As a young boy we always packed our car and headed to the beach for weekends each summer. It was only an hour’s drive away from Siauliai, but to a small boy it always seemed like an endless journey before we arrived; the place where the dense pine woods parted and the beautiful Baltic Sea came into view.
Once the car had been unpacked we’d race down the path from our cottage to the beach, not to swim (it was always freezing cold even in summer) but to search for treasure given up by the wet sand.
The memory of hunting for amber with my brother and my parents remains so vivid for me even to this day. We’d walk with heads bowed, our feet in the cold, wet sand while we concentrated on finding these small treasures tossed up by the sea.