After a rather long break, I and my friends Donatas (niekonaujo.lt) and Tadas set off on a trip to see some abandoned places here in Vilnius, Lithuania. One of our targets was the abandoned hotel “Saulės žiedas” (“The Sun Ring”). I have to admit that I had rather high expectations for this place and was a little bit disappointed when I saw the building so vandalized and empty. On a rather warm spring day, the chilling humidity confronted us when we opened the door. Some of the rooms resembled skating-rinks; the floors were covered with a solid layer of ice. On the walls and ceilings – water drops and icicles.
Nevertheless, some rooms were pretty cozy – soft carpets under the feet, nice wallpaper, few things here and there. True, it was dark in some rooms as the windows were boarded up. But it provided the opportunity to test a wider range of my updated equipment and try variety of different photo techniques.
For your attention the report from the abandoned Vilnius hotel, few HDR shots, some colored with artificial lighting (as you remember, bright colors are not Photoshop effects!), some funny episodes with my colleagues, a couple of self-portraits and the last photo, a very interesting composition achieved by accidentally pushing the trigger while I was adjusting camera position on the tripod.
“Have a good time at our hotel.”

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We were looking for a strange place, which we called The Beach of Green Glass. We knew it was located near a small town of Zurrieq.
We asked a local “sailor“ how to get there. He wasn‘t surprised by our question, just gave us directions to the Malta‘s landfill of waste. When we explained that we were actually interested in the Green glass beach, not the landfill, he invited us to his place, as he had a lot of junk and glass bottles.
Luckily, we didn’t find the “Beach” (as we later found out from our colleagues, who succeeded in getting there, it is the dark side of Malta and not a very pleasant place.) But, as it often happens, you go after one, you find another.
Zurrieq – a quiet, small town with small population but with many celebrities. We passed one house, patronized by… “Pink Floyd”!!! (houses here usually have their saint patrons). Then we met RAMBO, then some other celebrities, finally, in one of the town’s yards we met CHUCK NORRIS himself with his fellow friends.

A few months ago we together with Donatas Žvirblis and Aivaras Vilkas visited Latvia‘s abandoned military objects (we have already mentioned earlier this trip on: http://guli.lt/2011/11/colorful-bunkers-latvia/).
Since this time the trip was filmed, finally you have a chance to see with different eyes a film mounted by Aivaras Vilkas.

This is a video brief of the urban exploration trip to the abandoned places, first and second world war heritage in Kurzeme, Latvia including Liepaja and other places at the seashore of Baltic Sea.

Trip crew:
Donatas Žvirblis (niekonaujo.lt)
Simonas Šileika (guli.lt)
Aivaras Vilkas

Filmed by Aivaras Vilkas and Simonas Šileika
Video editing by Aivaras Vilkas

Soundtrack includes:
Lorn – Grandfather
Eskmo – Cloudlight
Lorn – Barbara
Michael McCann – Opening Credits [Deus Ex: Human Revolution]
The Glitch Mob – A Dream Within a Dream
Hans Zimmer – Black Smoke [Angel and Demons]
Holy Other – Feel Something
Daft Punk – Overture [Tron Legacy]
Peter Digital Orchestra – Juicy Lady

A week ago we came back from a tiny but fascinating island – Malta. The trip was organized by our like-minded travelers www.bomzturas.lt, who always find ways how to travel cheap and have abundant of experience. Many thanks to Dainius Pilypas, the author of the project.
There were around 20 of us traveling to Malta, but we split into smaller groups, according to our own needs. We had several goals, one of which was to experience life of homeless, that is, to sleep rough in some abandoned places, at least some of the nights.
When we reached Malta, it was very late, so we had to find a place there to spend the night when it was already dark.
Here are a few night shots of our first night in Malta – our neighborhood, that cozy “hotel” or just a bird hunting lodge on the coast near the town Marsaxlokk.

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It is our last day (or night) in Greece. Since we went to Rhodes Island for the second time, we chose another hotel and unexpectedly saw quite a different island. Before saying farewell to Greece, we had to achieve one more goal – to go out and make some experiments with lights (which we failed to do during three weeks of our visit). We had no particular place in mind and were just wandering around randomly “picking” up on our way places that at least reminded abandoned objects.
Contrary to the saying “You can’t do more than you have got time”, we saw much more than expected.  My wife, with quite different “mission” in Greece (to feed as many stray cats in Greek islands as she could, and there were plenty of them), also wasn’t left disappointed. She succeeded in feeding 30 or so stray cats.
P.S. Although, this was our last night in Greece, it’s not the last post from Greece on Guli.lt

Short video how my wife was feeding cats in Rhodes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjDqdQbFwRA

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Wish you better 2012.
Authors: Simonas Šileika & Donatas Žvirblis
Sound: Donatas Žvirblis
3d / 2d / fx: Simonas Šileika, Virginija Šileikienė
Cast: Eglė Ciemnolonskytė, Sandra Šileika-Rutkauskaitė, Irmantas Čepulis, Tadas Baltrušaitis, Šarūnas Raudonis, Donatas Žvirblis
Guliveris  |  NiekoNaujo.lt  2012

One night I and my colleague Donatas (niekonaujo.lt) went to see the abandoned camp-sanatorium Sigma (Lithuania, Vilnius). Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy to find it, as it was a night time. So, we were wandering in the darkness for quite a while and then quite unexpectedly bumped into a young couple with a small child and a huge dog. We asked them the way and got two contradicting answers.
The woman said “It is not so simple. You can easily get lost even during the day time in this forest, besides, it is a dangerous place – there are many open wells out there.”
The man said “Just go this way and you’ll find the camp. It is not that difficult to find it. As long as you have torches, you’ll be ok.”

Brief history of the object
The former pioneer camp- sanatorium SIGMA was built in 1981. In its prime time it had many treatment facilities: medical therapy, water therapy rooms, swimming pools, massages. For more active patients there were various entertainment facilities, even films were showcased.
Here the Camp Sigma, thanks to my lighting, takes new colours.

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Here’s another evening in Santorini (Greece). I and my wife were searching in a hurry a perfect spot to view the sunset and spend a romantic evening.  We came across this ideal place. The Mountains did not obtrude the view of the Sun and not a soul around, only the tiny chapel welcomed us. We admired the sunset only for about 7 minutes, as the Sun was quickly dropping down and instead of “drowning” into the horizon was soon mercilessly enveloped by the clouds. As always.
At the bottom of the cliff we saw two bathtubs (!?), full of water. Suddenly a horse emerged as if from nowhere. Then another one. And another.  The whole family. The bathtubs were their water-troughs. Then a watchful eye of my wife spotted the abandoned object down there and our romantic trip took another course.

We descended the mountain. The horses and the target of our destination were enclosed in the barbed-wire fence.  The youngest of the horses looked very curious.
While my wife was feeding the horses with dried papayas, I ventured to approach them. After I took a few shots, the smallest of my “friends” became inquisitive about what I was doing there and started approaching me. His mother followed him, of course. As I am not familiar with these large and strong animals and don’t know what to expect from them, seeing the trampled Opel and hearing the menacing (at least so appeared to me) snorting, I quickly grabbed my things and backed down.  As the situation calmed, I repeated my attempt. While I was taking pictures, the owners of the territory pulled in to check whose car is in their territory, but what they saw, was a beautiful girl in white dress, feeding horses with dried papayas (!). I and my tripod remained frozen.

Brief hypothesis on the object
Our sunset chapel stood on the very edge of the cliff and it could be reached by car. Someday someone, probably, in this car reached the cliff’s edge and “crossed the boundary”. Or the car was simply pushed down from the cliff. In any case, the car obviously tumbled down from the cliff and later was trampled by our “mad horses”.

P.S. For the smallest and most inquisitive horse, I made the special animated card

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Autumn trip to Latvia’s abandoned military places. (http://guli.lt/2012/02/video-latvia/#more-1959)
We visited many quite similar coastal battery bunkers (although Donatas, the initiator of the trip, by the way, has a different point of view on that   But he can explain himself better on his great website niekonaujo.lt)
Some of these forest bunkers were deserted 50-100 years ago (some – since World War I, others – since World War II), in other words, they were deserted, vandalized or blown up many years ago. Not often we would come across any objects or traces that would indicate past presence of soldiers here, therefore, such rare discoveries were even sweeter.
So, the bunkers from a ‘slightly’ different colorful angle (once again, the colors are not Photoshop effects).

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I spotted it immediately, the only red one and big house in the sea of white ones. In the very centre of Santorini, Thira there stood the abandoned Pool bar MAGIC SUNSET. Just 8 years ago, you could drop in here for a drink, sprawl out at the pool and admire the amazing view. Not today. To get inside was not so simple. Nevertheless, on the very last day of my visit to Santorini, after a long hesitation, I said to myself “Now or Never”.

The beauty stands on the cliff. If you chose the wrong path and if you are not cautious enough, you might get yourself into big trouble. (Look at the donkey zigzag path in the second photo on the right of Thira town. It leads straight to the red Sunset.)  By the way, have you noticed its distinctive color? The house paint was made from the red rocks below it, which were formed (as well as Santorini Island itself) by the eruption of three volcanoes, one of which, Nea Kamen, is still active and could be admired through the Bar windows. After double checking all the entrances and finding none of them opened, I realized that the only way inside is to climb over the stone fence, separating the site from the cliff. Normally, not many people wander around such abandoned places, but not this time. My “illegal” activity immediately caught attention of a bunch of tourists, but I didn’t care.
The view, which awaited me inside, took my breath away. I could only say that it is probably the most memorable abandoned place I’ve ever seen. It is really strange why it was abandoned…

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