Playing in Lithuania

Alla and I came to Lithuania for a long weekend, starting with a day in Kaunas. Kaunas is the second-largest city in the country, and to be honest I booked it by mistake. I knew there was another place we wanted to see (Trakai) and I got all excited when I got an email about a special deal for a good hotel in Kaunas. Alla straightened me out long ago, but we decided to spend a day in Kaunas anyway just to see the city.

Our travel connections worked perfectly and we got there on the earliest-possible train so we had plenty of time to explore the old town. Our bargain hotel was closer to the train station than to the main tourist area, so we had an interesting walk. Our first impressions of Kaunas were fairly dismal, but the farther we walked the fancier things got. By the time we got to the center of the old town, we were in the midst of expensive designer stores, chic outdoor bistros and lots of brides. Friday, it turns out, is a big day for weddings and bridal parties strolled around the city looking great and posing for pictures. We did a pretty thorough job of covering the main tourist sites listed in our book, though we would have dropped in on a couple of museums if they opened earlier on Saturday. But since they wouldn't open until 11, we jumped onto an express bus and checked into our favorite hotel in Vilnius.

We know Vilnius pretty well, but we've only been here in the winter. It feels a lot different in the summer. Suddenly, for example, there are outdoor bistros everywhere. And the girls are even prettier than I realized. As always, we found plenty to do. There's a music festival going on, and we chose a Chinese choir giving a free concert in a church we like. We chose the choir because we saw them (or another Chinese choir) rehearsing in a Swiss church last year and they pretty much knocked our socks off. The group we saw in Vilnius, the Peiyang Chorus from Tianjin University surpassed even those high expectations. If you ever get a chance to hear them, you certainly should. After the concert, I went to thank some of the choir members and one of them gave me a brochure about the group. I asked if I could buy a CD and she took me off to see the choirmaster, who indeed had CDs but not for sale. They gave it to me as a gift.

On Sunday we took a tour to Trakai, the place I wanted to see when I booked a night in Kaunas. Trakai is an island with a big restored historic fortress. Our guide had lots to say, though we couldn't verify the accuracy of her spiel. As they say, history is written by the victors, and she presented strong Lithuanian pride. Her truth may have been polished a bit by that pride, but she certainly had no lack of things to say and she gave a very interesting tour. As usual for a tour, she skipped over some things we might have liked to see longer and I'd like to come back to Trakai under my own power some other time. There are some little hotels there, and I think it might be fun to spend a summer day swimming in the lake and seeing the castle fortress in more detail.

In between things, we discovered a couple of excellent parks in Vilnius. We've walked past Bernardine Park numerous times in the winter without really noticing it, but when we finally found it this weekend we spent lots of time there with great pleasure. We found the other park because I hadn't looked at a map recently enough to know that it would be overly ambitious to walk all the way to the television tower. Ultimately we got waylaid by Vinigio Park, which we'd thought about seeing but figured it was too far away to bother with. It's huge, and we walked all the way across it by the most direct road. Finally, at the far end, we asked a couple of locals how to get back to our hotel and they gave us a surprisingly-long ride back in their car.

I published a few more pictures from the weekend in this album:

2014-07 Lithuania

Vilnius, Day 1

We came back to Vilnius for Kazukas Fair. It's only about three hours by train from Minsk and we really like to visit here.

Since we've already been to a Kazukas Fair, we didn't feel any need to see a high percentage of the vendors' booths. We just like being in town with lots of other people for a cheerful event. We focused today on the university, since our self-guided tour last year left us with more questions than answers. This year Alla signed us up for an English-speaking tour. Pleasantly, a group of seven friends signed up to join us. Six of the friends live in Vilnius, and they brought along an American guest. They were very sympathetic people, we had a great guide, and everything clicked. The guide appreciated everybody's interest and curiosity so she added spaces not normally included in the tour, and we spent two and a half hours together seeing beautiful rooms and hearing fascinating stories about them. Our guide is a librarian, and she knows a lot about many things. Her tour already made the weekend a success.

We did lots of other fun stuff too, but I have to mention dinner. TripAdvisor recommended a new restaurant called Druskos Namai, and we went to try it out. It's in a part of town (technically, not even in Lithuania, but there's no border control) we hadn't visited before. They're following the local-foods movement and reinterpreting Lithuanian cuisine using traditional ingredients in very non-traditional recipes. The pureed caramalized-onion soup started us out right and everything flowed from that. We can hardly believe how deliciously we ate for a lot less than we'd spend for less-interesting food in Minsk or in Boston. Needless to say, we're going back for lunch tomorrow.

How big is "big?"

We went online to figure out if there were any events coming up in Vilnius since we wanted an excuse to return. We found an event called Kaziukus Fair, a 400-year-old market weekend. We were able to figure out that it's largely a craft fair, but we learned little more. This gave Alla all the reason she needed to choose this weekend for our trip, though I had a hard time imagining that the craft market could be any more impressive than the ones we have two or three times a summer in Minsk. I didn't hold high hopes for the fair, but figured that this would be as good a time as any to see some of the architectural sites we failed to see last time. Besides, I wanted to buy more peanut butter.

When we arrived at our hotel we discovered that the crafts fair stretched as far as we could see in either direction on the street in front of our door. Somewhat excited, we went out to see what the vendors had to offer. Indeed we found lots of handcrafts, and of course we bought three of the festive flower sticks everybody seems to want during Kaziukus Fair. We also ate a lot. Especially I ate a lot, because I came a little under-dressed and eating helped me stay warm. I started with a pig's knee on sauerkraut, washed down with acorn "coffee." I kept coming back for more of that acorn stuff. It's really good. Later I bought a huge plate of stew. The meat tasted like lamb, but I suspect it was pork. It came in a delicious sauce with LOTS of some sort of legume; beans I guess.

We also consumed a certain amount of sample foods from various vendors and a big slice of a flaky filo-type pastry around an amazing volume of poppy seed filling. While this all-day feast killed our desire to eat dinner at a fancy restaurant, it didn't quite warm me up. Alla took me in hand then, and we bought a nice warm Lithuanian-style wool sweater. You may remember that Alla had to buy herself a sweater last time. The Lithuanian wool merchants are probably happy that we like their capital. Come to think of it, they must like our capital too. (This only makes sense if you know English well. In case Google Translate can't make the joke work, the first time I meant столица and the second time I meant капитал.)

Anyway, the street-long fair we saw from our hotel included as much as half of the entire market, assuming that we have in fact even noticed it all. The line of booths curves around into old town and spills out onto quite a few other streets. When I imagined "Big," I had no idea just how big I should think. I should have tried to imagine "Enormous." In any event, it's possible that tomorrow we will get beyond the market fair. Well, we will certainly get to a supermarket. Whether I finally get to the top of castle hill is, however, in serious doubt.

For more photos, click here.

Vilnius, day 2

Yesterday we planned to go into museums because it was even colder than Friday. But the sun shone brightly and we couldn't miss it.

We started the day with an attempt to walk to a big shopping center called Akropolis because we heard they had a farmers' market on Saturdays. We layered on extra clothes and headed out, slightly overdressed. After walking for about twenty minutes we thought we saw our destination ahead but when we asked a passer-by he said that we had much farther to go and he strongly recommended that we get onto a bus. We took his advice, and discovered that indeed the Akropolis was nowhere near us. We didn't buy much at the farmers' market, but Alla continues to get a good laugh out of the brick of traditional bread I bought. It seems to weigh about as much as a newborn baby. We also found an enormous supermarket in the shopping center and we bought a couple of bags of groceries. We limited ourselves to stuff we couldn't buy at all in Belarus, though we were also tempted to load up on stuff that just costs less here.

If we saved any money by shopping in Vilnius, we spent it all getting home from the Akropolis anyway. We decided to take our load home in a taxi, and taxis aren't so cheap here as in Minsk. I don't think our driver took anything even close to the most direct route back either. It felt like a majestic S, which we converted to a dollar sign by imagining the straight line we would have liked to take top to bottom. $

We ended the day at Philharmony, where we heard Chopin's 2nd piano concerto, unknown to me but very familiar to Alla and Saint-Sains' 3rd symphony; unknown to Alla but very familiar to me. Everybody enjoyed both pieces thoroughly and the performers gave us encores after each. Vilnius has two symphony orchestras, which really impresses us. We tried first to get tickets to performances in a new hall but couldn't find any tickets left for sale. I'm really glad now, because I loved the show in the small and historic hall. The musicians were superb, as were the acoustics in the hall. I'd go back there any time.

Today we really do plan to stay indoors. We will go to church first, and stay for an organ concert in the church right after the service. Then we finally plan to get inside the National Gallery of Art. Or whatever it's really called.

Speaking of what things are called, there's a great drink here called rugpeinis. I was really afraid to pronounce it when I found it on the menu. Turns out it's pronounced about like I thought. The menu described it as curdled milk, and indeed it has a slightly globular texture. I like it, though I still cannot order it with an entirely straight face.

I get the peanut butter and the alcohol-free beer, Alla gets the wine and real beer, and we'll share everything else.

Intro to Vilnius

I got thirty minutes' free access to the internet in our hotel's business center so I'm writing about our extraordinary day yesterday. I'll go back once we get home and add some pictures.

As I explained in my last post, Alla launched us on a cold-weather excursion to Vilnius, Lithuania. Our expedition started out with a pleasant ride in a somewhat-chilly train car from Minsk. I was glad the train car heating system couldn't keep up with air leaks in the front of the car because I was wearing warm ski pants and a thick fleece jacket. Alla also dressed warmly, so we decided to walk from the train station to the hotel. I had already mapped out a route on Google Maps and knew some of the landmarks we could pass on the way. Not surprisingly, we didn't encounter a lot of other pedestrians. We ourselves enjoyed the privilege of being out on the beautiful streets of Vilnius and walking along a bike path without too much snow and ice under our feet.

The hotel we chose turned out to be a little simpler than we expected, but we like the location and the very attentive staff. We intended to make short commando raids on the town, retreating to our hotel when we needed to warm up. It turned out that we didn't need to return to the hotel except to set a few things down. As long as we kept moving, we felt warm enough. This is especially true for Alla, who bought a pretty and very warm wool sweater at an outdoor market. She amused both the vendor and me by disrobing enough in the bitter cold to try on unique and beautiful wool sweaters and dresses at her stand. I think Alla was actually warmer than the vendor and I, since she was quite active undressing and dressing at top speed.

Vilnius is filled with beautiful churches, a fantastic and very historic university, and many architectural treasures. We started off with a planned route but got lost when we exited the university by a different door than we entered. From that moment forward, we never quite knew where we were. We knew we hadn't left the old town area, however, and anticipated that we could find our way home on the map whenever we wanted. But we really didn't want to find our way home because we kept finding wonderful pastry shops, enticing restaurants, cozy bookstores, amazing crafts galleries and gorgeous buildings. We finally decided we really could not eat anything more when we left the last restaurant at about 8:00 after an early dinner. Intending to go home, we decided to meander down our favorite street one more time before settling into our room. Finally we did succed in getting home, but it took a lot longer than we expected because we kept finding more things to investigate and photograph.

Today we will start with a trip to an indoor farmers market at a big shopping mall. We expect that this will give us opportunities to buy stuff we can't get easily in Minsk. In particular, I plan to buy some peanut butter and Alla plans to find some unfamiliar kinds of cheese.

So far we haven't eaten any pigs' ears. We did see them on the menu yesterday, but the waiter recommended against them. Maybe later!