Lithuania are the lights on?

Nice bus trip down from Riga to Vilnius and stayed at the Alexa Hotel, just on the edge of the wall of the old city. Lovely old city part that merges into the main business area and across the river is the new CBD with glass towers. The town does not show the affluence of Riga or Tallinn and there are less furs seen here and a lot more empty buildings.

Lithuania was the first of the Baltic States to gets its freedom from the CCCP with a small but fatal protest getting the ball rolling. The country has a history of occupation with the Russians (good old Peter the Great), the Poles in the 19^th century, Russia 1920 to 1939, then Germany and then back to Russia. It is surprising that they have been able to keep any of their language and cultural ways that, if anything, appear stronger now, particularly as parts of the population were deported to gulags in Russia or workshops in Germany or just shot by Nazis and KGB. The once strong Jewish population is less than 5% of what it was prior to WWII.

Lithuania is now part of the EU, but has not adopted the Euro and uses Lits as its currency. They don’t like turning on lights  - not sure if they have an electricity problem or are still stuck in the old ways. Most shops are only half lit, even the hotel had two lights above the bed with bulbs but they are only there for decoration purposes.

 

We are starting to get into Catholic territory here so the churches are changing from Russian Orthodox to Roman Catholic and Lutheran. Visited the church museum at St Michael’s the Archangel church that had a vast collection of monstrance’s, bishops’ robes, chalices and other altar ware. The place was a church, but ended up being a collection point for all the surrounding churches that did not survive the Soviet period.  The altar ware dates from the 13^th century, containing lots of gold and intricate work. There was also a large collection of bishop and priest vestments that could be seen in great detail as they were not under glass but displayed in huge drawers that laid them out.

It must get cold here even the trees have woolen coats on them.

 

Visited the KGB museum, with a good exhibition on the history of Lithuanian freedom fighters from 1946 to 1954 against the Soviets. The basement was used both by the KGB and Nazi’s as a prison, confessional and execution site for thousands of Lithuanians. Like Phnom Penh it is hard to fathom the sheer numbers of people processed and life extinguished in these places. The KGB had so many bodies that they ran out of places to hide them. This does not include the thousands that were deported as whole families.

 

Just to cheer me up they also showed equipment used by the KGB on how they monitored foreigners and suspects including cameras installed in all hotel rooms occupied by foreigners and assigning agents to follow them.  Christine, we may have made the Soviet pin up league for the year we visited.  Not a nice thought!

We now head off to Warsaw Poland by train for a few days to have a look around there.