Lonely Planet grew out of the 1960s books 'X on a Shoestring' and tend to appeal more to the back-packing sort of tourist, but for some countries they are really indispensable. 'Insight' guides are just better at, well, insight. And they make terrific souvenirs.'
Well, back to the room and some writing. There are only a few things wrong with our room. It's too damn cold, it is too dark when you want it light since most of the lights don't work, and it is too light when it should be dark since it has big windows and only lace curtains that cover only some of the window. And we are fairly far north so the days must have about seventeen hours of light already. The bed is too narrow--it is really a single bed. We are both struggling to get under the covers. When we travel Mark tends to catch cold easily since he keeps hitting different strains and he has more trouble than most people fighting them off. (When Mark woke up the next morning after less than six hours of sleep because of the light, his throat was a bit scratchy.)
Mark set up the Walkman with traveling speakers and we listened for a while to a local classical station and then switched to Voice of America overnight. When he travels he carries a Walkman, some very compact speakers, earphones that wind up onto a cassette-shaped holder that can be kept in the Walkman, and an AC adapter, and he says he really has a sound system that folds up very small. It turns out that the 220V to 110V converter we got for India works here also. He is only a little afraid to plug Thing in here.
Mark explains, 'Oh, yes, Thing came along on this trip too. Thing--named for the compact character so useful in THE ADDAMS FAMILY--is an HP 95LX palmtop PC. It is the size of a pencil case. It is a rare hour that I don't access it for something, at home or traveling. When I travel I use it for currency conversions, for taking notes during the day (if I took them by hand too many would be illegible). It paces me on my film and on pages in the log. Currently we are 4.59% through the trip. I should be on roll one, shot 31; actually I am on 26 so I am okay. I should be on logbook one, page 27. I am actually on page 35. If I keep up at this rate I will have to finish my log in Thing's memo application.'
'I had downloaded a fair amount of correspondence from the Internet on what to see in this region. Like the Walkman, Thing is a really good investment in space. Last trip I referred to Thing as if it were a person, a literary device that Evelyn does not like, but I have to admit that when an accomplished travel writer like Fred Lerner sees me using Thing and tells his daughter, 'Oh, look, it's Thing,' I am just a bit tickled. It also strikes me as surprising, because I still think of these logs as just notes I am writing to myself and there is a flash of 'Wow! How did he know that?' Then when I know he has read my log, I like that too. That is the real kick of writing the log: when someone shows familiarity. I started writing logs as an alternative to photography that I could do in my spare time rather than during sightseeing time. Now I do both. But frankly, the logs are better portraits of where I have been. They are also a lot easier to share with people. In person I tend to be quiet and a bit shy, even with friends. But when I write I take on a whole different persona. That's also a reason I write,' Mark concludes.
May 7, 1994: Evelyn had difficulty sleeping, but whether from jet lag or the cold temperature she can't say. She *is* glad she brought her thermal underwear--she's sleeping in it.
Breakfast was bread, butter, cheese, two kinds of hard sausage, hard-boiled eggs, and coffee, laid out for us when we went into the kitchen at 8:00. This is *not* the 'heart-smart' diet. We see very little of the mother and daughter whose apartment this is. If we have a chance we need to ask about heat and where we can throw our trash. The former may not be possible, but there must be a trash can somewhere.
For those who think mathematics is essentially a humorless discipline, Mark has just decided not to use the usual currency conversion program in Thing, but has given it the following formula to solve:
(cent*9/5+32-fahr)^2+(litu/1188-dol/300)^2=0
At 9:30 we went out to see the city, but Vilnius does not seem to wake up very early. It is just one very dead town, and nothing much opens until 11:00 (since it is Saturday). Just as well. Mark says he is suffering that most American of ailments, the bad hair day. So we sat in the sun outside the Cathedral and wrote in our logs.
Now for you to understand our next site, let us remind you that we said Jogaila and Vytautas were cousins. That meant they had the same grandfather. This was a man named Gediminas. Legend says that he once had a dream of an iron wolf howling on a hill right near the Vilnia River's mouth. Such a hill did exist. (Did he know this in advance? Mark assumes so.) He interpreted the dream to be saying that a powerful fort could be built at that place and a great city would arise from it. At this point the Vilnia flows into the Neris River. He built his fort and invited merchants, craftsmen, and religious people to settle at the foot of the hill. In the 20th Century, when Lithuania achieved its independence from the Soviets, it was on the tower remaining from this fort that the old yellow, green, and red flag of Lithuania flew once again on Friday, October 7, 1988.
The hill, now called Gediminas Hill (or Castle Hill by books that want everything in English), is 150 feet (44 meters) high. That is roughly 0.38 times the size of Godzilla in the American version of GODZILLA, or 0.6 time the height of Godzilla in the original Japanese version. That's just to help you get a feel. It is about sixty paces high--assuming you have the talent to lie on your back and pace straight up. The iron wolf did not pick a really big hill to howl from. Iron wolves don't, as a rule. Iron is heavy. Leopards tend to climb. Mark says, 'I have been told that close to the western summit of Kilimanjaro there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude. I suppose what might have happened is that some hyenas got sick of having to cower in the presence of the haughty leopard and ganged up on him. Then, fearing they would be discovered, they dragged the body someplace where no other leopard would ever discover it. Well, at least it is a working theory.'
We climbed the hill and there was a tower. It was made of red brick. There is a museum in the tower with medieval war weapons: crossbows, pikes, and maces. These were either donated or found at the site. And there were the usual models of what the fort looked like when it was in its full glory. It is only a very tiny museum: three small rooms each little larger than our rented room. (Of course, the charge was small as well: 70 cento, or about US$0.17, each.) Also, as was common, everything was labeled only in Lithuanian.
After that we climbed the seventy-four steps of the tower. Between the hill and the tower you get a nice view of the Old Town of Vilnius. You also get to see the modern (or Soviet modern) sections of town, which are not nearly as interesting. Off to one side you see the nice stadium that the Soviets built to please the local populace. Earlier, the land had been a Jewish cemetery, but after the Soviets pulled up the tombstones to use as paving stones a la Auschwitz, nobody really thought of it as a cemetery any more, so the ever-practical Soviets built a stadium on the site--which was the original idea. It is enough to make you wish the film POLTERGEIST could really happen. The Soviets had also knocked down the original 17th Century Three Crosses Monument, but a copy/replica was re-erected in 1989 to commemorate three monks who had been martyred there. Actually, there had been seven monks--four were thrown into the river and three were crucified, which goes to show you that if you're not martyred in an easily memorialized way, you lose out on the monument.
You also get a nice view of the confluence of the two rivers. You can look down on Cathedral Square and the University.
From there we went to find the Lithuanian State Museum (which used to be the Revolution Museum of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic). It was across the Neris River over the Zhhaliasis Bridge, about a thirty-minute walk away. This bridge, by the way, has one of the few remaining hammer-and-sickle symbols in Vilnius, atop the statue on the northeast corner of the bridge.
Walking around here one certainly gets the feeling that the United States economy is booming. The movie theater is showing HOME ALONE 2 (Heaven help them!). (Tickets are 1.5 Lt, or US$0.40, but we weren't that desperate for a movie yet.) You see stores selling Texas Instruments products, images of the Simpsons, and Pepsis for sale. The United States sure must have an economy second to none. So why don't we get that feeling at home?
When we got to the museum it turned out it was now the National Gallery--or perhaps we got lost, though it's probably the former. It still has the art exhibits of the Lithuanian State Museum, but apparently not the exhibits on the Resistance, Lithuanians in America, or the 1991 Revolution. (At least we didn't see anything like that, though the 'Lonely Planet' guide mentioned them.) Tickets were 60 cento each.
The visit starts with folk art. Practical items like paddles and pulleys have decoration carved in. A particularly popular motif is what Mark calls a 'compass lily.' It looks like a flower with six petals inscribed in a circle. Most people who have played with a compass and paper have drawn it by starting with a circle and drawing arcs with the same radius with centers on the edge of the first circle, starting new arcs where previous arcs intersect the circumference. We see pottery and painted chests. Then there is a room with giant road-side crosses and icons in what look like birdhouses. Supposedly the best of these are by Vincas Svirskis (1835-1916), though we couldn't really make any artistic judgments. Mark notes, 'I have never understood why icons are put in these little houses. But then I am not big on religious statues. They confuse me. Idol worship was the worship of the statues of gods. The rejection of magic was the rejection of appeals to spirits to intervene. Monotheism was the belief that there is only one god to worship. Yet there are current religions where people pray to statues and believe that prayer achieves it ends, as does prayer to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. This may well be monotheism, and the rejection of idol worship and of magic. But on the face of it, that is not obvious. It could be questioned.'
A very popular local theme is St. George and the Dragon. We see all sorts of Georges from handsome and brave to one in our final museum today who looked terrified and wounded. Dragons also look from fierce to exhausted. One looked very wolf-like.
There is an old painting of cherubs floating around an eye of God in a triangle, the symbol we see on a United States one-dollar bill.
Some of the impressive works are from more modern collections, including more recent sculpture. There is an odd painting of a running wolf in which you see the wolf's internal organs. Perhaps the most impressive piece in the museum is a small metal sculpture showing a fusion of bat-like wings and a modern aerodynamic shape. Except for the modern gallery, the museum was somewhat dark, and the lights for the cases were turned on only if a visitor was in the room. (Each room had a woman watching it, waiting for people to come in. It didn't look like there were a whole lot of people. In fact, the hour or so we were there, there didn't seem to be anyone else.)
We had lunch on the way back in a restaurant called the Viola. It is an Armenian restaurant in a really ugly Russian-style building. The dining room itself is very nicely appointed with carved moldings around velveted walls and crystal chandeliers. On one wall is a painting of a gored matador lying dead on the ground dripping blood, as an admonition not to order your meat rare perhaps. |
