Kaunas. The entrance fee was something like 2 euros for both of them if I remember correctly. The Museum of Genocide Victims is the kind of place which will stick with you. It is located on the former KGB headquarter in Vilnius. (Just to shortly brief you in on Lithuania’s 20th century history: they declared independence in 1918, in the context of the Bolshevik overthrow of the tsarist regime in Russia and the peace treaties after the first world war. They enjoyed independence until they were invaded by the Soviet Union in 1940 and then invaded by the Nazis which brought about the Holocaust in Lithuania, where hundreds of thousands lost their lives. Then again “liberated” by the Soviet Union, they were given the statute of Soviet Socialist Republic until 1989, when the revolution occurred, to 1991, when they received recognition for their independence). And it gives you the creeps. The second floor is just cell blocks and KGB nomenclature desks. You get to see how the prisoners felt like back in those days. The Vytautas the Great Military Museum in Kaunas was also really enjoyable. The one thing which I found to be the most interesting is the Lithuanian sense of irony and how it works when set in motion. In one of the halls of the exposition, they had the statue of Lenin with the Nazi flag on the background. I really like their sense of irony.

Sightseeing and exploring on foot

I would also like to say that by this point, I realise I am not a very outdoor kind of person neither am I the type of person who would go bungee jumping or rafting on her weekends. But I do enjoy parks, gardens, pools. I would never go to the zoo because it is too cruel for me to see animals trapped in cages; nor to the circus. But I can spend hours and hours in a mall. Anyway the best piece of advice I can give you if you are an outdoor person yourself is go for walks. Always go for walks. Nowhere in particular. Just go on random streets, start with the city centre and go explore. You’ll see that there are plenty of beautiful churches and architecture in general and some events and things going on that you couldn’t have possibly heard of, like jazz concerts or dance street performance or street basketball. Lithuania’s national sport is basketball and they are so good at it. They just love it. Lithuania plus basketball = love.

Also, you can get a view of the city from the Gediminas' Tower for free!

Clubs and pubs

If you like going to clubs, you’ll get the hang of it pretty soon. Tuesdays is C**inn night and Fridays (or pretty much all the other days starting with Thursdays) is S***nto. These two are the most popular I would say clubs among Erasmus students and you’ll meet a lot of Erasmus people there. Rumour has it that it is actually quite hard for Lithuanians to enter these clubs, as the bouncers are targeting only the international students (just rumours though, I don’t think they are 100% accurate). Keep an eye on their Facebook pages and you’ll see that they have different events going on and different discounts every week. Usually the price for a drink whether it’s a coca cola or a beer does not exceed 5 euros. You’ll see that there are other places Erasmus people like going, such as Crazy B***, R**ublic no. 4, B*si T**cias etc. But don’t make it your everyday routine, because there are a lot of other interesting things to see! I’m just not giving the full names because I don’t want to sound like I’m advertising for these places.

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