Journey through Mirkwood 1.

There was a ten days long Lithuanian-Hungarian tolkienist summer camp last week in north-eastern Lithuania, and I really want to tell you about it, but don't know, how... because it is really not about the things which happened and can be told, but the feelings and experiences. Let's try. To "begin with the beginning", though our Lithuanian friends already planned this for more than a year before that, for us it all started with an invitation posted in our forum in mid-October, and my part in December, when I warned our official people not to neglect this opportunity and was asked to do something about it. So I did, started to collect participants, helped to write our part in the application for funding with Pillangó (our international relations secretary), and then waited for the results. The results came, the organising started and the two of us travelled for a meeting to Lithuania in the very end of May. And seven weeks later we arrived to the same place again, with sixteen other Hungarians, to meet approximately the same number of Lithuanians and spend with them a long week in Mirkwood. So we did, but the week turned out not to be long enough.

We started near Salakas, camping on the shore of lake Luodis. At first the groups from the two nations were just standing separately, while the fire was started with some difficulity and a Hungarian newspaper. Then one of the groups started to sing. After them the other, and so on. Lithuanian songs seemed to be long and sad compaired to ours, of which most of us knew only the first few verses. The meat slowly became edible, the experts discussed the local tengwar modes preparing for their presentation, and one after the other we went to sleep.

Morning came and we made a run to the lake needing to get clean. It was great, but the weather changed constantly, a little rain, some sunshine, an amazing double (or triple?) rainbow mirrored in the lake, a lot of rain again, towels once used seemed never to be dry again. Taking advantage of the sunny bits, we announced the four groups (red, yellow, green, blue - and the white council of organisers) and their leaders, then introduced the members to each other by ice-breaking games, making knots and torpedos of them. Then in the first hours of the night we started to learn more of each others languages, expalining our "gy" to the Lithuanians and hopelessly trying to pronounce their diphthongs,  but at least learn understandable versions of the basic greetings.

The weather continued to be unpredictable on Sunday, when in the middle of a very interesting tengwar lecture half of the Hungarians ran away to the local church for mass. Being there we also climbed up some stairs to the tower checking whether the bells are feeling well amongst all the dead pigeons. They seemed so.

After a lecture about weapons of Medieval Europe and Middle-Earth, we started to work on our own swords, which being quite long and for the hikes of the following days attached to the backpacks by most of us gave a special style to our wanderer group. The first bit of archery training already lead us to the night, so the first try of local folk dances found us in complete darkness on the uneven shore of the lake. Still, it was fun, and nobody fell into the water. There was something about making pancakes in the lyrics. And of course the amazing sounds of the hornpipe by Tomas to lead the dance.

Next morning we listened to Laiqua's lecture about architecture of Arda and Europe sitting in the sun on the shore (some of us still in raincoats), eating our breakfast rice, while in the background members of the team on duty standing in the lake still fought the cauldrons which did not want to become clean enough. After that followed another lecture about heraldic devices, already around the campfire, then we had to pack our tents and stuff to get ready for the first hike, mixed with spontaneus swordmanship trainings for those who still had their swords at hand.

We folded our tents in rain and unfolded them again in rain, and between the two had a long walk in the changing weather, through village, near lake, and here and there near the road there were big crosses with little Jesus figures or suns on pillars or the combinations of the two. The second camping place was around an old school building (in Švedriškė), which contained a badly tuned piano and enough place for all four teams to paint their flags till late after midnight. There was a well of ice cold water for washing the dishes, because this place was a little walk from the nearest lake, and they said we should beware of the snakes, although none of us have seen any.

During next days hike we arrived to the woods of Aukštaitija National Park, and realised that food is all around us. Experienced finders started to collect blueberries, rapsberries and I don't know what berries all along the forest roads. And the rain was nice enough to stop sometimes. Still the sentence "The strange glowing object in the sky scares me." became popular.

Blueberries were all around and below the next campsite (above the shore of Lake Utenas), too, even visiting some of us in the not best situated tents. We were also late with the program, continued to work on the flags, learned about ranger lore and were still introducing the history and present of our societies one hour after midnight.

So, this was half of the story. To be continued.