Lazing about in Lithuania

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After hanging out in Riga for a while, we hopped on a bus South to Vilnius the capital of Lithuania. We had heard good things about Vilnius that it was like Riga but without all the tourists and we had met two guys in our hostel from Vilnius who assured us that Vilnius was very nice. They even offered us a lift there the next day but after watching them drink three quaters of a bottle of Jack Daniels between them and with another in thier bags we chose to use our bus tickets.
We got to Vilnius and were forced inside as it started raining. This was the first time it had rained enough for us to cancel our plans since we left the UK, so we weren't to upset.
Vilnius was a nice enough city in the town centre, but it didn't have the charms of Riga it could have been the weather which was cloudy the whole time. But you got the feeling that Vilnius isn't trying to atract that many tourists and would just rather be left alone. This being said the old town is UNESCO heritage listed and has some pretty cool tourist attractions.
There is a castle in the city which has good views over the city and Vinius is famous for its churches which although interesting and inside some were extermely beautiful and to be fair over the top, weren't exciting enough to have us praying to any number of gods.
The main tourist site for visitors to Vilnius is quite obviously the gates of dawn. This is the only part of the old city walls intact and is only intact because of the Virgin Mary icon which sits in the top part of the gates overlooking the street. The site was left alone by the Russians in the 18th century and the Soviets as they were to afraid to touch it. Today it is considered one of the holiest sites in Polish catholisism and has got the tourists to prove it. Standing on the street we were nearly swept away by waves of religous tourists all trying to get a good photo of the beautiful icon.
After rambling around Vilnius for a while we decided that enough was enough and that it was time to head out on some day trips. We headed for the most famous day trip from Vilnius to Trakai castle. We took the train to Trakai and Peter insisted on sitting in the oldest carriage of what was otherwise quite a new train so he could feel like he was back in the USSR. As soon as we got to Trakai the clouds that had been haunting us parted and we were met with beautiful sunshine. The castle is like something out of a fairy tale it sits out on the lake and is connected to the mainland by various bridges and walkways. The lake is a beautiful place and we also saw the Lithuanian rowing teams practising for the Olympics, not sure how they will go but they were practising for quite a few hours.
The next day we went on another day trip to a place Paneriai. Paneriai was used in WWII by the Nazis and there Lithuanian supporters as a concentration camp. The instructions on how to get there in our guide book are pretty bad so we ended up walking around for a while. in this time we ran into a German guy who was looking for the same place. Not withstanding the irony of looking for a concentration camp with a German guy we eventually found it. The camp was extremely beautiful and was set amongst some really nice forest. However it was also eerily quiet. The camp was the site where over 100,000 people died and as you walk around the site the sheer efficiency of the place is horrifying the people were killed in massive pits and then the bodies were burnt in other pits. Talking to our new German friend he was able to give us interesting information as many of his family had grown up under and lived through the Nazi regime. The whole camp left us with a very strange feeling and the horrors of what happened during this time suddenly became alot more real.

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