In Vilnius

Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008--Kaunas

I wnet to two museums today and got pensionist's admission prices! How nice. One was the M. K. Cuirlionio Museum. It features paintings by that artist who is considered the greatest from Lithuania. I especially liked another exhibit--sculpture creations using bark by Elzbieta Daugvilieve.

The second museum was the IX Fort. It was a prison used by both the Nazis and the Russians over time to house political prisoners. 50,000 people were murdered there during WWII. 30,000 were Jews. For some reason, the Nazis also sent Jews from Munich (where there was another concentration camp) to here only to kill them 5 days later.

I had a problem finding the bus stop for the IX Fort Museum. It is stressful being in a place where everything is unknown and trying to find one's way around. I had studied the map and had an idea where I should go, but it wasn't very detailed. I knew approximately when I was there, but about that time, the sign inside the bus quit posting the names of the bus stops, and the signs at the bus stops quit having their names posted. I went beyond where I should have gotten off. The driver was nice, though. He told me to sit. I finished his route and then he put me off there when we returned.

I went to the train station to check on trains for Vilnius. The station here is beautiful and has just been completely restored. I can take a train at 10:42 tomorrow. That should be fine.

Friday, Sept. 26, 2008--Kaunas to Vilnius

Notes:

1. The ending of the last name here indicates whether a person is a man or a woman. Unfortunately, there are two endings for women to indicate whether they are married or not. They have tried to move away from that, but it hasn't worked, since only married women have chosen to use the new generic ending for women.

2. Lithuanians are not as attractive as Georgians were. Georgians had very dark features. Lithuanians seem bland in comparison.

3. Smoking is bad here. It's worse than in Georgia, and the guidebook had warned me that it would be bad there.

I was surprised today to find that the train to Vilnius would not leave from the main station but from a suburban one due to work being done on the track within a tunnel. Fortunately, I am always early to go places, so I had time to catch a bus to the station where the train was leaving.

In Vilnius, I went to the Genocide Museum. Actually, it is mainly for two purposes--to tell about the resistance to the USSR takeover of Lithuania and to show what the KGB did here during the USSR years. It was interesting to actually be in the KGB headquarters, see the cells where they housed prisoners, etc.

In all the former communist countries, the construction was so bad. I saw it in Georgia, and I am seeing it here. It is quite common for marble facing to be cracked and/or loose and falling, paving stones to be broken and uneven, fountains and reflecting pools to be inoperative, rust developing where concrete is too thin to cover the rebars well, bricks and concrete crumbling, etc. I am sitting in front of the opera and ballet building here. It is a perfect example of such poor construction. How sad.

I ate a nice snack today--a bar like peanut brittle only it had seeds and they were much more compact (with little sugar to bind them). Umm.

Among the other places I visited today are the Frank Zappa statue (who apparently is the most famous Lithuanian outside the country), the Cathedral which is rather simple and elegant but has a very ornate Chapel of St. Casimir inside, and Sts. Peter and Paul Church.

I did self-catering again tonight. I bought some chicken pate, bread, Italian salad, and a beer and ate in my room.

I went out walking in the evening. Vilnius is nice at night. I went by two places where stages had been set up earlier in the day. I was thinking that I would hear some music. However, the stages were being taken down. Guess the music was for a very limited time.