Circumspencing the Globe

Sarah and I arrived in Vilnius on Monday.  We narrowly caught the 8:00 a.m. bus out of Riga.  I had set my watch alarm for 7:00 and, as a back-up, asked one of the very friendly hostel employees to prod us awake at 7:00.  Both safeguards failed.  I don’t know if my alarm didn’t go off or if it did and I didn’t hear it, but my eyelids didn’t open until 7:35.  I woke up Sarah, who was in the bunk below me, and we both threw on our clothes and packs without a moment for ablutions and hurried downstairs to turn in our keys in exchange for our passports.  The “reception” area is actually a popular pub, and no one was there, or so it seemed.  I peaked behind the bar and, lo and behold, our back-up wake-up person was asleep behind it in a sleeping bag.  She leaped into action, apologetic, gave us our passports and sent us on our way.  We barely made the bus, and in the process poor Sarah left behind souvenirs from Russia.

 

A backpackers’ haven, the hostel in Vilnius, Lithuania, was the liveliest so far.  The lights in the dorm room rarely went off, no matter the hour of day or night.  I’d often drifted through towns alone, practically tip-toeing, letting the town affect me.  But in Vilnius, traveling in a rowdy pack, the town’s status diminished to that of a setting only, with the characters figuring more prominently.

 

Above are the only (remaining) synagogue in Vilnius, a statue reminiscent of Lithuania’s Soviet past, part of the castle and a view from the castle. 

 

Lithuania’s history is truly tragic.  In the 14th century, Lithuania aligned with Poland to stand against German invaders.  But in the 18th century, other countries, including Russia, divvied up the Polish-Lithuanian state.  In 1918 Lithuanian nationalists declared independence from Russia, but in 1940 Lithuania was forced into the USSR.  Within a year, 40,000 Lithuanians were killed or deported.  From 1941 to 1944, the Nazis occupied the land and up to 300,000 others, mostly Jews, died in concentration camps and ghettos.  Until then, Vilnius had been a vital center for the Jewish people, dubbed by Napoleon as the “Jerusalem of the north.”  The Nazis, with help from the Soviets, effectively wiped out the Jewish population; today it numbers about 4,000.  The USSR resumed its reign from 1944 through 1991.  I visited a former headquarters of the KGB, walking through the cold, bleak subterranean rooms used, not long ago, for interrogation, incarceration, torture and execution.  An estimated 250,000 people were murdered or deported to Siberia while armed partisans resisted Soviet rule from the forests.  It was brave Lithuania that led the Baltic push for independence and that first declared independence, which the Soviets finally recognized in September 1991 after storming into Vilnius and killing two dozen activists earlier that year.  Lithuania was the first of the 25 EU member countries to ratify the EU constitution.

 

Above, more shots from around Vilnius.  Below, the same, plus Sarah and a guy I taught how to armwrestle.

 

Finally, some of the cast of characters who livened up the hostel:

 

Sarah and I parted ways on Wednesday afternoon, she remaining in Vilnius and I heading for Poland.  We chatted until the wee hours of Wednesday morning, departing from our normal comedy sparring and delving into deeper spiritual subjects.  We might reconnect later in Poland.

Tags: Baltics, Lithuania, Travel, Vilnius

This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 8:23 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.