🎶🎧Refleсtions — The Neighbourhood

July in Vilnius was suffocating; the asphalt melted under the relentless sun, and after the whole Eurovision madness (rehearsals until dawn, camera flashes, endless interviews), Alanas felt completely drained, like a squeezed-out lemon. All he wanted was to hear the sea again. The real one: cold, salty, Baltic.

And right then, as if someone up there had overheard his thoughts, the phone rang. It was babytė, her voice warm and familiar, asking him to look after the house on the Curonian Spit. “Dedushka and I are going to Latvia to visit Aunt Birutė for a week. We don’t want the raspberries to overripen or the cucumbers to wilt without water.” Alanas didn’t even hesitate. “Of course I’ll come. Of course I’ll breathe.”

Going alone, though, would have been lonely. So he called her, the one who’d been through fire, water. “Hey,” she answered, and he could hear the smile in her voice right away. “Missing normal life already?”
“I’m going to the Spit. My grandparents’ house. Sea, banya, raspberries. Coming with me?”
A half-second pause.
“Are you seriously asking?” They met that evening outside his place. The sun was already sinking, painting the old Soviet apartment blocks in warm amber light. They popped into Rimi and grabbed everything on the list Alanas had scribbled on a napkin: • two litres of white wine, • Lithuanian v0dka with blackcurrant (because there’s no other way to drink in a banya), • a pack of dumplings so nobody had to cook, • and a block of Marlboro Gold, because summer, sea, and cigarettes on the porch are sacred.

Night train to Klaipėda, then the ferry, then the bus to Nida, and suddenly the smell of pine became so thick you could almost touch it. At the final stop, a cool breeze rolled in from the lagoon, carrying the faint, distant roar of the sea beyond the dunes. His grandparents’ house stood at the very edge of the village: old, painted blue, white window frames, and a huge garden where raspberry bushes were bending under the weight of fruit. The key was exactly where it was supposed to be, under the pot of mint. They stepped inside and turned on the light. The air smelled of dried thyme, old wood, and something indefinably home-like. On the table lay a note in babytė’s neat handwriting: “Guys, don’t forget to light the stove, firewood’s in the shed. And don’t drink all the vodka in one go. Love and kisses, babytė & deduška.” Alanas dropped his backpack and walked to the window. Outside: dark sky, bright stars, and a thin silver line on the horizon where the sea breathed. She came up behind him, rested her chin on his shoulder.