Days 25-29: Vilnius

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The pre-dawn flight to Vilnius arrived there at 11am, picking up two hours on the timezone difference. The airport is in old and new halves, and inexplicably they have decided to assign the Soviet-era-mausoleum half as the arrivals hall and the sparkly new half as departures, which to us was not good impression management. Anyway, the information desk was helpful, explaining that we could take a no. 88 bus to a stop very close to our hotel for one euro ($1.60) each “possibly with a charge for bags”. That actually turned out to be a mini-bus, with a driver who was surly but not unhelpful. It was Sunday, and on the way in we gave up seats to two grateful and voluble (in Lithuanian) old ladies. They and a number of others were being ferried straight from church to market, two venues that appeared, like much in the central city, to have changed little, and that was a good thing. The locals appeared untroubled by the speed and frequent lane-changing of the no. 88 and the way in which it seemed to angle outwards as it wheeled at pace around corners, rather in the manner of a cartoon vehicle.

We easily found our hotel, the Shakespeare, which caters to business travellers and tourists and is old-world, like something out of the 1950s, in a good way. For a change, we were the only Australians around, and there were even not many Americans – more Germans, English and East Europeans. We chatted with an American couple as we arrived, but after the woman boasted of bargaining a market vendor down by one euro (prices are very low all round) we politely avoided them for a day. We had little enough left of the day for just a short walk around the immediate neighbourhood, on the way noting two ice cream shops and a wine bar. We checked out the latter for pre-dinner drinks (cheap but not especially cheerful) after an afternoon snooze and before dinner in the hotel, which was fine but pricey by local standards.

The following is a list of some of the places visited and impressions of the city from the following four days. These are not necessarily in chronological order, and the reader will forgive that some cathedrals and museums are not given their proper names … so many. And so much linen. It is a little-known statistic that in Lithuania there are more linen shops than there are Icelandic horses.

We were keen to visit the market we had passed on arrival, a long walk on which we were able to observe to the variety of buses in the city system. In addition to the minis like the no. 88, there are old-fashioned snub-nosed classics, modern articulated doubles, and trolley-buses, a concept that we had heard of but never seen before, drawing electric power as a tram does by contact with overhead wires. Unfortunately the market was closing as we arrived and had lost its bustle, but we were able to marvel at the low prices of fresh food (0.50 euro/kg for yummy apples, 1 euro for mediocre plums), the alluring smells of the smallgoods hall (so many different cuts and colours of cured pork/bacon and sausages) and the range of clothing (from handmade beauty at a fraction of Scandinavian prices to super-tacky). Somehow the place was so entrancing that I forgot to pull out the camera to record it, which is annoying.

Cathedral Square is maybe the largest paved public space we have ever seen, perhaps 80m x 200m, broken only by a single huge statue of the city founder and his horse. Great spot for a demo. It is overlooked by the presidential palace (apartments, drapes, etc.). Nearby is a steep hill with the remains of a fortress at the top, visitable by funicular railway that regrettably was broken while we were there. There are several old fortifications to be visited around the old town. Lithuania seems to have spent much of its thousand-year separate existence defending itself against invading Swedes, Poles, Russians or Germans, then being friends with them for a while against one of the others, and repeat. It has only governed itself for about a hundred of those years.

It may be only an understandable matter of recency and its long duration, but the Soviet incorporation seems to be much the most reviled of all those invasions. We visited the Genocide Museum, covering the period 1940-1992, which was an invaluable and deeply impressive record of the horrors of the period. It was notable, though, that only a single room was given over to the German occupation of 1942-44, in which time more Lithuanians (mostly Jews) were killed by the Nazis than were by the Russians in the surrounding fifty years. One gets the impression that the anti-Communist resistance was a much more popular and energetic movement than the anti-Nazi one.

Other museums suggest that there has been an upsurge in archaeology, particularly ancient. One had an entire exhibition given over to recent discoveries, and overall there is a wealth of material in the National and smaller museums, including surprising artistry from as far back as the 10^th century BC. The National overall though was something of a disappointment, with too many portraits of important men and their families from the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and much Catholic and Orthodox iconography collected from institutions and homes. Other museums included a toy museum, of which there are apparently now a number around the world, but this one claims to be the first; and an amber museum, which tells you a lot of genuinely interesting things about the substance and, yes, they will sell it to you as well.

We visited several churches and cathedrals of different denominations – the town has more than a few – the most impressive of which, St Anne’s, was just up the road from our hotel. A beautiful Gothic piece, very vertical, if that makes sense, and with an abundance of glorious wooden carving. Napoleon apparently visited (welcomed on his way eastwards to a common enemy in Russia, on that famous excursion where he didn’t get much further) and said he’d like to take it home with him. Just a hundred metres on, we ventured into an Orthodox cathedral that was deceptively plain outside but inside full of gilt and massive oil paintings. As in other cities we’d been to, everything seemed to be within walking distance, though the Frank Zappa statue (don’t ask) was just beyond us. Compared with other cities we could mention (and already have), road signage is great. Not only lots of street signs, but if you are looking for a major street you will sometimes be helped by a sign telling you that it is 200m away in that direction, a handy feature I don’t recall seeing anywhere else.

One neighbourhood, Uzupis, across the Vilnia river from the old town, is an arty/Bohemian kind of place that has declared itself an independent republic (although it still seems to be covered by public services such as street cleaning). It boasts a quirky constitution and plenty of art-related shops that do accept euros even though Uzupis theoretically has its own currency. The day we were there the streets were almost deserted, though that may have been due to the pouring rain (thanks to our hotel for the umbrellas on loan).

The people are helpful if often unsmiling, which is a cultural thing rather than unfriendliness, and street wear tends towards black and dull colours. Not surprisingly, English is less common than in Scandinavia, especially outside the tourist-service sector, and the language in signs is less easy to interpret from linguistic guesses. An odd feature of shops and cafes is the tendency to vintage American blues and jazz for piped music – Leadbelly, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and their compatriots are everywhere. The food feature is the cepelinas (= zeppelin), a kind of potato dumpling about 10cm long, boiled, baked or fried, with a savoury or sweet stuffing that is generally small in proportion to the potato bit. The drink feature is what they call “bitters”, a herb-flavoured mystery that seems to involve both vodka and brandy – even the internet fails to yield anything definitive. We have a bottle.

And on the last day, for the first time, after Iceland, Sweden and Norway all failed to sprinkle any on us: a little snow.

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