All good things must come to an end

Sunday, June 23

In one of Jim's wanderings he passed a portal that led to a Lutheran Church.  There was a sign in English by the portal saying there was a service at 9:30 on Sundays.

We decided to attend the service.  When we arrived we were warmly greeted by several members.  The hymns were from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Worship supplement and the service approximated tradition Lutheran forms, but the church is explicitly non-denominational.  The interim pastor, Bruce Sloan, is a semi-retired Southern Baptist minister from Georgia, but he wore a clerical collar, unlike most Baptist preachers.  We wondered if he was going to preach from the high pulpit, but didn't climb up there.  At 11:00 AM, there is a Lutheran service there in Lithuanian.  Since there were paraments on the pulpit, we suspect their pastor used it.  The pastor's wife, Angela did terrific preludes and postludes on the piano, but an organist accompanied the hymns.  There were about 60-70 people in attendance.

The Lutheran parish was started in 1552 and the current building was erected in 1739.  The interior, including the organ, was destroyed by the Soviets.  It was divided into 2 floors with the upper one being a basketball court.  The life of the parish was extinguished until just before the country's independence. Restoration of the building took 7 years, reopening in 1995.  The congregation is called the International Church of Vilnius.  There were people from several countries there: Americans, Canadians, Germans, Nigerians, Lithuanians wanting exposure to English, English and Swedish, at least.

We had another good surprise.  The church was having a picnic at the home of Steve and Rebecca, folks who had greeted us.  We boarded a tram with several other folks from the church.  We paid careful attention to where we went because we would be coming back on our own.  It was an American style picnic featuring hamburgers cooked on a grill.  It was a real pleasure talking with people from such diverse backgrounds.

Steve and Rebecca and their kids are renting one fourth of a large house.  The rest of the folks living there are all from the same extended family.  Steve is teaching at one of the local universities.  He got recruited there by an organization that places American Christians in foreign schools.  He enjoys his job and hopes to stay at least several years.  His classroom is probably a quarter mile away as the crow flies, a bit farther to walk.  The house has a large yard and garden, complete with greenhouse, so they can eat fresh foods as they ripen.

A hundred years ago, this had been an area for hunting, then development of homes started.  Many old homes survive in a variety of conditions.

Seveal older homes have been torn down and replaced by modern ones.  One of the women from the church lives in the building below.  She has a pedicure business in which fish nibble at your feet.

We got back to our hotel successfully.  After a few minutes, Jim started on his final quest.  When he went up to the castle on the hill, he could see the taller hill with 3 crosses.

Ardith stayed back to prepare for our return journey, while Jim went for his little stroll.  He went downhill from our hotel, crossed the bridge into Uzupius, and climbed back up its main hill.  He had to look carefully for a path leading toward the crosses.  He carefully judged distances on his map and decided to go through a portal with no markings that opened to a weed-filled alley.

He was right, it led to a set of steep stairs heading down.  When he got to the bottom, there was a nice gentle path.  People were riding bicycles and pushing baby strollers.  He thought this was going to be fairly easy, despite a warning from the girl at the hotel desk.

 

Along the path, he saw several kayakers on the Vilna River.  These are the same kayaks and river that went by the restaurant we visited a few nights ago.  There were challenging spots here, as was the stretch by the restaurant.

After a moderate distance, the flat path continued, but the way up was a long flight of stairs.  Jim sometimes likes to count things.  He went up 241 steps to get to a relatively flat place.

After a very short way, there was another ascent - 91 steps to the base of cross.

The hill first had wooden crosses placed on it in the 16th century when Christianity was struggling to make inroads into Lithuania.  A concrete structure was erected in 1913, only to be torn down again by the Soviets in the 1950s.  The new ones were built very shortly after independence in 1989.

The view of the city is quite remarkable.

The way back down was easier.  Jim chose to go down a sloping asphalt path instead of the 241 stairs.  He brought a map that didn't show another thing he had hoped to see, an important cemetery.  Close to where he had guessed the cemetery was, he found a sports complex.  Some pieces of that were badly decayed.

He ended up at the Neris River and followed it to where the Vilnus ends.  There is an overlook there.  Some teens were swinging underneath the overlook.  Jim though about doing that, but several more teens headed toward there as he neared.

 

Jim went into Cathedral Square. There he finally got the statue of Gediminas, perhaps the best leader of Lithuania, in decent light.  He made 3 previous attempts and didn't like any of them.  He decided that the only time to get significantly better light would be a half hour or so after sunrise.  Since we are just past the solstice, that would mean about 4:30AM.

 

As he passed the Town Hall square, he saw young musicians setting up in front of the hall.  He convinced Ardith this would be a nice early evening activity - perhaps we could have dinner at an open air place while we listened.  We went there quickly and found a seat on a bench and waited for the music to start.  We watched the director make several calls on his cell phone and players trickled in.  45 minutes later, they started.  The music was fun and pom-pom girls waved in front of them for about half there numbers.  

After sitting on the bench through 5 or 6 numbers, we started looking for a place to have a light dinner.  Most of the places only served drinks and snack foods.  We chose place with a bigger menu and shared a pizza.  It was fairly good, but far less so than the rest of the meals we have had - probably a good way to transition.  On the way back to our hotel, we stopped for one last ice cream.

We had a 6AM flight, so we got up at 4 and got a taxi at 4:30.  All was smooth.  We flew from Vilnius to Copenhagen where we we had a 5 hour layover.  It was a bit of a struggle to stay awake, but we did fine.  Our return flight had good news and not so good news.  The good news was that the plane had far more legroom than the flight over.  The plane was the same model - Airbus A330-300 and we were just one row different, so we have no idea why it was so much better.

The less than good news was that everyone near us except the women in the seat behind us was a high school aged kid.  About 2/3rds were Americans, the rest Danes. We've never been on a plane with such a high volume of noise.  We could barely hear announcements.  They didn't pay any attention to the announcements.  There was no obvious adult presence.  Jim suspected they got seats as far forward as possible.  When we hit turbulence, the kids all put up their arms like they were on a roller coaster.

Other than the fact that Jim's cell phone behaved badly and we lost track of one of our bags (it hid after being offloaded from the belt), we had a good connection with son-in-law John and granddaughter Zoe.

Jim is now happy that this blog is finished and he can add other things back into his life.  We hope that you have enjoyed it.

A monumental walk

Saturday, June 22

One of the brochures Jim brought to Ardith when she was ill described a walking tour to statues and monuments,  That's what we picked for today.  Our path led us down a street that had a great deal of charm, even though buildings were a bit run down.  After Jim took the first picture below, he paid attention to the posters filling windows of the building on the left.  A less than stunning model is wearing less than stunning clothes in each of them.  The posters are photos taken in front of the most fashionable shops, showing their brand names.

We also passed a reminder of when milk was delivered to our doorsteps (for people our age).

A man was walking his large dog on the railing of a bridge to our first destination, the Republic of Uzupis.  The dog seemed quite happy to be doing its balancing act, just like some kids enjoy doing similar things.

What?  The Republic of Uzupis?  Aren't we in Lithuania?  We need some background here.  In the 1930s, Vilnius was 40% Jewish.  Uzupis, which means "Behind the River" is separated from the old town of Vilnius by the Vilna River.  It was a Jewish ghetto before World War 2.  Between the Nazis and the Soviets, the Jewish population was driven out or killed.

Uzupis became run down and attracted the undesirables of society.  After Lithuanian independence, artists were attracted to the area, due to low rents.  It grew and began to thrive. In 1997 they declared independence.  This reminded us of The Maritime Republic of Eastport in Annapolis. In 1998, the bridge separating the Eastport section of Annapolis from downtown was closed for several months for extensive repairs.  A group of locals declared their independence and the tradition of rivalry has persisted.  Each year there is a .05K race across the bridge and a tug of war across the water.  Uzupis outdoes Eastport by having a constitution that is displayed in multiple languages on metal mirrors.  The constitution has some sensible stuff and a fair amount of wackiness.  Here are a few articles:

• Everyone has the right to hot water, heating in winter and a tiled roof. 
  Everyone has the right to die, but it is not a duty.
  A cat is not obliged to love its master, but it must help him in difficult times. 
  Everyone has the right to be happy.
  Everyone has the right to be unhappy.

The symbol of Uzupis is an angel (Gabriel) high on a pillar above the Republic's main open space.

 

There are lots of examples of nuttiness evident here.  There were almost no people, though.  We suspect that was due to very late partying celebrating midsummer last night.

Heading down the hill to the other bridge connecting Uzupis with the mainland, we could see our next destination peering over the rooftops.

The Bernardine complex consists of two Catholic churches, a monastery and offices for some organizations.  St. Anne's Church was finished in 1500.  It is an amazing brick structure.  One group of scholars said there are 33 different shapes of bricks there.  We are surprised that the number isn't bigger.

The larger church in the complex is Saints Bernardine and Francis of Assisi. It is 25 years newer than St. Anne's.  At one time, its walls were part of the city's defenses.  During Soviet times, it was used as an art students' studio.  Many parts of the interior were incorporated into student works.  The interior is slowly being restored.

A statue on the grounds is of Adam Manciewicz, a poet whose 19th century writings inspired Lithuanians in the 1980s to push for their freedom.

Every time we were near a church today, we saw babies in baptismal gowns.  This was especially concentrated here.  We saw about a dozen in the half hour we were here.  We saw that people who wanted to have their child baptized went into the church office and signed up for a time.  Saturday is a the usual day for baptisms.  Tomorrow is St. John the Baptist Sunday, so that is probably regarded as a special day to have your baby brought into the church.

We saw a tree all dressed in its finest knitwear.  This reminded us of Hobbywool in Riga, but Hobbywool was more tasteful.

As we approached the main tourist street, we saw a teacup sticking out of a wall, then more.  This was the wall of a shop featuring tea.

While we were on the main tourist street, we poked our heads into shops selling amber.  Amber and honey were the main export goods in Lithuania at the time of its large empire.  The Baltic countries are still the largest source of amber in the world.  Ardith ended up buying a pair of earrings.

We went down to Cathedral Square and hydrated ourselves while enjoying a small snack.  While we were sitting and enjoying, we heard what sounded like bugle calls, except they didn't sound like they were coming from a bugle.  Soon a guy came into view playing a long straight horn.  He was followed by people with an Olympic torch, an Olympic flag and 2 other flags with Lithuanian colors and Olympic symbols.

We came to Cathedral Square because we wanted to experience the next "monument".  This is actually a tile in the plaza floor.  It marks the spot where the human chain from Vilnius to Riga to Tallinn demanding freedom for the Baltics was intended to start. (Due to overwhelming turnout, it went farther). The letters on the tile spell "miracle" in Lithuanian (Stebuklas).  Legend says that if you stand on it, close your eyes and make a 360 degree clockwise spine, your wish will come true.  Jim suspects that Ardith wished that he didn't start walking more slowly or straying away to take excessive numbers of pictures.

Not far from there we got some surprises.  These were good ones.  The main street closes for a time on Saturdays for a special market.  There are lots of things for locals and tourists.

The meat seller had a boar's head at his booth and a woman had a unique delivery vehicle for caffeine.

We wished we hadn't snacked because there were a lot of great looking edibles, but we passed everything by.

As we neared the end of the market area, the sounds of a busking accordion player were replaced by the wail of a siren.  Police cars came into the main street then continues on.  They were followed by perhaps a thousand bicycles, pedaling furiously.  A great sight, too bad it didn't last longer.

Next, we hunted down the statue of Romain Gary.  He was a French writer, diplomat, pilot, etc who spent his boyhood living in the house adjacent to the statue. The statue recreates a scene from his autobiography when he was trying to win the attention of a girl named Valentina by cutting up and eating what the descriptions call a gumshoe.  When we were kids, we called them rubbers.  We haven't seen kids or adults wear them for ages.

 

Next on the agenda was something quite odd for Lithuania - a statue of Frank Zappa. This was commissioned by the local Frank Zappa fan club shortly after independence and replaced a bust of Lenin.  He has no connection to Lithuania, but represented a type of freedom.

The final monument on our tour was the giant Easter Egg.  Supposedly a symbol of revitalization of its neighborhood, its paint is peeling, thus in need of revitalization itself.

Along the way, Ardith did a double take.  She thought she saw her name on a wall.  There was a company in a small office building called Ardita.

 

We also passed the synagog where the Karaite sect mentioned in yesterday's blog worships.  They managed to escape most of the ravages of Nazis and Soviets because they weren't "real Jews", but most of the remaining Karites are living in Israel.

As we neared our hotel, we passed through the Gates of Dawn.  This was one of the gates in the old defensive walls of the city.  The "outside" of the gate is plain, with a few bullet holes to help recall bad times.  Above the opening on the inside is a chapel with a famous image of the Virgin Mary.  There was a worship service happening as we passed through.  Jim recorded some of the singing.  Hes especially liked the fact that the woman next to us began singing something that was very familiar to her, softly at first, then full voice.

Jim recognized that Ardith was quite tired from the day's activities and suggested a place to eat that was very near the hotel.  Its outdoor eating area was in an alley-like area off the main street.  It was totally charming farther back in there.  We were the first to come for dinner, thus had full attention of the wait staff.  We had a fry bread that was shaped like large French fries.  If we didn't share, that amazing dish would have filled one of us.  Ardith recalled how her grandmother made fry bread that was quite different than this, but was one of her favorites.  Jim was enchanted by the idea of a poached pear tower, and that swayed his decision to have the duck breast in a berry-wine reduction with polenta and spinach.  All was wonderful, especially the pear.  Ardith was quite happy with her chicken croquettes, fried potatoes and warm cucumber and tomato slices.

Here are just a few buildings or features we especially liked today.