'Vilna's crooked streets, with their worn cobblestones and their picturesque arches, were the ubiquitous landmarks of the city's distant past. Bust just as enduring as any architectural relic was the abiding presence in Vilna of Jewish history, a history of faith and learning and matters of the spirit. Vilna was the city of that powerful eighteenthcentury Talmudic mind, Vilna Gaon; it was the stronghold of rabbinic Judaism, the fortress that withstood the assault of Hasidim. Modern Hebrew literature had originated in Vilna and Yiddish literature thrived there. In Vilna the Zionist movement experienced its first stirrings and there too the Jewish labor movement and the Jewish Socialist Bund had their origins. In Vilna, even as late as 1938, one could still witness the powerful and passionate conflict between tradition and modernity in the Jewish community. In Vilna I lived at the heart of the Jewish community.' --Lucy Dawidowicz, WHAT IS THE USE OF JEWISH HISTORY? (page 25)
From Evelyn's log: 'Yaakov Smirnoff says that a person can move to France and live there twenty years and still not be French, but if a person moves to the United States, as soon as they step off the plane they are Americans--perhaps not United States citizens, but still 'Americans.' And our language reflects this. In Bosnia, there are 'Bosnian Serbs' and 'Bosnian Muslims'--Serbs and Muslims primarily, Bosnian only as a secondary characteristic. Here there are 'ChineseAmericans' and 'Polish-Americans'--Americans primarily; Chinese, Polish, etc., secondarily. True, this has not always held firm--the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II is an example of a time we set this aside.'
'But on the whole it is true, and yet as Americans we have so little of our own history. It is said that America is a place is a place where a hundred miles is a short distance and a hundred years is a long time. (Mark adds, 'And two languages is a lot of languages.') So when we travel, it is almost inevitably to someplace with a longer history. And we try to find places with a distinct culture, not part of the Euro-American-Japanese post-modern soup.'
'That I rejoice in living in the 'soup' yet seek out places which are not makes me wonder at times if I'm not viewing these places as a sort of museum, or giant EPCOT exhibit. I hope not--I think what I am searching for is a global culture that can retain its individuality in subcultures without restricting or restraining people. Whether this is possible is more than I can answer.'
May 5, 1994: Mark notes, 'It is 4:30 the night before another trip. It is just barely over six months since our last trip. I am coming to the end of the pre-trip all-night vigil. Readers of previous logs will know that I consider the most valuable resource to take for a long international flight is a good stock of fatigue and exhaustion. That way I sleep through much of the flight and totally confuse my internal clock. It then looks to the position of the sun for guidance. It is my way of almost entirely avoiding jet lag.'
'The effect it has on me is somehow surprising. The next day I feel wide awake, particularly if I keep moving. If I sit at my terminal I still feel fine, but if I close my eyes for five seconds I feel myself dozing off. Then I will have a moment of drowsiness and I will realize that I've typed two lines of M's without realizing it,' he concludes.
At least this trip there were no really negative omens like the last time when we discovered a mouse in the house the night before the trip. Concern over damage lasted the whole trip through India. As far as we know there is no little creature messing up our house. Mark spent the last night doing work on the computer (to make up for leaving work early the next day). He saw three films: FINAL MISSION, THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT, and CANDYMAN. The only one he can recommend at all is THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT. He also did some reading. Evelyn, in keeping with other advice on how to avoid jet lag, got a good night's sleep.
We got a ride to work from Virginia Savitsky, a friend from work who also travels.
Work was fairly uneventful. Mark says, 'My supervisor had not given me any real work for a week or so. That is not uncommon. The vast majority of what I do does not come through him; it is from reports of problems or requests or just me doing what I think needs doing. I actually did a fair amount of running around to help customers. You know how it is: some people's computers just have off days.'
Discussion at lunch was about Michael Fay, who was sentenced to caning in Singapore. Apparently today was the day of the caning as punishment for vandalizing cars with spray paint. There was little sympathy for Fay. Particularly since we've been there and seeing the warnings all around of fines, we figure the man had to be really a couple of bulbs short of a full marquee. Mark says this is just a case of evolution in action.
Came 15:00, went Leepers. (Note: in the interests of globalization, times will be expressed using a 24-hour clock. We will also try to give distances in kilometers, etc.) Our friend Jo Paltin drove us to the airport. We are flying SAS. That stands for Sacrifice All Schedules. First we got into the queue for the ticket check. It seems that their computer was just having an off day. Mark estimates we were in that line not moving for twenty minutes before they started doing things manually. Then we went to the gate where we were in line a good forty-five minutes to get our boarding passes. A sort of beefy guy was behind us in line, his arm around what Mark seems to remember as being a bleached blonde. He was telling us about lines he had been in and bad service he had gotten in the past. A plane to Cancun was four hours late, so he said he would not go there again. Besides, you cannot leave when you want. Planes out go only a few times a week. We told him about a plane we'd taken to Lima that was nineteen hours late. He also told us how he'd been to New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman's Inaugural Ball. He'd waited seventy-five minutes in line and the food was terrible. He'd never do that again either. As we got up to the desk at last, he gave Mark his card. He said if we ever need anything collected we should contact him. 'If we don't get it, we don't charge you!' Mark wanted to be polite so he told him if we needed something collected we'd call him. We'll tell him no rough stuff, though. Unless it's absolutely necessary.
Well, eventually we boarded the plane for a 18:05 take-off. We actually took off about 19:40.
Not much eventful to say about the flight. In keeping with Scandinavian cuisine, the snack was Japanese rice crackers. (Did you know that the Swedish word for seaweed is 'tang'?) The meal, which came about 21:00 New York time, was served with French wine and started promisingly with a calimari salad. (One of the passengers asked the purser what was in the salad. 'Squid.' 'I ate squid?!' 'Squid.' As it happens we are something of fans of squid. American airline companies would never serve anything as adventurous as squid, of course.) The main course was over-cooked vegetables with under-curried chicken. There was a very nice crispy roll. Dessert was apple tart with too much whipped cream and not enough apple. There was a one-inch diameter disk of Bel Paese cheese.
May 6, 1994: Mark was awake long enough to write down what he had eaten, but the combination of digesting his meal and his own sleepdeprivation came flooding over him and he slept very soundly for six and a half hours. (Evelyn woke him when a light breakfast of cheese, rolls, and fruit was served.) Evelyn slept an hour of the time. Of course, she didn't bring much exhaustion with her.
The flight magazine had a story which answered some questions Mark has had, namely, how does Robert Duvall give such a good performance? People who know claimed he got the accent wrong for TENDER MERCIES. Right area, but he was one county off. That's pretty accurate. He apparently immersed himself in the Texas country music business, even singing with a band. Then he drove over the state recording locals reading parts of the script. He mimicked them with a very good ear until that was the way he talked. Evelyn does not feel so strongly about Duvall, but Mark considers him to be the best American actor.
From the reading, the Baltics look to have folklore and customs that are a link between those of Scandinavia and those of Russia. The folk costumes look a lot like you used to see in Soviet fantasy films: lots of bright red. These countries have been victims and ideological battlefields of invaders from the West for centuries. Poland has long had designs on Lithuania. Sweden has wanted and occasionally gotten Estonia and Latvia. Russia and the Soviets grabbed all of the Baltics, and of course Germany grabbed it in trying to grab all of Europe. Of course independence is welcomed.
Lithuanians are aggressively hospitable and anxious to bring visitors into their homes to sample home produce and meet family and pets. Estonians are more stand-offish, and Latvians are somewhere in between. At least that's what the books claim.
After an hour's wait in Copenhagen, we boarded the place for the final hour's leg into Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Lunch had more of an ethnic feel, with an open-face ham sandwich with a strip of what seemed to be gelled meat gravy, but firmly gelled, like Jell-O. Also there was an open-faced shrimp salad. For dessert there was chocolatecovered marzipan.
Finally we started descending outside of Vilnius. Mark says he wishes he'd had his camera out to get a picture of the crackerbox little cottages we flew near. On the other hand, we would see more cottages during our trip.
It was kind of a dismal day in Vilnius. Luck of Leeper dictates that we left New Jersey just as the recent dismal weather was getting nice and Vilnius is overcast.
We had a particularly bumpy landing. Generally Mark doesn't mind these, but Evelyn had not been feeling very well, probably from lack of sleep.
We got off the plane and there was a shuttle there to take us to the terminal. At first it looked as if the terminal was only a few feet/meters from the plane anyway. Actually, it turned out to be an entrance not a whole lot further. Maybe the bus took us four hundred feet (a hundred meters).
Immigration was very fast--someone took a quick look at our visas and stamped them. We then claimed our luggage. Mark had checked his and it came extremely dusty but otherwise fine. The other thing we'd checked was a box of twenty pounds of books from the National Yiddish Book Center. We are acting as couriers, taking the books to Mejeris Shubas at the Vilnius University.
Customs was merely getting in a line called 'Nothing To Declare' and walking out. There were crowds waiting for arriving, a good third of whom were holding flowers. Flowers seem to be a very popular thing. You see many people carrying flowers. The other thing you see is a lot of bananas. More than candy or ice cream people eat bananas, people sell bananas on the street, and you see banana peels in just about every public wastebasket. We don't know if this is banana season or if it is year-round, but it is the particular local fun food.
There is a bank right there and we exchanged US$300 for 1188 litu. (By the way, for those getting the printed version of this, that little tail under the 'u' is an ogonek. Mark points out that an ogonek is a European diacritical mark, not to be confused with Ogadai, whose dying was a critical European mark.) The national unit of currency is the litas, which is very close to US$0.25 right now. (There was a 1% commission. It turned out that places in town had lower commissions, and also that US$300 was far too much for six and a half days--though if we had paid cash for our bed and breakfast it would have been about right.)
A taxi driver asked if we were looking for a ride and we said no. He walked away. |
