Day 2 in Vilnius

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Ardith is not feeling well.  We ate breakfast in the lower level of our hotel, and she came back to our room while Jim went out to change money, or at least that was his excuse.   He left at about 9am  when the Old Town area was just waking up.   Places that were jammed with people last night were nearly deserted.

  Merchants were just setting up their wares.

The fountain that was filled with people enjoying themselves now just had one dad taking a picture of his daughter.

 Two park benches were occupied by guys who appeared to be sleeping, but didn't seem homeless.  Perhaps they were recovering from the night before.

Jim saw a huge log in the park and questioned why it was there.  A half hour later, he saw the other side and understood.

Jim's camera wasn't quick enough to catch the fronts of these 3 policemen.  They each had a large cup of coffee in one hand as they navigated their Segways  through the park.

Oh, right, he was sent out to change money.  In St. Petersburg, Tallinn and Riga, there were money changing shops densely distributed though the areas that tourists visit.  He couldn't find any such place here.  He went to the tourist information and they said that only banks change money, by law.  In Helsinki, he had to pay 5 Euros ($7) in addition to the split between buy and sell rates.  The woman in the office said the most any bank charges is $1.20.  The bank Jim chose charged 80 cents.

There is a lot of repaving and other cleanup going on in the city. The European Union is having its summit meeting here in November and Lithuania has been given funds to spruce things up.

 Workers can't work continuously - they need a break from time-to-time.

Jim has seen several women who found peaceful places to read.  When he was showing these pictures to Ardith, he questioned why he hasn't seen men doing that.  She said that is because they are always lying down somewhere.

 The biggest public space in the city is Cathedral square, encompassing the Catholic cathedral and its bell tower.  The country is 80% Catholic, the bell tower was once part of the city's defensive walls.

Several time we have seen tour groups whose leader uses a microphone and transmitter.  The participants all wear earphones to hear her.  This is an especially good solution in crowded places, but is also useful for dealing with stragglers.  Jim saw one group where 2 women were a half block behind, but seemed to be paying attention to the leader.

Jim watched 2 young teens photograph a merchant's wares, so he did too.

 An hour after he had been down a nearly empty main street, Jim got caught in 2 very large tour groups going in opposite directions on a moderate width sidewalk.

Minutes later, he passed a cafe where 2 young women had been sipping coffee early in his trip.  More than an hour later, they were still there without apparently consumed anything more.  Its a leisure style that Jim has a hard time comprehending.  He has a hard time sitting still.

 He passed a lot of interesting buildings and other sights on his very indirect journey back to the hotel.

The playground was filled with English speaking children.  Some are part of the ex-pat community here, but most private nursery schools teach English to their students.  The 5 countries we visited have 5 very distinct languages, so most people use either English or Russian for cross-border communication.

Jim found the restaurant he had hoped to eat in.  It looked interesting, but alas, we found too many other interesting places.

Another place had a fire hydrant in the middle of tables.  What would happen if there were a nearby fire?

 Jim passed perhaps a hundred people carrying bouquets of flowers.  He wondered if there was a flower market nearby, thinking he might buy some to cheer Ardith, but people were coming an going in all directions.  He finally figured out what was going on and the clerk in the hotel confirmed it:  the various colleges of the University were having graduations each day this week and giving flowers to both guys and gals is the tradition here.

Jim went back to see how Ardith was doing and to drop off brochures he had picked up in the tourist office.  She still wasn't doing well.  She sent him back out to play.  During his money changer quest, he had seen the remains of the Upper Castle and wanted to climb the hill.

There is a Moderately sloping spiral path up the hill that is largely paved with cobblestones.  Jim was walking faster that some young people going up at the same time, but they got to the top first because he kept stopping to take pictures.

He first ended up by the Castle Keep building.  He eventually figured out that he probably wasn't supposed to be there when he came to a fence separating him from the tower.  Instead of going up the nice wide path, he had chosen to take a small path through a partly open gate.

 Next it was to the tower - the place he was supposed to go.  Walking up to the tower is free, taking a lift there isn't.  At the level of the tower base, the view is great, so Jim briefly pondered not paying to go in the tower.

The tower itself houses a museum.  There were models showing how the castles and other fortification were set up 600 years ago.  There were also displays of armor and a few other nick-knacks on the first 2 floors.  Jim was initially disappointed. Taking the very narrow spiral stairs to the 3rd floor brought him to a place with a TV showing scenes of airplanes flying. politicians making speeches, and people holding hands. He didn't get it, until he read the text accompanying the stills taken from the video.These were about The Baltic Way, a massive demonstration on the 50th anniversary of the Soviet takeover of the Baltic States.  More than 2 million people form a human chain starting in Vilnius, passing through Riga and ending in Tallinn.  6 months later, Lithuania became the first of the Baltic States to assert their independence.

 From the top, there was a good view of the Neris river and some of the newer parts of the city.

Jim took a steeper path down the hill, one that led away from the main part of town.  In his wanderings, he came across a woman doing heavy-duty makeup work on another who was sitting in the back of a vehicle.  The closest building to them was part of the Cultural Ministry, so he started speculating on why this was happening: was their a show about to happen, was she applying for a job, meeting a special guy?

He got back in the early afternoon and asked Ardith if there was anything I could get that would make her feel better.  She said no to various ways of asking, then finally said that I could get her ice cream from the shop that was just by the entrance to our courtyard.  She loved the wild berry flavor I got her, and got the same flavor each of the next 3 days.

Since Ardith still wasn't well, Jim decided that he would do another thing that Ardith wouldn't especially enjoy.  He went to the Energy and Technology Museum, which was open later on Thursdays than other days.  It wasn't listed in our guidebook, but was in one of the brochures Jim had picked up.  The museum is housed in the city's first power plant, built in 1903.  Much of the equipment remains and dates from then or the 1930s when a major upgrade was done.

 

In addition to being able to wander through the fascinating maze of pipes, valves, wires and controls, there were several other interesting things in the museum.  Unfortunately, the memory card on Jim's computer got corrupted and over a hundred pictures were lost, many of this museum.  There was a very large room filled with old cars and motorcycles, many of which Jim had never seen before or in many cases, heard of.  There was a  large section on various industries that had been in the town and how technological innovation had happened there, despite Soviet suppression of many ideas.  The earliest was of shoe making and how technology changed that practice and the society associated with it.  There were lots of radios, tape recorders, TVs, etc.

Jim was especially interested in the early computer technology.  Some was cloned from IBM and other western sources, but there was some genuine innovation in things like printers and card punches.

 Jim got a free glass of wine with his $3 admission to the museum.  He had stumbled on the grand opening of a new exhibit commemorating 120 years since the first horse-drawn trams were used in Vilnius.  The main part of the exhibit was a series of old postcards showing the evolution of the trams.  There was also a display of plans for a large-scale modernization of the city's tram system.

 Ardith was feeling well enough to go out and take a long-ish walk to dinner. Jim had seen a nice place along the Vilna river and thought it would be just what Ardith would like.  We were very lucky.  Just as we entered the restaurant, one of the riverfront tables opened up.  At the table next to us were probably 2 families that had recent university graduates, complete with flowers and diplomas. We had a great meal and got to watch a lot of kayakers navigate a trick section of the river. About a third of them mildly bumped into the wall. 

When we returned to our hotel it was close to 10PM.  Jim had walked between 14 and 17 miles today and enjoyed it immensely. There was a big crowd on the sidewalk and we had thoughts of evacuations of other strange things.  It was intermission at the Philharmonic which is one building way from us.