Lithuanian's trip to work leads her off-track to Estonia

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2008

TALLINN (AFP) — The Baltic states' membership of Europe's borderless Schengen zone gave a Lithuanian woman a rude awakening after her journey to work led her to the wrong country, Estonian police said Tuesday.

The 33-year-old supermarket cleaner, identified only as Jolanta, hitched a ride Monday on a truck to get to her workplace in the central Lithuanian city of Kaunas, 125 kilometres (78 miles) from her home.

But Lithuanian-speaking Jolanta's request was lost in translation for the the Russian-speaking truck driver who offered to help.

Instead of dropping her to a Kaunas branch of the Baltic supermarket chain Maxima, the trucker took her to one in the southern Estonian city of Tartu, some 500 kilometres away.

Jolanta failed to spot the mistake --...