Note: I wrote in a paper journal while I was out and about. Its 45 pages, not including anything from Czech (but the pages are half size.) This is simply going to be that journal... Just I'm going to type it up for you! I'll try to finish it by Wednesday at the latest. Pictures... will come later. They might be edited into these posts... or they might just have a separate post... We'll see.
Week ONE:
Lithuania!!!
We got here on Saturday. The whole time I just though, "LITHUANIA?! WHAT?!" I never thought I would visit this country. I knew nothing about it other than where it was. i had been told a couple of things in class, like that it had once been part of a giant empire with Poland and that it had been occupied by the Soviets and Germany at various times as well as that it had achieved its most recent independence in 1991. Other than that, I could point to the country on a map. I came without expectations. Landing, all of the planes just unloaded onto the tarmak and then buses came and got you. We were welcomed by a Lithuanian flag and a giant flag of the EU. The Baltic states are rather proud of their involvement in the EU. Everything was in two languages: Russian and Lithuania (crylic alphabet and roman alphabet with MANY accents.) Don't tell Lithuanians, but their langauage sounds a bit like a mix of Spanish and Russian. But, telling then that their language sounds like russian is one of the biggest insultsyou can give. They, in case you were wondering, speak Lithuanian. We landed and hopped on a coach bus to our hotel, Hotel Panorama, built by the Soviets during their second occupation. Kara and I went to our room, then went to lunch. We expected cheap sandwiches. We got a delicious 3 course meal with chicken in cran-apple jam. Amazing. The restaurant in the hotel was very nice- with wine glasses and white table clothes... Very good. Its one quirk: it constantly played techno. The same techno CD, for EVERY MEAL. Usualy we ate at the hotel for breakfast. Waking up to techno is something special. Anyway, after lunch in the Techno Restaurant, we went on a 3 hour walking tour of old town Vilinus. It was gorgeous!!! (See picture post/s) There were reconstructed churches, cobblestones, tiny winding roads... Amazing. Our guide was this cute lady who kept us up-to-speed with all the history of the area... Including information about the crusaders burning everything... multipule times, soviets destroying the insides of churches and turning them into warehouses and then all sorts of things. So much I couldn't even begin to tell you everything, or retain half of it. We eneded up taking the finicula up to a tower on a hill... that had an AMAZING view of all of Vilnius. Then we losts 8 people... but continued on to this *amazing* Gothic cathedral and to Vilinus' hippy town, which simply started as an April Fool's Day joke. The bridge into the area was covered in padlocks, and had a groom carrying his new bride across the bridge. We asked what was up with the padlocks... Turns out its a big tradition! I forget teh little details behind it, but the jist of it is that the bride and groom engrave their names on to the padlock, then lock it to the bridge then toss the key into the river below. I think you get the symbolism there. Anyway, its basically adorable. We also saw 'jewish street' where all the jews used to live... later turned into one of two ghettos in Vilnius. There used to be ~90,000 jews in Vilnius, I think it was like 40% of the population. Then Germany invaded during WWII... and killed 90% of the Jews in Lithuania... Including 70,000 in Panari (more on that later...) There are now only about 6,000 jews in Lithuania... After the tour we had a little bit of time for dinner and some of us went to a Lithuanian version of TGI Fridays... only they only served 'traditional lithuanianian food' which was quite tasty and RATHER cheap. After dinner, we found the 8 people we'd lost earlier, then went to a play that was supposedly about a Lithuanian Folk Tale... which it was. Only... it was avant gaurd. it had subtitles on a little screen, which was nice. But... how are you supposed to follow a plot that involves a bride on stilts marching around and controlling these guys... who then spit milk everywhere before taking off their pants and beating the stage with them??? And this doesn't even start to explain the strangeness that was this play. I througrougly enjoyed it however.
The next day, Sunday, we went to Kernave and Trackai. Kernave is the oldest of 3(?) capital cities of Lithuania. It as burned twice by crusaders. The first time they rebuilt the town... the second time they just gave up and left. Now its a bunch of beautiful hills that were carved by glaciers- a UNESCO world heritage site. We made friends with a dog, who then followed us around the area until we left. We named him Sam since Sam & Ryan had missed the bus to Kernave... then we hopped back on the bus and drove to Trakai (all waving goodbye to the adorable dog.) Trakai is a beautiful Castle town, right on a lake with an great castle just in the middle of the lake. First, we stopped to learn about the Karites, a tiny minority of Turkish Origin who follow the Old Testament and are really strict about it. They have their own language and their own church... and there are only 300-600 of them. We visited their church and their ethnographic museum and then went to a really cute restaurant and ate some traditional food (tasty soup and then meat in pastry crust.) It was REALLY good. Some more info about these Karites: They speak an old version of Turkish and migrated from there a long time ago. Their houses have 3 windows on the front... no one really knows why.) Anyway. Then we went to the Castle! It was amazing. Great castle! It looked like we were walking around on a giant movie set. It had actually been burned a number of times (by Crusaders) and had been reconstructed. We went to the residential part of the castle and saw the Grand Duke's room and his treasury (which was below his room) and all sorts of stuff. We werent' supposed to take pictures... but we all did. You're all lucky! After adventuring through the castle, we did what was one of my highlights of my entire trip: Traditional Lithuanian Sauna!!! It was amazing. We had a never-ended buffet of lithuanian food- I even ate smoked pigs ear (its vile. it tastes a little like bacon, but its chewy and crunchy at the same time because it still has cartiledge in it...) and drank this drink made out of bread. It tasted like apples. It was good :) But the sauna. We had a cabin that had a sauna in it, and then a path leading to the lake. So we went into the sauna for 15 minutes (or until you couldn't handle it...) and hit yourself with birch branches (they still have leaves on them, and they're dipped in water.) Then, when its time, you SPRINT out of the sauna and RUN down the steps and LEAP into the lake. Which, as you may imagine, was rather cold. But it was amazing. And I loved it. And did it three times. Its highly recommened.
The next day wasn't so entertaining. We had an extremely boring lecture at the Yiddish Institute at the University of Vilnius. Then we took a tour of the libraries and courtyards of the university. The tour was good. The library had been built by a guy who liked the Baroque style... then he died. But his successor loved the clasical style... so the library is an interesting mix of the two. After that, we climbed up the narrow, narrow spiral staircase up to the top of the old observatory. It had windows and amazing views of the city. Getting up there was a little, tough, but totally worth it. Then we went to (what I think was) the Church of St. John's. It was GORGEOUS. Statues... engravings... there was a whole scene. I can't even describe it. The pictures don't do it justice... Why can't churches in the states be even 1/10th as pretty as the cathedrals here? After that, we went and looked as some new frescos depicting traditions of lithuania. They were, of course, beautiful. Then we had 2 hours to get lunch and walk down Gedomingo (pronounced Guy Domingo), the main shopping street in Vilnius. We went to a nice pizza place and had good times. After that, we had a lecture at the Seimas (Lithuanian Parliament) with a guy who was running for a spot in parliament... he didn't know if he'd made it yet. His party had done well, but its proportional representation, and he didn't know where on the list he'd ended up. He'd been up all night waiting for the results... he gave us a quick tour of the Seimas building, which was built for the unions by the Soviets. It was -very- seventies looking. We saw the room where lithuania declared their independence and signed the paper as well was a bullet hole in a window that had been saved from when they had to protect the parliament from Soviet attacks when they tried to take Lithuania back. The lecture was in a giant meeting room/video confrence hall. That was the end of our day. We had the rest on our own, so wee got dinner at a nice Indian place under the Indian consulate. It was really quite delicious. One of my favorite things about lithuania? The food is normal priced. And I'm taking advantage of it by eating full meals for every meal. Most meals are less than 20 litas... and there are 2.5 litas/1 USD. Its a nice change from the fulaffels and china boxes I eat when I have to buy food in copenhagen.
The next day was Kaunas day! We hopped on the bus to make the hour and a half trek there. Its one of the other former capitals of Lithuania. We started with 2 AMAZING lectures about Lithuania, so amazing that I was sad that they had to end. And even more sad that we had been late and the lectures had to be cut short! But, afterwards, we had a historical walk through downtown Kaunas. we saw presidential statues and more soviet buildings. There was a little castle that hadn't been reconstructed yet... It was clear that they had not recived as much money as Vilnius since Lithuania joined the EU... Vilnius had nice, reconstructed buildings. Kaunus had graffiti and run-down buildings. It was sad, but good to see the contrast. One of my favorite stops of the trip was to the Old Fransican Church... it hadn't been reconstrusted yet, and still had damage from when it was a paper warehouse during soviet occupation. Now, there still aren't any lights, the walls and pictures are faded and chipping and the windows, even the stained glass windows, are broken. You can see that it was once beautiful... but now its just so sad and quiet. That was the end of our tour... then we had time for a quick lunch. A few of us headed off to find a restaurant that wasn't going to be flooded by everyone in our program and ended up at a small but cute little cafe that I'm pretty sure was family owned. No one there spoke english... So ordering was interesting. Especially when Megan can't have any dairy... I wanted the peaches and chicken... and pointed at it on the english menu. But she thought I pointed at the one above it, the pineapple, cheese and chicken. So I got that. it was good. After we got our food, with only minor difficulties (like Kara and Megan having to trade meals...) we ran back to the bus to go to the Cherlonis museum. He's a lithuanian artist who painted lithuanian symbology... but his paintings didn't sell while he was alive and he died of starvation. But now he has his own museum. They were good paintings... Just not really my type. They were faded and not as bright as I usually like. But they were good. Our second to last activity of the day was a visit to the Sugihara house. Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat ambassador guy who was sent to Lithuania to spy on soviets and thing during the second world war. However, when people began to fear that the Nazis would attack, he worked with the ambassdor of the Netherlands who would give people a piece of paper saying they did not need a final destination visa to go to the Curacau islands, which the Netherlands owned. Sugihara would give transit visas to take the trans siberian railroad through Russia to get to Japan to get Jews out of Lithuania and free of the Nazis. We had a lecture about it, but the guy talked so fast and there was so much information that I couldn't quite follow... But the museum was interesting, with stories of survivors and how they could only buy boiling water on the trans-siberian train... Then it was DINNER! We went to a small place and had dinner with some Lithuanian students and got to talk to them about how their TVs are dubbed funny (they leave the english and have one guy translate whatever the english says after it finishes...) and whatever we wanted. Our lithuanian friend wasn't the best at conversation (I think he was in it for the free meal...) But he was really nice :) AND with dinner they gave us Lithuanian Champagne! It was AMAZING. So good. Then we jumped back on the bus to go back to the hotel and sleep. yay.
Wednesday was our second to last day in Lithuania. It was our depressing day. You'll see why. It was VERY interesting and I learned more on Wednesday than any other day, but it was rather depressing and draining. We started at the Genocide Museum. Its in the basement of what is now the Supreme Court Building. However, during soviet occupation, it was the KBG headquarters... I thought it would be a museum covering many genocides that had happened in Lithuania. I was... kind of wrong. It covers holocaust, gulags and KBG prisoners... And half of the museum is the KBG prison as it wasin 1991 (when the last KBG officer left.) By 1992 it was a museum. We saw how hand rails all had sensors to know when hands were on or off of it and how when they first got there they were placed in tiny closets. Some people stayed in this tiny room... 20 people at a time ( a few of them managed to dig their way out through the meter thick wall... with a spoon.) There weree a few rooms with beds, then one that was covered in rubber with a strait jacket in it... for the people they injected with this stuff to make you crazy. There was another room... where this metal disk was a little above the floor: water torture room. The room was filled with cold water up to the height of the disk, then the prisoner was forced to stand on the disk (maybe 6 inch diameter) disk for up to 5 days... If they fell, they were forced to stand back up, wet, since they'd fallen in the water. If they passed out, they were given hot showers until they woke, then forced to stand on the disk again. We also went to the execution chamber... you could see the bullet holes in the wall and the drain in the floor for the blood... as well as glasses and other personal items on the ground that people found while excavating the room... I forget how many people were killed there, but it was a lot. It was rather... sobering. Then, we all went back upstairs, where we quickly got a tour of the museum, complete with the tour guide pointing to a picture of him as a small child in one of the pictures... There was a lot about gulags and resistance movements and how the resistance was sent to the prison. There was a lot about how the KBG spied on people too. But the thing that really struck me how was recent it all was. For some reason, being there and actually seeing the years next to the things used and the pictures made me realize how young I am... and how all of this happened in my lifetime. And is still happening in some places. Anyway, that was a great way to start one's day... (Not really.) After that, we headed back to the Yiddish Institute where we met up with a scholar on the Roma. She gave us a lecture about the Roma in the Kirtimai settlement, complete with pictures. She was a very nice lady (who stumbled a little with her english, leading her to believe reading off a script would be better for everyone, but she veered from the script a bit.) Her lecture was really good, with many good details, including the history of Roma. She supplemented her script with many personal stories from her research. She then accompanied us to the Kirtimai settlement, right outside Vilnius. We started out at the community center, where we talked to the lady in charge who told us about what they do there, which is mostly mentoring kids and helping them with school. Then, we were off to the community. There were two Roma groups, the upper settlement, and the lower settlement. We started with the upper settlement. Of the two, they were better off. We walked through the streets in a large group, attracting all kinds of attention... Feeling like an invasive parade... We passed kids and adults and animals... and small little houses that were cute, but obviously not well made. We came to one lady who had worked with the researcher that was with us before, and she invited us in. All 25 of us. Into her 2 room home. She lived in a nice blue and yellow house. Three people lived there, the grandmother, a 26 year old lady and someone else. They all lived off of the pension of the grandmother. The 26 year old had gotten through the 10th grade in school and spoke pretty good english... She couldn't get a job in Lithuania, so she had spent the last year in Manchester doing hairdressing. But Lithuania is where she comes from, where she wants to be. But she can't get a job here. She wants a job so she can save up money to finish school. Some one did a survey and 46% of people in Lithuania said that they would not hire a person of Roma desent, so you can see why many don't have jobs... Please note that all of these houses are illegal because they have no where else to go and the building that they government have them is not big enough for all of them... At some point, her brother came and invited us to his house, which was right behind the one we were in, so we went over. His house was bigger, but more simple. What struck me in this house was how happy everyone was. We sat awkwardly, while he turned up the music, informed us that it was gypsy music... and then proceded to get us all to dance. We had a dance party there. They were all so happy to have guests... We get so sad over little things, yet they have so little and get happy over so much. Anyway... eventually the song ended and we took our pictures and headed out. We were heading to the lower settlement. On the way we passed needles lying in the 'road' and Kara even had one get caught in her shoe... These houses... where more like shacks. They seemed so suspicious of us. A few came and asked us for money... They had turned to drugs since they felt they didn't have the means to get much- few of them even had any way of sending their kids to school since the bus didn't come there and few of them have cars... They had deals with taxi drivers to bring the people there when they wanted drugs... We saw many taxis driving through... it was so sad. The houses in the uppersettlement, they weren't nice but they were decorated and homey... these weren't. Maybe it was just because they were more recently settled, but no one knows. After all of that, we met the leader of the Roma people who was their voice in the government. he was so happy to have us there and told us that we would be future government people who could help them and told us how great it was that we had visited... With that, we got back in the bus and drove away... They can't drive away. Anyway, we drove to our last site of the day: Panerai. The Panerai Memorials are a series of memorials in a silent forest... where over 100,000 people had been murdered in the Holocaust. The victims were brought in by train (the train passed 3 times while we were there...) then walked to a giant pit... where they stood on the edge and were shot. They fell into the pit and were buried. Then, right at the end of the war, when the Nazis began to realize that they were losing, they excavated all of the bodies and burned them. There were about 70,000 jews murdered there. The rest was a mix of other groups... though many were Roma. We saw the Jewish memorial and the memorial for murdered soviets and the pit where they were all shot and another pit where they were burned... All of this in a silent forest... with only the sound of the train that passed to keep you company. The train running on the same tracks that had brought the victims to their place of death. It was so hard to be there. After that... i just wanted to be alone... But that wasn't going to happen. I got back on the bus with the rest of my class. 2 people were missing. Someone said something about the jews and how they were upset and thats why they weren't there... Except they said it in a horrible, condecending way. There are a number of Jews in our class and regardless of that, its just not appropriate to say. Which, made me angry and just want to be alone even more. Anyway, after that, our depressing day was done. I rode back to the hotel with my iPod on to drown out everyone else until we got to the hotel, when Kara, Megan and I all went for last minute souveniers and dinner... Then to the bar to get our minds off of how heavy the day had been.
Thursday was the last day. All we did was wake up, pack up, get breakfast, then go to the Presidential Palace where we talked to two advisors to the president. It was really interesting and I felt very priveledged to be IN the presidential palace. We didn't learn much, it was our 'treat' of the trip. And I loved it. If I hadn't been about to hop onto the bus to Riga in an hour, I would have gotten the chance to get a tour of the palace, but thats okay. All in all, I enjoyed my trip to Lithuania. I would have never gone there on my own, so I'm glad that I got to go with my class. We did so much. It was great. But, I don't ever want to go back. The downtown part of the city is safe... but two steps out and you're on sketchy road where you simply don't want to ever be alone at night. One thing I noticed though is how much Lithuania was proud that they were a part of the EU. It was everywhere. They were so proud to be a part of the EU. The politician we talked to commented on it a little bit, about how Lithuanians want to separate themselves from Russians at all costs. He said that Lithuania supports the Iraq war just because Russia doesn't. By doing that, they aligned themselves with the US and against Russia. It was interesting.
So. That was my week in Lithuania! I'll post pictures at some point. I know thats a lot I just posted... And theres more in my head. You just have to ask. Or wait until Christmas break and I'll probably have stories to tell. :) have a good day!
