More Kaunas; later, Vilnius

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To make up for only getting one night in Kaunas, we decided to borrow a little bit from our first day in Vilnius (we’ve got 4 on the agenda, after all) and wait til the evening to hop on the bus. We had a relatively relaxed morning, and headed first to the bus station to leave our luggage in storage for the day. That was a bit of an adventure -- the trolleybus was so crowded Graham almost didn’t make it on, and then we spent the entire ride a bit, er, compressed. I think my backpack spent the ride making nice with some girl’s ear. But eventually we got off the bus and could breathe again.

We spent the afternoon taking photographs (ahh camera, we will not forget you again) and visiting some sights we’d missed the previous day. We stopped to see a statue of a naked man, which attracted a lot of controversy in the town. Frankly I don’t think it’s artful enough to be titillating, with strange proportions and uneven skin; even the nude ladies of the Court that famously excited Ashcroft must be more threatening than this sculpture. We also stopped in the Museum of Devils, a marvelous little collection of homunculized evil -- originally the private collection of one monomaniac whose favorite number was thirteen, and who donated his life’s work to the state on his death. A few of the devils were actively creepy, but most were actually kind of charming. Awfully gendered, though.

Once we’d had our fill of Old Town and New Town shops and museums, we made it to the bus station just in time for one of the dozen or so Vilnius express buses that leave Kaunas every hour. A short nap later, we pulled into Vilnius, and we were totally disoriented. Just as we found a restroom, pulled out the map, got our bearings, and dialed the number for our apartment -- we were suddenly approached by this strange old man who desperately wanted to talk to us in Lithuanian. Unfortunately the apartment manager on the other end of the line was *also* in a bit of a muddle as she was late to get somewhere and there was quite a lot of static and so I was trying to juggle a polite conversation on the phone with a hurried non-native English speaker in heavy noise while this creepy fellow kept trying to touch me. Meanwhile I had the guide and the dictionary in my backpack, which I was wearing, so Graham couldn’t easily figure out how to say “Go away, creepy old man.” Eventually a set of steely glares did the trick, but it set an unnerving tone for the evening.

We found our way to the apartment. Vilnius really felt like the big city after the other towns in Lithuania, and we were a bit intimidated at first. Our hurried host appeared shortly after to let us in. This place was another Gobstopper -- we passed through some creepy tunnels and up an old set of stairs to find ourselves let into an impressively-huge, boldly-decorated apartment with a number of flaws we found later. Flaw the first: the shower wouldn’t drain. (“We had some Italians here last week,” the host offered later, with no further comment. I love how in Europe, ethnicity explains everything.) Flaw the second: no hot water. Flaw the third: the internet connection didn’t work. Flaw the fourth: they’d put in a washing machine but had buried all the useful bits directly under the kitchen counter. Well, the bed was comfortable and the location convenient (right in the middle of the action of Old Town Vilnius), so we couldn’t complain....too much.

For the first time so far on the trip, my dinner instincts were pointing toward the familiar. We found ourselves a little Italian place in Old Town; in my hurry to make my order in Lithuanian I managed to order not the spaghetti bolognese I’d been craving, but instead the linguini with boletus. Boletus, it turns out, is what Lithuanians think porcini are called in English. Heck, maybe they are, but I’ve only ever called them porcini. Anyway, bolognese it wasn’t but we still managed to down it all, plus dessert and 3 liters of water. Man, we needed that.

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Photos

Dictionary Heaven
What's this? A used book stand with a table full of foreign-language dictionaries? Oh dear, I think we lost Graham...

Levitating Statue
Graham loved this sculpture at the far end of Laisves. The sculptor must have had some pretty good intuitions about physics.