The hotel we’re staying in belongs to Sabonis.
And of course, there’s a basketball court here. As one local told me, this used to be the court of Žalgiris’s summer training camp. Where the hotel buildings now stand, there used to be bleachers. Then perestroika (the late-Soviet reform period) began, and the crafty Sabonis somehow managed to get permission to build the first private hotel here in Lithuania — and possibly in the entire USSR. They allowed it, but only on condition that the "designated use of the land" be preserved. So he kept the playing court and slapped the hotel buildings up where the stands had been. The hotel is tiny — 14 rooms — and from the look of it, it seems to have originally been designed mainly for Sabonis himself and his buddies. And that’s still very obvious now, to my great delight: in most hotels, what really drives me crazy is the shower height — to wash properly, I have to move the showerhead all the way up. Here, I fit perfectly even when the showerhead is at its lowest setting. I probably couldn’t even reach the highest one. You can jump in front of the mirror and still only see the top of your head. The ceilings are incredibly high. None of this is surprising if you remember that Sabonis is 222 cm tall (7 ft 3 in).