To start with, let me give a shout out to my friend, Anders, who so graciously agreed to accompany his slightly crazy American friend to Lithuania. When I asked him several months ago if he would go with me, he nonchalantly said “yes” with the adventurous attitude of “Why not? I’ve never been to a Baltic country before”. (I can only wonder if now those words haunt him.)
We were scheduled to depart out of Stockholm’s Arlanda airport at 7 p.m. on a Monday night. When we arrived at the ticket counter to get our boarding passes, we discovered that every passenger that had booked that flight was booted out of the system and each had to wait several minutes while the very friendly agent rebooked each of us on the flight. I think Anders and I both had the same sense of foreboding.
Despite the snag in Arlanda, we arrived in Vilnius on time – right before midnight. In the waiting area of the Vilnius airport there were at least 15 mean looking taxi drivers holding up signs. I scanned each surly face and sign, found my name and hotel, and off we went to Hotel Tilto. No polite conversation from our driver, but he got us safely and quickly to our hotel. Getting the taxi to pick up us was totally worth every bit of my 12 euro.
The next day we went downstairs to enjoy our complimentary continental breakfast. I specifically chose a hotel with breakfast included because 1. I didn’t want to pay for another meal, and 2. I am not a morning person and would most likely just skip breakfast if I had to go out and find it. I have to say I was completely happy with our hotel’s breakfast selection – it was not the standard American “bagel and coffee” breakfast. There were 4 kinds of juice, coffee, tea, fish, meats, cheeses, breads, oatmeal, eggs, and more. We filled up our tanks and were ready to seize the day in Vilnius.
The church at the end of the street.
Anders grabbed a couple maps for us at the hotel front desk, asked a few questions about what to see, and out the door we went. The first thing we saw, at the end of the street, was a church with a Greco-Roman style entrance and statues on the roof holding a gilded cross. Very flashy and very unlike the other churches I had seen in Kosovo, Germany, and Sweden.
After wandering around the church, taking pictures, and trying to be respectful of the worshippers there, we trekked up the hill to the remaining tower of Vilnius’ ancient castle. The road was paved with cobblestones that were not worn down at all, which meant eventually I ended up walking on the retaining wall to try to keep my feet from tiring out too early in the day. The castle tower held a wonderful museum, with assorted artifacts from Lithuania’s history. Shiny suits of armor, deadly weapons, ancient Vilnius in miniature, and Lithuania’s story of independence were all on display.
Once back down the hill, we looked at our map, looked at the city ahead of us, looked at the map again, and then just decided to walk toward the next interesting building. Fortunately Anders and I have the same approach to sightseeing – we see something off in the distance and walk toward it. (This leads to much being seen, sometimes walking in circles, and being especially appreciative of any chance to sit down.)
The Catholic church where we walked in on a service.
We walked into old town Vilnius and into a world of cathedrals, churches, graffiti covered walls, and narrow streets with fast drivers. Each church or cathedral we went into was different from the last one and I was surprised at the number of actual worshippers in each one. Lithuania is still a strongly religious country as we found out firsthand after stumbling into a service at one of the cathedrals. We stood off by a pillar in the back and watched the people walk in, genuflect, and cross themselves. At one point, a whole gaggle of children came in with their teachers and all of them dropped to one knee in unison, Father-Son-Holy Spirit-ed themselves, and then ran off to different parts of the church. After about 20 minutes or so of observing and trying to figure out what was going on, Anders leaned down to whisper that he was falling asleep standing up and asked if I was ready to go. I nodded in affirmation and remembered a bit of my brief Catholic upbringing – we had better leave before mass actually starts or we’ll be there for at least an hour!
There he is - Frank Zappa.
At some point during the day, we did stop by the tourist information center to pick up some more pamphlets. I learned that somewhere the city there was a monument to Frank Zappa. Frank Zappa? Really? This I had to find. Anders gamely navigated our way to find Frank in Vilnius, and find him we did. He was off on a side street, hanging out in front of a graffiti mural of other great rock ‘n’ roll musicians. I have to say that seeing a Frank Zappa monument in the middle of Vilnius was of the most random things ever.
After finally finding Frank, and seeing lots of other interesting things along the way, we decided to head back to our hotel to rest and then venture out again for something to eat. At lunchtime, we tried to find some authentic looking Lithuanian restaurant, but ended up at a nice Hungarian place since neither of us could understand either Lithuanian or Hungarian. For dinner, the hotel conveniently provided a listing of “real” Lithuanian restaurants. We chose a place called “Cili Kaimas” (pronounced “chili kie-mus” – the “c“ is supposed to have a “smile“ over it) because we had seen the restaurant a few times during our sightseeing loops around the city.
Cili Kaimas reminded me quite a bit of the chain restaurant, Chili’s, in the U.S. Even the sign had a green and red chili on it. Of course, the food was nothing like Chili’s. I had some strange, but delicious, concoction called “Pork Beef Bird” while Anders had potato dumplings that were apparently very similar to a dish he could only find in northern Sweden. My meal consisted of a giant pork and beef meatball with a chopped boiled egg and spinach in the middle – kind of like turducken, but on a smaller scale and probably less fattening (I hope). Anders was so happy with his meal, he ordered it two more times over the rest of our trip.
Day one came to end in Lithuania and we plotted our next day. I will save the next day and a half’s happenings for another post. That vague sense of foreboding that Anders and I had in Arlanda – you’ll get to read about that soon.
