Scarlett Letters

skidspoppe and I were up and out early on Saturday morning. We'd rented a car to head west northwest to the coast, specifically to the Curonian Spit, and wanted to get an early start. We were going to meet his friend Lina, to whom we were giving a lift back to her hometown for the weekend, so with high spirits, we were off to Rotuses Aikste (the main town square) where the rental car was parked . . . except that when we got there the car wouldn't start. So while Skids called the rental car company for a jumpstart, I photographed the town hall (called by locals alternately the White Swan or the Wedding Cake, partly because of its beautiful white facade and tall, tiered tower in the front, and partly because it's wedding central each weekend), and the cathedral and then went to meet Lina at our designated rendezvous point, Kaunas Castle, to give her the scoop and bring her back to the car.

Kaunas Castle
Kaunas Castle sits a block or two off the main square on the banks of the Nemunas River. It's another recently reconstructed cylindrical tower topped by a conical roof and surrounded by remnants of walls of other buildings. I like what they do here with their castles: the original ruins of walls remain in their original materials: rough pale stones piled and cemented, and then the reconstructed walls are made of red brick. This way you can see what's original and what's reconstructed, and still see the whole building looking more-or-less as it did originally. Lithuanian castles seem to me to be smaller than castles in other parts of Europe (though I could be wrong about this). They are compact, but based on maps I saw at other sites, they appear to have been more closely located to each other. I met Lina at the bridge that crosses the former moat, we poked around a little bit, and then headed back to the car where Skids sat with the motor running, ready to take off.

The Ninth Fort
As we exited the city, Skids pointed out a gigantic sculpture off to one side of the freeway. It was massive. "That's the Ninth Fort," he said. "What's that?" I asked, and he turned the car around so we could go back to see. The Ninth Fort, as it turned out, is a memorial and museum, the remains of a Nazi deportation center and concentration camp where Jews were murdered. Later, it's where the Soviets perpetrated atrocities against Lithuanians. Besides the museum (which wasn't open so early in the morning, which means I have some reading and research to do to learn more about this place), you can see the remnants of prison buildings, a wall against which Lithuanians and Jews were shot and killed, and the gigantic three-part memorial sculpture erected in 1984, a towering wall of grim faces and fists raised in resistance. The sculpture is like many of the things I saw in Paris: so big it's hard to convey without being there. With the dramatic sky full of gray storm clouds marching along above us and the wind blowing around us, it was an impressive site. A quiet sense of reverence and firm resolve pervades the place, and we stood there, Lina and I, while Skids waited in the car, just absorbing it all.

As we walked back to the car, she told me about how her grandparents and family had been sent to Siberia by the Soviets. Apparently, they'd owned too much land. They were there about four years and her grandfather had been changed--not for the better--by the experience. Skids had told me earlier in my visit that everyone he knew here had a story like that; this was the first time I'd heard such a story firsthand and it was sobering.

When we were done we headed back to the car. About halfway back I discovered that I'd lost my camera cover. Not the lens cap, but the foam cover that protects my camera. We looked for it, to no avail. Either I'd lost it before we left Kaunas or it had blown away somewhere at the fort. (The wind was impressive that morning, heralding the torrential rain we'd fight through for the rest of the day.) At any rate, it was gone, and I chose not to get upset about it. Such things can be replaced; we had a three-hour drive ahead of us and I didn't want to delay the expedition.

On the road in Lithuania
I've mentioned before that Lithuania reminds me of the Pacific Northwest. This road trip confirmed that impression. With all the rain that the country gets, it's a lush and green place, though it's not at all mountainous. The land rolls gently on, geometrically patterned farmland stretching to either low hills or lines of trees. Houses are small; barns are correspondingly sized. Cows are invariably black and white. Freeways, I decided, are more-or-less the same everywhere: a lot of road and a lot of nothing between departure and destination points--except that this nothing was picturesque and familiar somehow, and I enjoyed the vistas for both of those characteristics. Lina was entertained by my interest; when it's something you've seen time and again, its novelty wears off. Here and there she pointed out items of interest.

We stopped in Rietavas, a town near to where she lives, to see its beautiful church, and then headed to Plunge (say "ploong-eh") where her family lives. Her comment about it was that a lot of Jews used to live there. This is true everywhere in Lithuania, and her observation was rather wistful. The town was small, with older and newer parts, the newer parts better kept and more modern. I was sorry she had to leave us; I found her company quite pleasant.

Skids and I hit the road again, driving to Kleipeda. We passed, weirdly, a deer farm along the way. Why a farm specifically for deer? I have no idea.

Kleipeda
Kleipeda itself is a small city that can barely be called a city except that it's not a town. The highlights I saw on the way to the ferry dock were a mall (Akropolis) and things that looked like small, rundown corporate parks. The dock was definitely part of a working industrial port, and the ferry itself nothing like what I expected. Coming from New York and Seattle, when I think of a drive-on ferry, I think of a big, cruise-line sized thing that you can park in and wander around on. The ferry we boarded was an open-air working boat, and we were packed like sardines on the deck. The ride was only 4 minutes across the strait that connects the Curonian Lagoon to the Baltic Sea--and then we were on the spit.

The Curonian Spit
The Curonian Spit is a long, thin ribbon of land that starts in Kaliningrad, Russia, and stretches to a spot just short of connecting to Lithuania (hence the need for the ferry ride.) It separates the Baltic Sea from the Curonian Lagoon and is, for most of its length, a forested semi-wilderness. At the very tip, at Nida, you can actually see Russia, the Baltic Sea, and the Curonian Spit depending upon where you stand. We drove all the way out to the tip and, in the pouring-down rain, got out to take in this view for ourselves as our umbrellas were deformed by the hard-blowing wind. There's a large sundial there that I would have enjoyed seeing in the sunshine; alas, it was not to be. We took in the view just long enough to get seriously wet and windblown, and then got back into the car to drive slowly back. We had lunch, enjoyed the passing forest as we drove, and then we went to what Skids described as "a thin place," where the walls between the worlds are permeable and anyone can come and go.

Witch's Hill
In Lithuanian folklore witches can be either good or bad much like, you know, people. Witch's Hill in Juodkrante is a sculpture park in a forested setting featuring wonderful wood carvings illustrating stories out of Lithuanian folklore. In the torrential downpour, we had the place pretty much to ourselves so it was us, our umbrellas, and my camera tromping the trail and viewing the carvings. Skids has led student tours there, so he became my private tour guide, sharing stories as we came to sculpture after sculpture. I learned about Egle the Queen of Serpents, Perkunas the thunder god, and lots of stories about people trapped or tricked by gods and witches. The carvings were marvelous, full of life and wonder, and the stories were inspiring. There's one in particular that I want to investigate more fully as the possible basis for a short story--or maybe something more ambitions. Skids later gifted me with the book from which he learned all this folklore. I am awed by this generosity, and truly grateful. We spent a wonderful chunk of time wandering the paths of Witch's Hill and when we were finally done--and soaked to the skin--we retreated to the car.

We departed the spit quite well satisfied with our excursion. With the rain pouring down and us feeling like drowned cats, we weren't feeling like more adventures in the rain, but we still had some daylight. Jaq knew about a walking sculpture tour in Kleipeda, so what he did was drive us through the tiny alleys of the city to show me some of the sculptures we might otherwise see on foot, which ended up being both entertaining and a test of his driving skills. We saw a cat and mouse, dragon, a chimney sweep, a pot of coins.

After that the only question was--what to do next? Our original plan had been to drive to Druskininkai in the southern part of the country, spend the night there, visit Gruto Parkas, and then head back to Kaunas. But what ended up happening was that the GPS unit pointed us back toward Kaunas to get to Druskininkai. Rather than spending money on a hotel, we decided that heading home was the better part of valor, less expensive and more sensible, so Skids drove us back in the driving rain. We listened to a Doctor Who audio book on the road, arrived in Kaunas, and just passed out.

Other trivia
In this region, some of the fishing boats and later, houses, have these elaborately decorated and beautifully detailed weather vanes. These vanes are traditionally used not just to tell which way the wind is blowing, but to indicate what family lives beneath it, what business they're in, and so on.

We reserved Friday for a sort of overview tour of Kaunas, where skidspoppe lives. Our first order of business, after taking some time at Coffee Inn to do a little blogging (well, I did; Skids had work to do) was to find a post office though, because Elizabeth and I had been unable to make a postal connection in Paris. Yes, that means that what postcards I managed to write in Paris will sport Lithuanian postage and postmarks. Kind of crazy, but it's part of the fun of travel.

Skids' friend Ausrine (say "Awshrinya" -- it's the name of a goddess out of Lithuanian folklore--very pretty) met us for lunch. When we were done, we started our walking tour--in the pouring-down rain. Our first stop was St. Michael the Archangel Church, a domed, neo-Byzantine church that I saw in the distance quite a few times before we actually got there. It's a beautiful building, reminiscent of the Taj Mahal (see the pic at the Wikipedia link) but not very well maintained--it desperately needs to be repainted--and we couldn't go inside to see what it looked like. Next to the building was a small statue commemorating Jews lost in the Holocaust.

Amusement park
In an earlier post, I talked about how, with its rain, Kaunas is like Seattle. Some parts of the city also resemble Seattle in their hilliness. Some of the hills here could give Seattle a run for its money. I was about to learn about this similarity firsthand.

We walked up a hill and several flights of stone steps to Vytautus Parkas, a lovely, green park in the heart of which was a small Soviet-era amusement park still in use today. All of the rides had seen better days; at least two of them were a parent's tetanus nightmare with rust and sharp edges everywhere. The rain began to let up at that point. The place was ripe for photography, so Skids and Ausrine settled in on the merry-go-round, she on one of the giraffes, while I went and took pictures of the raindrop-glittering rides with their old wooden footboards and less-than-reassuring safety rails. I look forward to sharing some of what I discovered there.

The White Church
We walked past the enormous civic library with its bulky, sweet sculpture of owls lined up on a massive branch, following a map of what Skids referred to as the Chocolate Tour. I thought he meant we;d be stopping at chocolatiers as we strolled. What he actually meant was a tour that would take us to locations where there were ceramic tiles that looked like chocolate bars in the sidewalk. If you collect pictures of all five bars and take them as proof to a local business, you get a chocolate reward. The first one we found was in a park near a sculpture. (There's a lot of civic art here, all of it in a sort of blocky, Soviet style--interesting and distinctive.) The tile was on the way to what Skids called The White Church but whose official name is Christ's Resurrection Basilica. Located on the highest hill in Kaunas, it is striking with its tall white tower. We'd hoped to go to the top for a view of the whole city, but the elevator was broken. We had the option to climb the stairs to the top, but I was just thrashed with all the hill-climbing and declined to make the ascent. Instead, we sat in the clean, modern 1930s-style sanctuary with its minimalist decor and tall, slim windows, and watched as the sky cleared and puffy white clouds floated by in a crisp blue sky. It's a dramatic effect, seeing nothing but sky from the sanctuary.

We took the funicular down the hill, kind of a backwards choice. It was a beautiful vehicle though, with dark-wood paneling and seats, and then strolled a few blocks to our next stop.

The Devils Museum
The Devils Museum is a collection of sculptures of devils accumulated by a well-known Lithuanian landscape artist. On its three floors, we saw sculptures, paintings, and masks portraying devils, their habits, and their interactions with humans. In Lithuania, the devil isn't a figure of evil but, rather, a sort of trickster character, and each sculpture showed him at mischief in one way or another. Sometimes he resembled a Western-style conception of the devil, but often he is shown in various guises, as a sprite or gnome or dancing figure taunting and vexing his human targets. The descriptions in Lithuanian and English tell folktales about the devil, sometimes well-translated, sometimes not, sometimes more-or-less coherent, sometimes not. Overall, it's a charming place, and I was entertained and intrigued.

At that point, I was also exhausted. I just hit the wall and asked if we could adjourn to the apartment for a bit. We did, and I quietly sat and surfed the web for a bit. We had dinner out at a student hang-out called Yzy Bar, where we indulged in burgers and ice cream, then headed out for the last event of the day.

The Shamrock
Skids had set up a get-together with some of his close circle of friends at a local bar. Most of them were former students, very smart people interested in movies and pop culture. In the group were Ausrina, Benita, one of the students with whom we'd gone out my first night in town, an engaging bass guitarist; Ruta, an attractive young woman with editorial aspirations and major science fiction geekitude, and her boyfriend Jorus; Andruis, a blond cherub-faced guy with a twinkle of mischief about him and a love of movies; Lina (say "linna"), one of Skids' closest friends; and a couple of others. We had a great time.

By 10:30ish, I was done, baked to a crisp and it was time to retire. Sleep was key, because saturday we'd be launching ourselves for a road trip across the country.

On the road again
Wednesday was a travel day. Bags packed, Elizabeth and I left the apartment early in the day to get to the airport. I had a flight out at 8 AM going to Vilnius, Lithuania with a connection Frankfurt; hers to Seattle was later, but it was easier on us both to travel to the airport together.

My flights and connection were pleasant and uneventful. It gave me plenty of time to reflect on the trip a bit, about how my great grandfather left Vilnius more than 100 years ago to find a new life, and here I am going back to at least get a taste of the place he forsook. I also thought about the enormous privilege I'm enjoying: an American woman of some means hip-hopping across Europe on vacation. I'm very much aware, especially in current economic conditions, of what a special thing it is I'm able to do because of my nationality, my income, my position in the world. As I sat in Frankfurt Airport, I also found myself considering the fact that I was surrounded by people who speak other languages more fluently than they do English, whereas I speak native English and a smattering of French. I was truly aware that, in this situation, I'm the foreigner.

Wheels down in Lithuania
I arrived in Lithuania at 1:55 PM and found my way from the airport to the train station. I had to stop to get Lithuanian money because Lithuania, while it is a member of the EU, is not a member of the Eurozone. At the cash machine I withdrew some litae, glanced at it quickly (I still haven't really had time to study it and see what I'm handling), and headed out. I had to take a train from Vilnius to Kaunas, where skidspoppe lives. I caught the 2:45 departure, an old Soviet train, blocky and basic with big windows and hard, vinyl-covered benches. It was, as Skids described it, the slow train. In the end, it was the right train because it meant I got to see a lot of territory at a leisurely pace, and what I saw was lovely.

I was surprised by how lush the landscape is. Once you leave Vilnius, the landscape turns rural almost immediately. Autumn has arrived. While most of the trees surrounding the lakes that dot the shallow valleys are still green, there are patches of red and gold that would satisfy the most dedicated leaf-peeper and make it all look a little like a painting. The farms we pass look like something out of a storybook, each with one strategically placed black-and-white cow lounging in a pasture, the picture of pastoral serenity. The villages we pass include small, old houses that have clearly seen better days but, in the aggregate they too, look like illustrations out of children's books. The transitions from rural to industrial and from industrial to rural are immediate--not fleeting, but dramatic. By the time I arrived in Kaunas, I'd gotten an interesting overview of this southern central part of Lithuania.

Talking science fiction
A friend of Skids' met me at the train in the pouring-down rain (apparently "Lithuania" means "the place where it rains"), presented me with an umbrella, and then took me by bus to the university where he teaches; he had class, which is why he couldn't meet me. It's a class on film, and this session in particular focused on science fiction. He'd asked me if I had a particular favorite, because he screens a movie after each class for the students if they choose to stick around. I nominated "Forbidden Planet," which he acquired. He asked me to speak about the movie a little bit, so I introduced it and, after the film, got up to talk about it and its context in culture and in science fiction. After that, Skids, his friend, a couple of his students, and I went out for a late dinner and some chatter. When we finally got back to the apartment--in the pouring-down rain--we talked a little and then I just passed out.