Vilnius

Our Vilnius arrival was a little more brusque than we were expecting – the Uber driver, and car, were a bit rough, the areas of Vilnius we drove through looked a bit dicey too and our hostel was more… Bohemian than we were expecting. It’s a campsite with a few rooms, really. We have a “bungalow” – a wooden tent with power, essentially, so it’s no frills, but comfortable beds. The eye masks are essential, once again! We put our name down for croissants in the morning (1.90 euros a pop), assembled sandwiches with the provisions Aurélie had bought before leaving Riga that we hadn’t eaten on the train, and cadged a corkscrew to open the “apology” bottle of red that Sigmar had given us. And so, to bed.

Next day, lovely weather and a nice run during which I discovered two things. 1 – do not run in the opposite direction to your planned Footpath route as it, and therefore you, gets confused. 2 – Vilnius is the hilliest place we’ve been to so far, much more so than Stockholm (everywhere else is flat as a pancake). This made me a bit concerned for our bike tour with the kids, but not to worry, it was a gently undulating route rather than the more severe inclines I’d accidentally added to my running plan.

Thomas of the Velotakas bike tour place led us (and a Swiss family too) around the city telling us A LOT about the history of Vilnius.

Let’s see what I remember:

• Lithuania has this grand history of being a Grand Duchy, and aligned with Poland for centuries. But they seem very chill with that being in the past, and there doesn’t seem to be a sense of superiority Vs Estonia or Latvia, which seems cool to me.
• Lithuania *really* resisted the Soviet Union. They formally “lost” to them in 1953 (after Soviet occupation in 1940, then Nazis in 1941, then Soviets again in 1944), but still had some partisans fighting until 1965! And they were the first country to declare independence from within Soviet Union after the Berlin Wall fell.
• Lithuania is very Catholic. Polish influence (Poland had been Catholic for the preceding 400 years!). It had a huge Jewish population too in Vilnius, but that was virtually wiped out by the Nazis.
• Lithuania aren’t that fussed/very good at soccer, but are proud of basketball. But they even lose at soccer to Estonia and Latvia! 🙂
• Vilnius is named after a river and there are 2 rivers through the centre of the city surrounded by parks, making the place very green. My run this morning virtually had a bit of a trail in there, yet I was in the city centre.
• There is an Artist Collective Community called Uzopis, which is really cool – self-driven and funded, with a formal (although not legal!) constitution repeated in 40+ languages.
• Uzopis came out of the change from the collective ownership of Soviet times – noone has owned their property, but once people had the chance to buy and invest, they could do much more interesting things!
• Lithuania has 2 flags. The yellow green red came from 1918 independence, but there’s also a red one with a knight representing the essence of Lithuania that came from 1991 independence. Confusingly, there’s also a red one with St Christopher on that represents Vilnius specifically.
• The old town is UNESCO protected, but the new town is packed with skyscrapers built in the last 10 years or so, mainly by Swedish and Danish investment.
• Lithuania lost a lot of population to EU in 2004, but in recent years have had an influx from Ukraine (women & children, mainly) and Belarus (entrepreneurs). Logistics is big business for Lithuania, so they keep the Belarus border open to facilitate trade from Europe to Belarus (and Russia?).
• Deportations to Siberia were widespread – a lady was at the shrine and explained to Thomas that she’d been deported at age 1(!) and it had been so hard, even when coming back, to find useful work. The shrine was built of stones brought back from where the people had been exiled.

So a lot there! It had been nearly a 3 hour trip which the girls had borne with barely a complaint, so after we refuelled with pizza, we headed to the park which was cool and had an excellent playground.

Returning to our campsite, we discovered it was hosting a jazz concert that evening. Great. We had a wee picnic and a drink while they got started and…well, there are some types of jazz I like. But this was one of the other ones.

The dogs in the campsite don’t seem keen either, which is a feast for all the senses. But fine, it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry, right? We could just stay in Radissons the entire trip and not have a single story from where we’ve stayed!