Vilnius

I wasn't in Lithuania long enough to really write very intelligently about it, nor even in the capital Vilnius to really do it justice. I had a three days' holiday there on our spring break, where I met up with Kathy Knapp of the University of Connecticut -- another Fulbrighter who is teaching at Vilnius University this term. We met at the Fulbright orientation meeting last summer in Washington, D.C., and made plans to meet some time. So here we are! That's St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in the background. What this photo does not capture is the hordes of European tourists everywhere. The Baltics are not on most North Americans' itineraries (yet), but Europeans sure have discovered them.

Vilnius is a lovely city built on hills so that there are lots of interesting vistas. Its Old Town is one of the largest in Europe and mostly beautifully restored. In particular, there are Baroque Catholic churches. Lithuania is a very Catholic country compared to Latvia and Estonia, and the churches apparently came into money in the Baroque period with the rise of the Grand Ducky of Lithuania, which ruled over a considerable chunk of central northern Europe. So most of the churches are dripping with statuary and fancy drippings, all designed to send you into celestial orbit. But my favorite was this little gem, St. Anne's, which has some Baroque features but never lost its essential Gothic vibe.

I mostly walked around the city, which is compact, dense, and very walkable. The fact that there is a cafe every ten meters helped, where you could get your morning, afternoon, and/or evening kava. Lithuanian is closely related to Latvian, but they are not mutually intelligible. So just when I felt I was getting the hang on one language, I had to deal with yet another one. Probably more people spoke English in Lithuania, though, which was helpful.

It is a museum city, as is fitting for a capital. It does have some rivalry, though, with Kaunas, about 90 kilometers to the west, which sees itself as the cultural capital and Lithuanian heart of the country. That said, the Lithuanian Picture Gallery is sort of the national gallery, and it seems to be housed in what was a house in the city's core. You feel as if you are wandering around someone's private space, someone with good taste and a lot of blank walls. The Museum of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was kind of a wash, on the other hand. It has lots of good stuff but not much in terms of explaining why the stuff is important. You start in the foundations of what was the castle, and the ruins are marked as, well, ruins. "Here is the rubble from when a wall fell in the fourteenth century." And sure enough, that's rubble in front of you. That sort of thing. Here is a pot. Here are a bunch of bombard balls from the sixteenth century (sort of a precursor to cannon balls). Yeah, yeah, but what's the story behind all this? I was glad that Kathy was with me for this museum. Cracking jokes about all this stuff made it quite fun.

The best part of Vilnius is Užupis, a little neighborhood tucked in the bend of the Vilna River. This is where the hipsters live, so much so that the neighborhood has adopted its own constitution which is posted on one of the street walls in 25 different languages. Among its provisions:

• Everybody has the right to be sad. 
• Everybody has the right to celebrate or not celebrate their birthday. 
• Every dog has the right to be a dog.
• A cat is not obligated to love its owner, but it must help out if help is needed. 

I could live under such a constitution. Here is Užupis's main crossroad, and just up this street is a terrific Italian restaurant where I had a little glass of the house wine and some excellent pasta. This is something that I have missed in Latvia. Though there is pizza galore, there is a dearth of real Italian cooking in Daugavpils. Someone should open a restaurant -- I'm just sayin'.