Friday, August 2, 2024
Our flight was at 7.40 in the morning. Flights from Dublin to Vilnius are not frequent and you take what you can get. It’s quite far east I was surprised to discover (geography is so often a shock for me) and a three hour flight. It’s also two hours ahead of Dublin. A world of wonders. We did not travel light. For some reason I regarded the 20kg baggage allowance as a target rather than a ceiling. Herself was doing an internship in London so not with us for the beginning of our adventure. She would later have stern words to share about our poor packing skills.
The arrivals part of the airport in Vilnius is lovely though currently being extended. For their own reasons, the Soviets built it like a train station. I found it rather charming.
We got a taxi into town to our Airbnb. At the time I booked it, I thought herself would be with us but due to work obligations she was not. I wanted all the children to have separate bedrooms so we needed four bedrooms and if you have four bedrooms that’s usually enough for 8 people and so basically, we found ourselves staying in a flat that could have doubled as an oligarch’s lair.
Pricey but vast.
By this point the troops were getting hungry so we went to a revolting pizza place up the road for lunch. Then we had a stroll into town. Well, what a nice spot. I am here to tell you that Vilnius is delightful. Here is the last tower of the city walls left.
Here is a poor shot of the most touristy street in the city. I mean there were tourists – mostly Germans and Americans – but certainly not an overwhelming number.
The weather was absolutely perfect. Mid 20s and sunny. After our stroll around the old town, we hit the supermarket – always the glamour – and Daniel made dinner thereby adding several years to his exhausted parents’ life span.
Mr. Waffle, Daniel and I went out for a post dinner stroll and drink but Michael preferred to stay behind. We found the city hall square and had a drink.
We came home through what had been the Jewish ghetto. Vilnius had a huge Jewish population before World War II and it was a centre of Jewish learning. I think you know the depressing next steps.
More generally, we began to learn the extremely complicated history of this small part of the world (so much more to come). Lithuania was only christianised in the 14th century (the Teutonic knights are big here). The Germans are kind of the mercantile/upper classes in the Baltics and there are lots of German names, schools etc. Lithuania was previously part of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and also East Prussia. Also, the Lithuanian language? It’s an orphan only related to Latvian, and not very closely related at that. Are you all following at the back of the classroom?
When we came home we settled ourselves in front of the ludicrously large television and experienced the weirdness of watching our own Netflix account on TV abroad. Also, when you turn off the lights in an oligarch’s lair, small star-like lights twinkle in the ceiling. They do themselves well these oligarchs.
Saturday August 3
I love my husband and this is the only reason we remained married when he revealed to me that he had hired a car for pick up from the airport – early enough – on the morning after we arrived. I believe his thinking was that we could get ourselves settled and then take day trips out of the city. But, if so, why not the day we arrived? A mystery. Anyhow, in the interests of marital happiness, he agreed to get a taxi to the airport rather than explore Vilnius’s tram/trolleybus network as he had originally planned. We had some difficultly finding the car hire place when we got to the airport but we found it eventually and took possession of our car from a very young man.
Mercifully the airport is near the city and the traffic was very light so we drove back without difficulty while I pointed out to Mr. Waffle how bike friendly the city was. Naturally, our oligarch’s flat had come with underground parking. You had to drive into a lift. It took us an embarrassingly long time to work out how to do this and involved several calls to the patient Airbnb host and I would rather not list the ways in which we failed to get it to work. Suffice it to say that we were exhausted by the time we got back to the flat.
For lunch, we went to a Georgian Restaurant which Daniel picked. They are big eaters the Georgians but we all quite enjoyed the food offerings and I got to use my (almost non-existent) Russian with the waiter who spoke no English so thrills all round.
After lunch we went to the university which is central and lovely. These photos do not at all convey its attractiveness.
It has a viewing tower. I love a viewing tower.
The symbol of Lithuania is the Gediminas tower. It’s at the top of a hill and a caterpillar type yoke was parked half way up. Oddly impressive.
I honestly thought I was too exhausted to climb up this hill but, ladies and gentlemen, there is a funicular!
There was, inter alia, information in the tower about the human chain in the Baltics and lots of pictures from the time. This was when the people from the Baltics all held hands – which I remember from TV at the time (1989, children) – the chain started from the Gediminas tower and went to Tallinn and it was the beginning of the end for the Soviets in the Baltic countries although that wasn’t entirely clear at the time. It was funny looking at the pictures because I remember seeing them on the TV holding hands – it really grabbed everyone’s imagination. I also remember thinking, “Where are these strange countries I’ve never heard of before?” And also, “Why are their clothes so weird?” I would not have anticipated that in the future I would be there on a family holiday or that looking at the photos in 2024, I would find it impossible to distinguish their appalling 1980s clothes from those I wore myself at the time. It’s really hard to explain to the children how deeply unlikely the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to those of us who grew up in the 1980s and how alien and distant these countries were to us.
After a day of entirely worthy tourist activities we went back to the flat and saintly Mr. Waffle made dinner.
Sunday August 4, 2024
We went to mass in Lithuanian. Vilnius is a city of many many churches but we went to the cathedral for mass. Just as well we had the architecture to look at. An almost pointless duty to be honest. Not the faintest idea what it was about. My father always lamented the post-Vatican II disappearance of the Latin mass because he said that you could always understand mass wherever you were. “How true,” I thought.
Daniel came to mass with us. When he was in Sardinia with his friends, he suggested that they go to mass on Sunday because, “Isn’t that what you do on holiday?” The ongoing secularisation of Ireland appears to be coming as a surprise to him.
In what is clearly a local habit, people put money into the collection basket and then took out change. How peculiar.
The four of us went for a forgettable lunch in a Belgian restaurant but it was our first taste of local borscht. The beetroot is big locally. Fine but not amazing. Maybe you need to be brought up on it.
After lunch we went to the KGB museum which was on our street. Honestly, I found it traumatic and would not recommend. I did learn a lot about Soviet deportations and Lithuanian history under the Soviets more generally but the building is offices above and cells – almost dungeons – below. It leaked misery and grimness. No wonder the Baltics are so worried about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s only 40kms from Vilnius to Russia-friendly Belarus and Vilnius is as far from Minsk as Dublin is from Cork. They feel a chill.
Daniel took himself off to a basketball court. He was extremely impressed by the facilities. You access lockers via an app for kit (basketballs, table tennis bats etc.) and there were loads of different sports available. There were people from everywhere. He ended up chatting to a Ghanaian- Lithuanian basketball player based in England. He knew all about Gaelic games as his PE teacher in school was from Ireland. Honestly, the world is a lot smaller than when I was a child.
Saintly Mr. Waffle made dinner again and no one had, as yet, guessed my dastardly plan to avoid cooking at all while on holidays.
After dinner we walked to the “Gates of Dawn” – an entrance to the city. I knew it was an important tourist landmark as it featured on fridge magnets but I could take or leave it. The walk there and back was really lovely though.
We passed a kiosk and they had the weekend FT for €6.70 and no magazine. I dithered but I purchased. How great was my ire on getting home to discover that it was the previous weekend’s edition which I had already read? Pretty great.
Monday August 5, 2024
After breakfast out, myself and Daniel went to visit the chapel of St Casimir which the guide books had kind things to say about. In fairness, it was nice.
Out again for lunch which was fine but we made a key discovery (one which I had to make several times in the Baltics before being convinced) which is that focaccia in the Baltics is pizza base with nothing on it except maybe some oil. Learn from my tragedy.
We then packed up and left Vilnius to go to the coast. We stopped at Trakai castle just outside Vilnius. This is an island castle in a beautiful village with a fascinating history.
Tourism levels were pretty low and the locals have turned their fields into car parks. We ended up dealing with a Lithuanian granny in a field. She spoke no English, we spoke no Lithuanian and, yet again, my wholly inadequate Russian came in useful. I meant to tell her we were visiting the castle (literally the only thing to see in town). For reasons I will not bore you with (see editorial discretion is alive and well) I have learnt the phrase zamok vraga (written in Roman letters here, cut me some slack I don’t think this site supports cyrillic, it means the enemy’s castle – zamok is the castle and vraga is the enemy). In my excitement I mixed up the two words and told her we were visiting the enemy. Crazy foreigners huh?
The village is beautiful. The castle is beautiful – though largely reconstructed by the soviets – but it is, and I cannot emphasise this enough, very dull inside. It boasts collections of ivory, porcelain, pocket watches and glass. Be still my beating heart. For the others the highlight was waiting outside and seeing me go into the gents instead of the ladies. I mean it does remind me a bit of the Game of Thrones castle and I wasn’t the only tourist wandering around humming the theme tune but, overall, not worth it. But yet, if you came to Trakai what on earth else would you do? A mystery.
It took us a long 3 hours to get to Klaipeda on the coast. August is the time for roadworks in Lithuania, in case you were wondering. We got in quite late and after trying several establishments managed to persuade a slightly reluctant waitress to let us have dinner in a restaurant in the square which was a real mercy because it was 9.30 and tempers were a bit frayed.
We found it really difficult to book accommodation in Klaipeda and the little flat we found was central and despite an unlovely hallway, very appealing. But small was the word; it was two-roomed and tiny. And pretty warm despite the air conditioning (though some saboteur may have turned it off in the middle of the night and opened a window, so the fault may not entirely lie with the air conditioning).
More soon. Hold on to your hats etc.
