Lithuania Day 3: Walking Kaunas
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.
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.