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All posts for the month July, 2013

We’ve arrived in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, unsure of how long we’re staying or where we’re going from here. The question – the answer to which could come at any second – is whether the government of Belarus will give us a tourist visa to travel there for a week; we’ll tell the miserable story of how challenging this process has been when it’s over. Personally, I’m hoping we get in. Not so much because I want to go to Belarus, but because Mark really wants to go to Belarus. And if we go to Belarus, that means we get to do something that I really want to do – like, say, bicycle across France and through a bunch of other countries to the Black Sea next summer!

Either way, Vilnius seems to be a pretty spectacular city. It’s slightly smaller than Riga, but somehow to me at least feels more modern, more vibrant, and more Western. We’ve only spent a few hours wandering around, as a lot of our time has been taken up applying for and checking on the status of our Belarusian visa (see above). What we’ve seen, though, and what we’ve eaten so far, all speak tons for enjoying Vilnius. Here are some of our favorite pics.

Mark, having just entered the Old City through the Gate of Dawn, the only remaining gate through the old wall

Mark, having just entered the Old City through the Gate of Dawn, the only remaining gate through the old wall

A bike in the University

A bike in the University

A Baroque church, where someone was playing the organ - it was an amazing sound

A Baroque church, where someone was playing the organ – it was an amazing sound

Lunch - the police car in back was part of an entourage providing security for some high-ranking military person who was coming

Lunch – the police car in back was part of an entourage providing security for some high-ranking military person who was coming

Vilnius, from the top of a bell tower at the University

Vilnius, from the top of a bell tower at the University

Note in the lower right area what may be the world's finest balcony

Still from the top of the bell tower, note what may be the world’s finest balcony in the lower right

Old Town street

Old Town street

Residential architecture outside the Old Town

Residential architecture outside the Old Town

Churches

Churches

Lots of churches

Lots of churches

No end of churches - and no end to how quickly the color of the sky changes

No end of churches – and no end to how quickly the color of the sky changes

We never quite finished telling the Kauna story, so I’m going to back up a couple days. The primary event for the day was to walk to the Ninth Fort, once a prison used during both the Soviet and German occupations, now a museum of occupation. According to Lonely Planet it was about seven kilometers from the city, so how hard could that be to walk? We looked up the Ninth Fort in a Google Map, plotted the course, and off we went.

Alas, it was in fact not so easy. It was bad enough that some of our little pleasure hike took us through a nasty spaghetti-like interchange among a few highways. Worse yet, when we got to the place where the map said the Fort would be – really more like 10 kilometers – there was just a big open field. We walked back and forth and poked around, but it just wasn’t there. Eventually we made our way back to some big mall – by now we’ve walked maybe 15 kilometers and gotten nowhere except a mall, which is pretty much nowhere – so we could get some food and maybe with a WiFi connection figure out where this Fort was.

We did find it on the map, and it wasn’t that far from where we were, but it wasn’t clear how to get from where we were to where we wanted to be. There were choices, forks in the road. Yes, we took the road less traveled, but sometimes the road is traveled less because it’s just the wrong road.

Enough of that. Mark had started to conclude that this fort/museum just didn’t exist, but we eventually stumbled on it. So after probably 12 miles of walking, now it was time to walk around the museum and grounds. The first noticeable feature was a huge Soviet-era monument. As far as we could tell, it was a monument to the Soviet soldiers who fought the Germans in Lithuania. That struck me as somewhat strange, since the Soviets were themselves an occupying force, and not very nice occupiers at that. The used it as a holding place and interrogation center before shipping their enemies (or just innocent bystanders) to Siberia. Not a group I would build a monument to.

Monument to Soviet troops

Monument to Soviet troops

Closeup of Soviet style

Closeup of Soviet style

The museum of Soviet occupation is an interesting building, insofar as it appears to have been built for this museum – I don’t think it was part of the prison – and just looks so incredibly Soviet and hostile. It’s not even very easy to figure out where the entrance is and does a great job of just evoking brutality. The exhibits were interesting, depressing, and another reminder of how genuinely evil the Soviets were.

Exterior of Museum of Occupation

Exterior of Museum of Occupation

The powerful part of the museum, though, for me at least was the part associated with the years it was used as a German concentration camp. I’d never been to a concentration camp before, and standing on a site where tens of thousands Jews – mostly Lithuanians, but Jews from France and other countries were brought here as well – had been murdered is just really powerful. The prison inside the fort had exhibits, mostly dealing with German atrocities, and just horribly painful stories about families and all that. You can read about Nazi genocide all you want, but there is nothing quite as strong as looking at what had once been a mass grave holding thousands, or seeing the barrels where they had tried to burn the corpses to cover up their crimes.

Brutally simple

Brutally simple; in multiple languages, “Here the remans of 50,000 people – Russians, Jews, Lithuanians, and others killed by the Nazis – are burried”

That was supposed to be just part of the day, but after walking back to the mall to catch a bus back into Kaunas, we were beat. And a little somber. Fortunately, we could enjoy just a little more Kaunas beauty when we got back, something we needed after a day like that.

A quiet street in Kaunas

A quiet street in Kaunas

View from our hotel - after these weeks in Russia and the Baltics, night is a new concept for us

View from our hotel – after these weeks in Russia and the Baltics, night is a new concept for us

So what do you do if you’re in Kaunas, Lithuania for a day or two? Among other things, you find a hotel; this was the first time we’ve just sort of never gotten around to making reservations before getting somewhere. It turns out there are available hotel rooms in Kaunas.

1) Walk around in the Old Town through the occasional rain and just see stuff.

Old Town Kaunas in the rain

Old Town Kaunas in the rain

2) Start to make plans for going to Belarus.

3) Go for a run. Or at least that’s what Mark did (sorry, no picture). I’m on for tomorrow morning.

4) Fantasize about Eurovela 6, the bike route from the Atlantic coast of France, along the Loire, Rhine, and Danube Rivers through Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania to the Black Sea (tentatively scheduled for Summer 2014).

My fantasy

5) Eat at a very cool restaurant that specializes in local foods in what is essentially a wine cellar, where you pick your wine from the selection and they add a $3.25 cork fee.

I was 'splaining to Mark how we could bike from France to the Black Sea

I was ‘splaining to Mark how we could bike from France to the Black Sea

6) Enjoy the public art.

Bikes as public art - what's not to like?

Bikes as public art – what’s not to like?

So far, so good!