Four Days in Vilnius

August 24 (continued)

We continued up the street until we came to the Grand Dukes’ palace. All of the guidebooks described this as being under restoration for decades but not yet open. Well, the books will have to be revised, as it is now accepting visitors. And how! We spent four hours there, without noticing the time.

The trip through the palace begins at the lowest level, with the archaeology of the foundations. As with many public sites in Europe, the use of the one goes back many centuries. Earlier structures were reused, demolished, or buried, leaving their traces in the earth, including walls and drainage structures. The exhibits also show the many found articles that the residents lost or discarded over the years. The palace does a good job of tracking the stories of the succession of Grand Dukes, the configuration of the site, and the geographic domain that the Grand Dukes ruled.

Lithuania had only one king, Mindaugas. After his death in 1236mit was an independent Grand Duchy. For centuries, the Grand Duke of Lithuania was also the King of Poland. These were separate entities ruled by the same person. For a brief period, the Grand Duchy was the largest entity in Europe, reaching as far south as the Caspian Sea. It was one of the last areas in Europe to convert to Christianity. This made it the target of crusades by the Teutonic Knights. The Grand Duchy officially converted to Christianity more than once, reverting when political and military pressures ceased.

Eventually Lithuania was absorbed by Czarist Russia. When it became an independent nation in 1918, the tumult of post-war settlements left Vilnius in Polish hands. At that time, Kaunas was the capital. When the Soviets redrew the borders after World War II, they incorporated Vilnius in the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (one of the “SSRs” in “USSR”). These borders remained when Lithuania recovered its independence in 1991.

The second level of the palace is concerned with art and lifestyle. I was struck by the number of decorative ceramic tiles, many depicting people, animals, or events. These were used on room heaters, which we had seen in Rundale and would later see on the upper floors of the palace. There was a set of tiles that depicted hares hunting dogs with bows and spears. You don’t expect to find animal cartoons in the fittings of a royal palace!

The upper floors contain the rooms of the palace as it was in the time of the later Grand Dukes. Although luxuriously decorated, the style is more restrained than the highly painted and molded artwork of Rundale—more Renaissance than Baroque. I remember three successive waiting rooms through which visitors had to pass before reaching the Grand Duke’s audience chamber—if indeed they were allowed to get that far. At the very top of the palace is a cupola that provides a wide view of the city.
By the time we had finished, our breakfasts had worn off, and we were ready for lunch. The palace has no café, just some vending machines in the entry hall. It does have a small but decent gift shop. I think we bought some shirts there.

August 24(continued
Leaving the palace, we noticed a little restaurant, Senoji Pasaga, across Seventaragio Gatve, the east-west street. I had the impression that it was Spanish, although I could be mistaken about that. We had a nice lunch of what I would characterize as chicken and rice blintzes, with bread and beer. (Again, there are many foods of many nationalities that consist of some kind of filled dough, and so the proprietors might not use the same terms to describe it). The service was friendly, and we felt notably welcome.
We crossed the road again and went into the cathedral, which is right next to the palace. This building is unusual, as it has the look of an ancient temple—quite different from both the gothic and baroque styles one usually encounters in Europe. I have a note in my little book about “misbehaving Italians,” but I don’t remember the details. We often notice, to our shame, that our fellow visitors just don’t know how to behave in churches. They treat them as exhibits for their own amusement instead of the working religious sites that they continue to be. This time the Italians were to blame.

The cathedral has a separate bell tower, which has an admission fee. We went inside. Fran decided that she didn’t like the looks of the stairways towards the upper levels and so remained a few floors up. I did go all the way up, and some parts of the stairways did give one pause. It provided a great view from the top, and the bells and ringing mechanisms were worth seeing.

After that, it was getting late, and so we went back to the hotel to regroup and think about dinner. We decided on Balzac, a French restaurant a little off town hall square. We started out by sharing a cheese board and then had some wonderful duck confit, followed by cappuccino and crepes suzette. We had wine instead of our usual beer.

Walking miles: 8.6.

Friday, August 25 (Vilnius and Trakai)

This was our day to visit Trakai Castle. Although there was a bus stop near our hotel, we decided to walk to the central bus terminal and board from there, rather than deal with transfers and connections. The station is typical of its type: a big U-shaped structure, with loading bays lining the inner curve. Also typically, it was confusing to find where the bus we wanted was located; we worked it out. After a wait that seemed like forever but probably wasn’t all that long, the bus arrived, we boarded, and we were on our way. The countryside wasn’t that remarkable. However, it was still interesting to get out of the center of town and see more. The ride was about 45 minutes.

The town of Trakai occupies an isthmus between two lakes. The bus station is at one end of the isthmus, where it touches the highway from Vilnius. The castle is on an island connected to the town by a causeway. We had to walk through most of the town to reach it. The weather was pleasant (for a change!). It was a good day for a stroll. We got to see something of the houses and shops where ordinary people spend their time.

As we got near the castle causeway, we could see that Trakai is also a recreational area oriented towards the lakes surrounding the town. There is a marina and a place to rent pedal boats. There are ferries and other large boats plying the waters.
We had arrived before the castle opened. We crossed the causeway and had a look around the outside, during which we encountered a flock of swans with cygnets.

Trakai Castle dates from the late 14th Century. It was scene of a number of sieges and battles, involving the Teutonic Order, rival claimants to the Grand Duke’s title, and the armies of Muscovy. It was damage and virtually destroyed more than once, being rebuilt each time according to the needs of the day. After the 16th Century it served more as a residence than a military stronghold, before falling into decay. Efforts at reconstruction began in the late 19th Century and were carried out by the Russians, the Germans (during World War I!), the newly-independent Lithuanians, and then the Soviets. It was put into its current form, as it looked in the 1500s, by 1961. The lower walls of the castle are stone, but the upper works are brick. This isn’t unusual in Northeast Europe, but it gives the castle a different look than what you’d see in Western Europe.

Once the castle opened, we went inside, just ahead of some Italian tour groups. The site is set up with a path that takes you through the inner keep of the castle. You go in and out of rooms, out into the courtyard, up stairs, along galleries, and so forth. It seems a bit programmed, buy you get to see everything. It also controlled the flow of visitors. We didn’t feel that we were overwhelmed by the tour groups. It’s a photogenic structure with lots of interesting angles and vantage points. The interior rooms include the throne room, chapel, and treasury, among others. The exhibits have explanations in English.

The outer buildings of the castle contain exhibits that aren’t as closely related to the site’s history. Some are on different aspects of decorative arts.

This is one of those sites where you have to purchase a separate photography pass, in addition to the admission fee. It wasn’t very expensive. It is the only site where I have been asked to show my pass once inside. This was complicated by the language barrier. An elderly woman started speaking to me in an authoritative tone. I first showed her my admission ticket, but she weaved her hands to indicate that wasn’t what she wanted. Fran twigged that she was asking about the photography permit. After I showed it to her, that was okay.

August 25 ( continued)

As we walked back to the bus station, the stream of cars and tour busses coming towards us made it clear that visiting the castle early in the morning had been a good decision. We came across an Orthodox church and took a peek inside.
When we did return to the bus station, we misread the schedule and signs, which resulted in our failing to board the 12:30 bus back to Vilnius. We had to wait a half-hour for the next one. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a nervous bus traveler at the best of time. Sitting outside a run-down station on the outskirts of the capital of a strange country was stressful. I worried about when the next bus would arrive and whether we would identify the right one when it did. Well, we did get on the right bus. It was very crowded, but we got back to Vilnius okay, around 2:00 PM.

We walked north from the bus station towards Town Hall Square, pausing to take pictures of some gates and churches that we had first seen when it was raining so hard. We stopped for a small beer at an outdoor café on Piles Street called UAB Matilda. Then we went up to the parks to the north and east of the cathedral. We wandered around there for a while. We saw a little girl feeding ducks who seemed to be on the verge of being overwhelmed by her “customers.” After that we returned to the hotel to reorganize and plan our dinner.

We hit upon a restaurant that was recommended by more than one guidebook, but we couldn’t find it. We later worked out that we had been looking in the wrong neighborhood. I suppose that this illustrates the disadvantage of not using a phone to guide our movements. However, it also illustrates the advantage of getting lost, because instead we dined at Lokys, a charming Lithuanian restaurant in a barrel-vaulted cellar. I had game sausage with sauerkraut, and the dessert was a bread pudding featuring rye bread. There were shots of mead on offer, although I didn’t avail myself of those. The diners around us were German and Russian. The staff seemed comfortable conversing with all of them.

Walking miles: 13.7.

Saturday, August 26th (Vilnius)

The next morning, we followed our familiar route to the Town Hall Square and up Piles Street. Our first stop was Gediminas Tower, one of the iconic landmarks of Vilnius. The tower is the only remnant of the Upper Castle (the lower one having been transformed into the Grand Duke’s Palace). It sits upon a tall, steep hill. If this were an English castle, then this would be the motte of a motte and bailey.

There is a funicular to take people up the hill, but it was undergoing repairs when we visited. Instead, we walked up the winding cobblestone path. We arrived at the top before the tower’s opening time and so spent a while walking around on the gill, which affords a grand view of the old and new parts of Vilnius. Naturally, we took pictures. At one point a drone buzzed overhead. We may be featured in someone else’ pictures.

As the opening time drew near, we and a few others gathered by the door to the tower. The minutes ticked by without any sign from within. Eventually, I gave the door a tuck and found it unlocked. The staff seemed irritated that we had discovered their secret. They took our admission payments anyway. As it turned out, the interior of the tower didn’t grab my interest very much. I recall it being historical, but I don’t remember any details. My camera files show that the only photos I took were views of the outside. The one thing I do remember is a documentary video about the human chain that was formed from Vilnius through Riga to Tallinn during the break with the Soviet Union. It showed the organization and support, plus mile after mile of people ranged along the roads. The view from the roof is very nice. On the whole, though, I’m not sure that the view is that much better from outside on the hill to justify the price of admission.

After coming down from the hill, we went into the Lithuanian National Museum of Lithuania, which is behind the cathedral and Grand Duke’s palace. It began with an exhibit on academic archaeology in Lithuania, including portraits of professors and deans. I suppose that gives one a little insight into who set up the museum in the first place. Much of the museum tells the story of Lithuania chronologically, with lots of objects: weapons, uniforms, furniture, liturgical, documents, and artworks. One particularly gruesome example was a wooden board used for flogging serfs during Russian times. There is a diorama of the decisive moment at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, when a Polish-Lithuanian army broke the power of the Teutonic Knights. After the chronological section, there is a folkways section. It has rooms kitted out to look like typical village structures, such as smokehouse, shop, dwelling, etc. It has a big collection of folk art. Much of it is religious, including a statuette of what looks like St. George fighting a dachshund and another of an angel plowing a field behind a donkey. A large room contains mannequins in ceremonial folk costumes which were made for Lithuania’s national festival.

All the while we were in the museum we were playing tag with a multigenerational family group. Their age ranged from older than us to infants. They appeared (well, sounded) to be Lithuanian. I don’t know if this was a special occasion or if Lithuanian families regularly visit museums together. (It’s hard to imagine it turning out well if my own had tried something like that!)

August 26 (continued)

After leaving the museum, we were getting hungry. We went back to Senoji Pasaga, the restaurant where we had lunched on our first day in Vilnius. The weather being nicer, this time we sat in the outdoor courtyard and watched the birds try to mooch meals while we had potato pancakes with chicken and beer.

Wanting to see some of the new part of the city, we crossed the Neris at Mindaugo Bridge to the more modern north bank. The first building to greet us was the disused Palace of Sports and Concerts. This is a large modernist concrete building, with swooping curves and a glass front that practically screams “Soviet.” It is now abandoned, with grass growing through the stones in the courtyard around it. I later learned that it was built in 1935, on the site of the oldest Jewish cemetary in Vilnius (dating back to the 15th Century). It was also the site of a number of protest meetings during the independence movement in the 1980s.

We walked westerly along the north side of the river. There were buildings from different eras, many clearly having been adapted for different purposes. Although the river itself, there is a strip of parkland with art installations. There was also a big shopping mall and a sports area that had not met the same fate as the “palace.”

We crossed the river again, this time heading for the Lithuanian version of the KGB museum. We had some trouble finding it in a district of anonymous office blocks, most of which seemed to be occupied by international organizations. The museum is called the Museum of Genocide Victims. However, it does not, as one might think, concentrate on what usually known as the Holocaust, the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis. Indeed, Jews get little coverage. This museum is about the genocide against Lithuanians: First by the Soviets, then by the Nazis, and then (especially) by the Soviets again.

It's a grim place, both in the story it tells and the visitor experience. We entered and walked up a flight of stairs. Immediately facing us was a man sitting behind a desk that had a sign reading “Information.” As I walked up to him in order to buy tickets, I heard the sound of a woman beating her palm on a counter behind me. This counter, which can’t be seen as you walk in, is the real ticket seller. The only English that the woman knew was the number of Euros we needed to pay. I started to pull out my credit card (which most venues preferred), but she waved it away, clearly wanting cash. All through the museum there were older men and women sitting in corners and watching us with sharp and disapproving eyes. There is exactly one public toilet, which must be shared by men and women. I don’t know its condition, as we decided it wasn’t worth standing in the queue to find out.

The upper floor of the museum has adapted former office space to tell the story chronologically. There are lots of cases full of artifacts and some interesting videos with English subtitles. After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviets were given free rein to occupy the Baltic states and eastern Poland, in return for allowing the Germans to overrun the rest of Poland. The Reds began rounding up anyone they considered suspicious (which was a lot of people) and shipping them off to Siberia. When the Germans invaded in 1941, they were greeted as liberators by some, but it didn’t last long. They started killing Jews (sometimes with Lithuanian help) and imposing their own form of police state. By the end of the war, there were Lithuanians fighting in the Red Army and in the SS. The Soviets started settling scores again, even before the war with Germany was over. There was an armed resistance in Lithuania, known as The Forest Brothers, until the mid-1950s. It, of course, failed, and Lithuania didn’t regain its independence until the USSR imploded in 1991.

August 26 (continued)

The lower floor of the museum contains the cells and other prison rooms. The cells were similar to what we saw in Tallinn. There were again the close confinement “rooms” half the size of a phone booth. There was the banality of administration: offices, a library, photography room, and the guards’ break room. Then things got worse. There is an actual execution room, where prisoners were shot. There was also a water chamber. A naked prisoner was forced to stand on a small stool in an unheated room. The room was filled with ice-cold water up to just below the level of the stool. Whenever the prisoner lost his footing, he fell in. Outside there were areas covered with chainlink fencing on all sides and the top, where prisoners could exercise. A truly terrible place.

After leaving we crossed the street to a kiosk run by the Caffeine chain and got a couple bottles of water. Then we started back towards the hotel. We had never approached it from this direction before, and we didn’t quite know where we were. However, we eventually got oriented properly and found it.

After reorganizing, we set off to find the restaurant we couldn’t find on the previous evening, this time armed with better directions. We found it—but it closed at 6:00! Instead, we double-backed to an Italian restaurant, the Mano Lisa that we had kept passing on our way to Town Hall Square each morning. When we arrived, there was nobody else dining. The owner and one waiter greeted us and sat us down. The owner explained to us in Italian-accented English how he had grown up in Italy where the food was wonderful but had moved to Vilnius after falling in love with a woman from Kaliningrad (the Russian outpost on the Baltic between Lithuania and Poland). He introduced us two his two little daughters and explained how everything was absolutely fresh and prepared from scratch. The menu was on a chalkboard, in Italian. They translated it for us, but a little too quickly. When the waiter, who spoke Russian but not much English, came back to take our orders, I had to ask him again about one item on the menu. He said that they were “like lobsters, only smaller. Like on the zodiac.” I thought he meant crab. Okay, I like crab, and so I ordered that.

Meanwhile, the owner had sat his daughters down at a table and went through the motions of taking their orders (I don’t think they had a choice, though). He made a big show of pouring their water as if it were a fine wine. Some other people who came it were clearly regulars or good friends.

All of this was utterly charming. However, as the evening went on and other parties sat down, we got to hear the owner tell the story of his life to every single one of them. We got to know it by heart. The waiter took over for the Russian-speaking guests, but it seemed to be the same patter.

Meanwhile, our food arrived. Mine wasn’t crab—it was crayfish. Four very large crayfish, in their shells, with eyes, legs, and feelers still attached. I certainly know that food comes from formerly living organisms, but I confess I like a little more disguise by the time it reaches my plate. I had to crack them open with my knife in order to get at the flesh in the tails. That said, the food was delicious. We finished it off with tiramisu. We ordered the version for one so that we could split it. I think they slipped us about one and a half.

Walking miles: 11.2.

Sunday, August 27 (Vilnius)
The first thing we did after breakfast was to walk to the Artillery Bastion, southeast of Town Hall Square. This is the last remnant of the Vilnius city wall. It isn’t medieval; it dates from the 17th Century, when sieges were dominated by cannon. Bastions were designed to provide enfilading fire against infantry assaulting the stretches of wall between them. We couldn’t get inside the bastion because it was closed on Sunday. We could walk along the outside and look at the view into the old city from a different vantage point.

After leaving the bastion we walked north, again up Piles Street. A little east of that is St. Anne’s Church, about which Napoleon once said that he wanted to put it in his pocket and take home. (He was on his way to Moscow, which didn’t work out very well for him). St. Anne’s is a Gothic church, but it is built in brick. That makes for an interesting contrast from the pale stone usually used for such churches. We didn’t go inside because there was a wedding going on and we didn’t want to intrude. We took our photos of the outside. It was hard to get such a tall, wide structure in the frame. We did take a peek inside a small Orthodox church nearby.
We next went to look at the Presidential Palace. It is a large, balanced Renaissance-style building. We were surprised to find a group of protesters encamped outside. It wasn’t clear exactly what the issue was—something about the courts murdering freedom of speech.

Circling back to Piles Street, we stopped at another Caffeine to sip cappuccino and watch the crowd swirl by. Then we went into the Vilnius Picture Gallery. It documents the history of the city through art. I especially liked the way it integrated old maps and paintings of street scenes from the same period. As with many museums in repurposed buildings, the interiors were themselves worth looking at.

We stopped for lunch at UAB Matilda, the same open-air café where we had had beer a couple days before. The café specialized in khachapuri, which is the Georgian version of the “pizza” idea found in many cuisines: flat backed dough with toppings. This version has a thicker, chewier dough and involves eggs in the topping. It was a tasty discovering that we’ve since tried to duplicate at home, with mixed success. While we were sitting there, a rain squall blew in. We scrunched in under the table’s umbrella and watched the proprietors of the art market across the street as the scrambled to cover their paintings with plastic. A small flock of birds was undeterred in cleaning up the remains of somebody else’ khachapuri.

The rain soon stopped, and we decided to do a bit of shopping. We browsed among the kiosks and shops along Piles Street. A lot of the wares were remarkably similar. In fact, that goes for the handicrafts we saw in all three cities: the same carved wooden objects, the same knitted and crocheted hats, scarves, and gloves. We bought some espresso cups and matching saucers in a little shop. I can’t remember if anything else we brought home was purchased then. By then it was getting late, and so we went back to the hotel with our loot and started to work out how to stow it safely in our baggage for the trip home.

Although it contravened our ethos of using feet and public transportation as much as possible, we asked the front desk to reserve us a taxi for the trip to the airport. We didn’t want to have to deal with lugging our baggage to the bus station over the cobblestones.

August 27 (continued)

For our last dinner, we chose a Belgian restaurant called Rene (after René Magritte). The dining room was decorated with the artist’s paintings on a background of brick and white plaster. The tables were covered with newsprint, and there were boxes of pencils so that you could write on them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything clever to say. There was a children’s party going on in the back room, and so festively dressed girls and boys kept passing through to it. I had shortribs with frites and beer.
We then returned to the hotel and made our last preparations for the journey home.
Walking miles: 7.1.

Monday, August 28 (Vilnius to Alexandria)

We woke up at 6:15, too early for breakfast. The taxi was on time. At the airport, check-in and security were easy. However, all of this easy sailing was for naught, as Air Baltic turned out to be even less punctual than on the outward trip. We soon learned that our 8:10 flight was delayed until 9:00. This annoyed but didn’t worry us, as we had a three-hour layover in Amsterdam. So, there we had to sit for an extra hour and a half. We bought some coffee and ate some of the crackers that KLM had given us on the way to Amsterdam. There were a lot of guys in leather who were members of the Amsterdam chapter of Hell’s Angels (if you can imagine that), apparently on their way home from some event.

After we had waited for a good while, there was another announcement that the flight would be delayed further. It seemed that they were flying in a new plane from Riga. Gee, that’s not going to take long, is it? I went over to the Subway and bought a small club sandwich, which we split. Shortly after that, they said we would be departing soon, and so everyone got into line. Then they distributed meal vouchers to use at the snack bar. However, they kept saying that we would start boarding “shortly.” Here was the dilemma: If we wanted to use the vouchers we would have to leave the line and risk being in the middle of purchasing when they started boarding for realzies. We decided to forgo using the vouchers, a course of action with which most people concurred. We stood there waiting, as we anxiously calculated how our layover was narrowing. Of course, some passengers had already missed their connections.

They finally let us board. As it turned out, we would have had plenty of time for the snack bar. Also, the boarding process involved another bus ride to the end of the field; after that, our position in line had no relationship to where we would be in the queue up the stairs.

We were two hours and twenty minutes late by the time we got airborne. Ninety minutes later, Schiphol was a blur as we raced from Air Baltic to KLM. At one point we stopped at the transfers desk, but they told us we were fine and we could still catch our plane.

And so we did. I don’t have much memory of the flight to Dulles. We sat in the very last row. The USB port wouldn’t charge my tablet, which deprived me of music. (Don’t get me started about the choices in the airline entertainment system.) They fed us vegetarian pasta with white wine and a little trifle for dessert.

Once back on American soil, we went through the usual rituals: A long walk from the gate, being packed into a “mobile lounge,” trundling across the airport, another walk, shuffling forward to passport control, retrieving our luggage standing line for customs with the dogs sniffing for contraband.

We always have trouble finding ground transportation at Dulles. There’s something transdimensional about the ground floor of the terminal. We worked it out, as we always do, and a van took us home.

Walking miles: 0.5.

Thank you for a fascinating, thorough, thoughtful report of a city and region of which I know little. I appreciate the time that you took to write it, and enjoyed it very much!

Thank you for sharing your wonderfully-detailed report. I enjoyed reading it.

Your trip sounded wonderful. Thank you

An excellent detailed report.

On the Battle of Grunwald of 1410 which saw the defeat of the Teutonic Knights (as they are called in English), there is a monument (big) in Krakow, a few minutes from the train station, which I saw in 2001.