Caution:History Lessons inside

Friday, June 13

Despite the title, this isn't all about history.  Breakfasts at our hotel are quite decent, but don't begin to compare with those in Riga. However, the setting is much nicer.

When Jim brought home brochures yesterday, Ardith zeroed in on one of them.  She had been reading in our tour book about Trakai Island and its castle and wanted to go there.  Taking public transportation would leave you with a nearly mile long walk to the castle.  Ardith's ankle had improved after yesterday's rest, but she didn't want to push things.  The brochure described a tour to there and even though Jim doesn't particularly like tours, he realized that was the most practical thing to do.  That would be our main goal for the day.

The brochure listed a web site and a phone number.  The website reverted to Lithuanian after the front page and we didn't have a phone.  It was supposed to leave at 9:30, so we went to the tourist information office and had them call.  She didn't get through, but suggested a different company that departed at 11 and we made a reservation for that one. 

  With some time to kill, we decided to explore the innards of the cathedral.

There are a lot of subtle connections to Poland in here.  The main side chapel is devoted to St. Casimir and there were a lot of other Polish sounding names throughout.  History lesson 1: Poland and Lithuania were united in a commonwealth from the late 1500s to the late 1700s. Casimir was Polish, ruled the commonwealth for a time, and is the patron saint of both Poland and Lithuania.

 While we were walking along a side aisle, we saw what looked like a pulpit facing backwards. (Insert Polish joke here?), but seen from the main part of the church, it appears to be a platform for special dignitaries and is open to the front, back and center.

The confessionals were all open - not a chance for private sinning. Their woodwork was great, though.

We walked over to the Presidential Palace while we were waiting for our tour.  Yesterday, when Jim passed by, there were several people down on their knees chalking in squares on the pavement.  He thought it was an art project of some sort.  Today, we saw that they were coloring in letters that faced the Palace.  With some inquiry, we found out that it can be translated as "Listen To Us".  It is an ongoing protest by folks who believe that the government is unresponsive to the people.  It's good to see that the government tolerates at least some forms of dissent. One problem with doing 5 countries in just over 3 weeks is that you don't get a chance to wrap your head around political realities, other than a bit about Russia.

As we passed through the university area, we saw an interesting stack of books in a window.

 

Ardith sat on a bench along the side of Cathedral Square where we were supposed to meet the bus for our trip.  Jim was wandering, looking for more pictures.  She chatted for a while with the person that did reservations.  When Jim came back, he asked where to pay by credit card.  She said they didn't take credit cards, but told Jim just to go down the main street and he would see lots of banks that could change dollars.  We didn't bring an ATM card on the trip, partly to guard against possible loss, but mostly because Jim is a cheapskate and avoids as many bank fees as possible. After 3 long banks, he found a bank, went in and saw that there were about 30 people sitting on benches waiting for their number to come up.  This wouldn't do, as it was 15 minutes before we were supposed to depart.  Jim decided to go back to the place where he had changed money the day before.  As he was zooming by near Ardith, she yelled to him.  She had been talking with a woman from Finland who said there was a bank close by.  At a near run, she escorted Jim to a place where she could point to the bank he had missed.  He went in, changed enough money for the trip, and made it back to the bus with almost 5 minutes to spare!

Our guide was Julia, like Julia Roberts, she said.  She was attractive, pleasant and very well informed.  She also asked that we didn't take pictures of her. On the 40 minute ride to Trakai, she told us bits of Lithuanian customs and language, but mostly told us the history surrounding the place we were going.  

Mindaugus monument

History lesson 2: Mindaugas was the Duke who effectively created Lithuanian by uniting all the subtribes with the same ethnicity. He also was baptized and brought Christianity to the Lithuanians. This occurred in the mid-1200s.  Legend says that he selected the site for a castle at Trakai because of its defensive position, being on an island.  After he was murdered, the people reverted to paganism.  This made them the target of Crusaders of the Teutonic Order.  In the early middle 1300s, Gediminas transitioned Lithuania into a multi-ethnic state and began building an empire that would eventually become the largest in Europe, strecthing from the Black Sea to the Baltic.  He initiated construction of two castles in Trakai, one on a peninsula and the other on an island.   His grandson, Vytautus, brought an end to the wars with the Teutonic and Livonian Knights, both by battle and diplomacy.  One of his great victories was here at Trakai.

The peninsula castle has been reduced to mostly just its foundations.  The island castle had gotten into a state of major disrepair, but has been restored and can be explored.

Site of former moat

The Ducal Palace (the rulers had the title Grand Duke) now contains a museum.  Julia showed us where coals were heated and said that for the first floor, warm air was distributed through tunnels to heat rooms.  Jim had a fuzzy picture of this until an illustration in an exhibit showed how these "tunnels" were created.

There was much more history explained in the museum.  It was hard to grasp some of it because we Americans are taught almost nothing about eastern European history and there is an amazing amount of complexity.  History lesson 3: Gediminas brought a lot of men from the Caucasus of the Tatar and Karaite ethnic groups to be his bodyguards and defenders of the castle.  We had never heard of the Karaites before.  Their religion is sort of Jewish, but they only accept the Torah as holy and reject the teachings of the Talmud.  They also follow many Turkic practices.  Their numbers have dwindled.  There are just over 200 in Lithuania, with 80 residing in the town of Trakai.  The museum showed their traditional dress.  Later, we passed by their synagog in Vilnius.

They also had hordes of coins from just after the time of Vytautus that had been dug up, as well as cigar-shaped sticks of silver that were cut to make into smaller currency when needed.

Jim took a picture of a suit of armor.  It took 3 men to dress another in one of these 100 pound suits. When he took the picture, he didn't notice the face.  In the piture it looks like a live human female in the armor.  Spooky?

A painting showed Vytautus' victory at Trakai

Ardith's ankle told her not to go to the 3rd floor, so she went down to the courtyard until Jim finished.  She saw him taking picture and they ended up with dueling shots.

Trakai is not just a castle.  It is a functioning town and a major resort area.  Today had a record high temperature, about 85F.  Normal for this date is 70F.  This attracted lots of people to the water.  One of the swans seemed to enjoy people watching.  Jim needed to cool his heels, so to speak.  Julia saw what he was doing and said that she had done the same.

We had a wonderful time chatting with the woman from Finland on the bus ride back.  We wished that we would have taken her contact information.  She was really interesting and interested.

We went looking for a nice outdoor place to eat this evening and found a place with one outdoor table left.  A person sitting at one of the tables said that we really should look at the downstairs.  Ardith's ankle bravely made it down a narrow spiral staircase into a totally charming room.  She was hooked.  This won out over outdoors.

Ardith had a terrible time getting to sleep tonight.  Jim rarely does, but stays up much later than most folks.  Tonight is midsummer - the longest daytime of the year.  There were a lot of celebrations taking place.  She fell asleep just a few minutes before midnight.  There were really loud fireworks that went off at midnight, but Ardith snored on.  She said that she was wakened by later ones, but Jim was sound asleep then and hadn't a clue.

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.