'
The same room that has the your-worst-nightmare statue of Vytautas has its share of pikes and weapons of his time. Of some interest were two cannons that were shaped like architectural columns. That actually sounds like a clever idea. What invader would think to look inside a column to find your weapons?
There is one room with more rifles than you can shake a fire-stick at. (Strangely, the only exhibits labeled in English were the guns, which Evelyn suggests may be fitting. Perhaps the NRA provided the translations.) There is also a suit of armor with foot-long pointed toes, the idea being to kick your enemy to disable him, we guess. And there are lots of pistols. Continue on and you see the remains of the plane that killed Darius and Girenas. They have it in a realistic forest setting. They even have a little model of the plane coming down so you can tell the front end of the plane from the back which--to be frank--would be a little hard without the model. They did quite a number on themselves and the plane. The museum tour ends with World War II artifacts. There are a lot of pictures of people who we don't recognize and cannot figure out who they are, in part because of the language barrier.
As Evelyn says, 'When you don't read the language or know the history in detail, it's amazing how uninformative a historical museum can be. There were a lot of pictures, documents, memorabilia, etc., of people I assume were Lithuanian war heroes--although I suppose they could have been great enemies of Lithuania just as easily. After all, American museums might have an exhibit on Benedict Arnold. 'So what did you know as a bird that you didn't know as a boy?' (That's an old Merlin to Arthur line, in case you didn't recognize it.) 'That someone can look like a great hero and be a great villain, or vice versa. Or that you can't judge a person just from looks.''
Our next stop was the Devil Museum. Mark says one measure of a museum is to see what proportion of the exhibits are of personal interest. When you come right down to it, most museums are doing well if 10% of their exhibits are of interest to the average attendee. It is hard to imagine a museum in which 90% of the holdings are really interesting. There are almost no uninteresting pieces in Kaunas's Devil Museum. (Actually, its official title is 'the A. Zhmuidzinavicius Collection.') This is a whole museum devoted almost entirely to the representation of devils in the arts. It is not a big museum, but it is three floors of carvings and paintings and masks of devils. (There are supposedly 1700 pieces in the collection at this time, but not all are on display. One book warned that many of the images are anti-Semitic, but we didn't see many of those, so perhaps those are not on display now.) There are many touches that may be part of folklore or may be comments of some sort. Many of the devils seem to be smoking, drinking, or playing the accordion. I don't really know why accordions are considered diabolical. Maybe it is like harps are angelic. Or maybe the artists just have it in for accordionists.
Many of the pieces are too good really to explain. A facial expression will be just too delicate to describe fully. There was a nice grinning devil head very reminiscent of 1960s book covers. One figure I particularly liked showed a devil on a man's back. The man's face showed agony and terror. The devil seemed to be in ecstasy. This is one fun museum.
Of course, there were a few uninteresting pieces. It's hard to get excited about a mass-produced statue of a devil from the United States that says on the base, 'Good girls go to heaven, but bad girls go everywhere.'
By this point we were well and truly exhausted. Mark suggested we might be getting too old for vacations. No, but we might be getting too old for this sort of vacation, which can best be described as 'nonstop.' Well, that's not quite true--there are two 'slack days' built in, one presumably in Riga, and one in Helsinki. In the Southwest two years ago we did 4300 miles by car in three weeks. Last year in India it was nine cities in three-and-a-half weeks. This time it's six cities, which sounds like a slower pace but doesn't feel that way.
In any case, we decided to skip the funicular and return to Vilnius for dinner (there is reputedly no good place to eat in Kaunas) and a collapse. So we headed back to the bus station. At the station a boy was selling what looked like cream-filled flutes of ice-cream-cone material for only 40 cento (about US$0.10). Mark bought one and the little scoundrel tried to convince him that he hadn't given him enough money. Mark had given him four 10-cento pieces. We showed him that was the price he had posted. He knew that, of course, but business is business. It turned out there was a dab of cream at each end and the cylinder was hollow. You'd think we'd be more cautious after our last trip.
The trip back was pretty uneventful except for a tire blowout with a loud bang. Luckily we had plenty of time so we just waited as the driver changed the tire. This did not seem like the driver we had on the way and we sort of liked him.
On the way back Mark noted an ad for Uncle Ben's Spicy Stir-Fry Sauce. Yes, it looks like the same Uncle Ben, but rather than sticking to apostate rice, here he has kicked up his heels and branched out. He has a regular and a spicy stir-fry sauce. Mark says he always thought there must be more imagination behind the bucolic face.
You do see a lot of American brands doing unexpected things here. Mars is a really popular brand of candy bar which you buy either room temperature or frozen. Mark thinks there is also a line of Mars ice cream.
Dinner was pizza. There really is a pizzeria here, Picerija Vidudienas. Evelyn had a herring and mushroom pizza; Mark had a vegetable pizza. (For those of you going 'Yug!' is a herring pizza much different from an anchovy pizza? We realize 75% of you will still go 'Yug!' but we figure we've achieved a 25% gain.) Mark observes, 'The pizza actually may be better than you might expect from Lithuania. It might have even been good for Latvia. Now Estonia is another matter. And by the time you include in northeast Poland I would assume you would find the pizza quickly out-classed.'
Nor would this culinary delight stand on its own in the United States. *Anywhere*. It was kind of juicy and bland. But not half-bad for Lithuania, and 19 Lt (US$4.75) (including three sodas). That's okay. Mark bets you would be hard-pressed to find a decent cepelinas in the United States.
Mark wrote for a while before bed; Evelyn sacked out at 21:00. Mark stayed up to 23:00, then surprised himself by sleeping until 7:30.
May 9, 1994: Breakfast was two kinds of hard sausage again (picture salami and pepperoni, only a little more ragged), bread, and something like jelly but in the shape of a tin. Right after putting out breakfast, the mother and daughter both left for the day, so when we were done we put the perishables in the refrigerator and the dishes by the sink. The daughter goes to school and the mother works, so we have the run of the hallway, making it a little more convenient to shower and use the bathroom. We washed out a couple of things and hung them on the clothesline on the balcony outside out window to dry.
We probably should tell you a little about our living quarters. Our hosts appear to be a mother and daughter who live alone in an apartment with a kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms, not to mention water closet and a bathroom (literally--no toilet because that's in the water closet). They give us their living room which has a couch that folds down into a bed (more like a twin bed than a double). The rooms with plumbing are not in great shape. There is no hot water in the sink. There is an electric water heater that heats water as it comes through, but it is not really powerful. You can have a hot trickle, a warm spray, or a cool shower. There is no good place to put things down by the sink. The sink is also loose from the wall. Several tiles have fallen off the wall and are covered with magazine pictures of women.
The water closet is even tinier, so that if you stand up without being careful you bang your nose on the wall. The toilet is not in very good condition and is designed mostly to use very little water. As Mark writes, 'How can I put this tactfully? You do most of your flying over dry land. Only in the final moments of your flight do things end up where you want them. The toilet paper is standard Soviet-bloc issue-- stretchy crepe paper. It has an annoying tendency to tear in the wrong place at the wrong time. It can also be abrasive. I hate the toilet and the toilet paper, but alternatives are limited.' Also, the fact that you have to go to another room to wash your hands makes the whole operation more complex.
Well, this morning we decided we should deliver the books to Professor Shubas. Mark put a strap on the box so he could carry it on my shoulder. We already had seen where the library was, so it was easy enough to find. The door was locked. Well, maybe there is a way to get to it from inside the main University building. Yes, that worked. There was a woman behind the desk, one who spoke no English. We showed her a copy of the invoice with 'Professor Meyer Shub' on it. (Clearly part of the confusion was that Mejeris Shubas used an Anglicized version of his name when he wrote to the United States, but we didn't realize this until later. The other half of the problem was that he was with the History Department, not the library, but again, this is in hindsight.) The woman pointed to the hallway we had just come from. Oh, great--now what? Well, there was an office that said 'Direktor.' Great. Go to the top. The director was talking to what looked like a tall, clean-cut graduate student in a tie. We asked for Shubas. The graduate student offered to take us. We went with him back to the library. 'This looks familiar,' Mark told Evelyn. The librarian threw us out a second time. The student took us to a second office. There were several people there and in the back room a thin man in his fifties who greeted us with 'Shalom!' Great! We'd found Shubas. He spoke no English, but it became clear he wasn't Shubas, since he got on the phone to try to call Shubas. 'Shalom,' he said into the phone. The first number gave him a second number to call. He called the second number. Again, he said, 'Shalom!' and again lapsed into Lithuanian. It was clear this was a wrong number. Evelyn showed him the number we last tried on Friday. 'Shalom!' he said. More Lithuanian. We don't know much Lithuanian, but we do know 'does not understand' since our phrase book includes a phrase saying 'I don't understand.' Mark thinks he told the room it had been a wrong number, since when he got off the phone he said something that is like the phrase for 'I don't understand,' probably quoting the bewildered callee at the other end. He wasn't having any better luck than we did a couple of days ago--and he spoke Lithuanian!
Finally he gave up and took us over to Shubas's office. The door was locked and had a mezzuzah. The man pointed it out to us. However, somebody said Shubas would arrive in about a half an hour.
'Will the books be safe here?'
'No.'
Great, we can sightsee carrying twenty pounds of books on a strap.
We sat down to write in our logs. Finally Shubas arrived, a small white-haired man in his seventies but still very spry. He did not expect us and at first we think was not sure who we were. Mark just sort of walked in, dropping off the heavy box on his table, and Evelyn showed him the packing slip. As soon as he understood, he seemed very happy to get the books and to talk to us, saying how much he had to thank his good friend Aaron Lansky (president of the National Yiddish Book Center). (By the way, the address of the National Yiddish Book Center is 48 Woodbridge Street, South Hadley MA 01075, and they would greatly appreciate any donations of books or money. You might mention where you heard about them if you contact them.) As Mark said, 'These writings were unavailable to him for so many years ... |
