Seeing the Sights: Vilnius

 Since Vilnius is 8 hours away from Tartu, in order to get there in time to get anything done in a day, you have to leave early, which is how so many of our adventures begin. We got on the bus to Riga, and would have an hour and a half in the bus station before our bus to Vilnius. While we waited, some tried to sleep, but a few of us watched the cartoons playing overhead. There was a Russian cartoon about a girl and a panda, and there was even an episode of Pink Panther. 

     Long bus trips often make several stops to pick up people along the way, so when we were the only people on the bus to Vilnius, we sat in our assigned seats, assuming others would join us. Four hours later, when we arrived, we were still the only people on the bus. We could have spread out and not been so squished up next to each other trying to sleep, but whatever. All part of the adventure.

    We couldn't check into our hostel until 2pm, so we had time to kill. We walked around the city and saw what there was to see. We visited a park that had exercise-style play equipment.

One of the churches has a crown on top.
I was trying to wear it.

Photo by Anna

 We went to Užupis, an artist republic in Vilnius. They have a pretty amusing constitution, but not surprising for artists: 

1. Everyone has the right to live by the River Vilnelė, and the River Vilnelė has the right to flow by everyone.
2. Everyone has the right to hot water, heating in winter and a tiled roof.
3. Everyone has the right to die, but this is not an obligation.
4. Everyone has the right to make mistakes.
5. Everyone has the right to be unique.
6. Everyone has the right to love.
7. Everyone has the right not to be loved, but not necessarily.
8. Everyone has the right to be undistinguished and unknown.
9. Everyone has the right to idle.
10. Everyone has the right to love and take care of the cat.
11. Everyone has the right to look after the dog until one of them dies.
12. A dog has the right to be a dog.
13. A cat is not obliged to love its owner, but must help in time of nee[d].
14. Sometimes everyone has the right to be unaware of their duties.
15. Everyone has the right to be in doubt, but this is not an obligation.
16. Everyone has the right to be happy.
17. Everyone has the right to be unhappy.
18. Everyone has the right to be silent.
19. Everyone has the right to have faith.
20. No one has the right to violence.
21. Everyone has the right to appreciate their unimportance. [In Lithuanian this reads Everyone has the right to realize his negligibility and magnificence.]
22. No one has the right to have a design on eternity.
23. Everyone has the right to understand.
24. Everyone has the right to understand nothing.
25. Everyone has the right to be of any nationality.
26. Everyone has the right to celebrate or not celebrate their birthday.
27. Everyone shall remember their name.
28. Everyone may share what they possess.
29. No one can share what they do not possess.
30. Everyone has the right to have brothers, sisters and parents.
31. Everyone may be independent.
32. Everyone is responsible for their freedom.
33. Everyone has the right to cry.
34. Everyone has the right to be misunderstood.
35. No one has the right to make another person guilty.
36. Everyone has the right to be individual.
37. Everyone has the right to have no rights.
38. Everyone has the right to not to be afraid.
39. Do not defeat.
40. Do not fight back.
41. Do not surrender.

This is the wall every aspiring artist hopes receives a piece of his/her work. Embedded into the wall are these little works of art. You know you've made/will make it if you have a piece on the wall. Looks like a bunch of random objects to me, but hey, what do I know. What did immediately jump at out me where the set of teeth...

Chomp!

Our motley crew.

 Continuing on, we found ourselves at a church. Tobi told us what he remembered about it, the rest we read off the plaque in front.

Finally, we found and checked into our hostel. It was one of the nicest places I've stayed; we had the top floor of the building pretty much to ourselves, all of us in one big room with 2 couches, a table, and a bathroom to ourselves. We locked up our bags and set off, once again. 

I'm working on my group picture taking skills.

We continued to weave through old, twisting streets. We played on other playgrounds, and eventually searched for food. We decided on bringing pizza back to the hostel, so after picking up other snacks at a store, we bought four pizzas, a few picked out by Lucia (so we know we got the good stuff). She said it was the best pizza she'd had outside of Italy, so kudos "Pizza Jazz."
Dinner was followed by Mafia, a discussion on "What is culture?" which we ended up having to add to our taboo conversation topics, and a story writing game. We each added a word to a story and went around the circle. Our story ended up being about Squirrel going over the Candy Rainbow to Frog's stinky house. There was some spitting involved...

Hard to see with the glare, but it's a house full of people &
furniture made entirely of chocolate.

The next morning we split up; some of us slept in, some of us went to the National Museum. Unfortunately, we arrived at the museum before it opened, but that did give us an opportunity to walk up the hill nearby. You could see the entire city from the top of this hill.

We went into the church that's near the museum, and it probably became my favourite church I've seen. Most of it was done over in white, with white marble sculptures, white walls, white columns. There were these huge paintings of disciples/saints on each of the columns. But what I really liked was this chapel in the back. The bottom half wasn't white like the rest of the church, but still intricately carved, sculpted and painted. The top half, though had these paintings in the corner, as if these pure white angels dreamt of mankind in colour. These colour paintings overlapped other architectural features in the dome, almost as if the paintings and been their first (which might have been the case, I don't know). It was a really cool effect that I seriously loved. 

By the time we got to the museum, we only had a little more than an hour before we needed to head back and check out of our hostel. The museum didn't seem that big from the outside, but it did take us quite a while to get through. We ended up doing roughly half the museum in the 10 minutes before we left. One of the most important events in Lithuanian history is the Battle of Grunwald. Someone built a huge scale model of it that takes up quite a bit of one of the upper rooms in the museum. You can, of course, see the major portion of the battle, the collision of armies, but you can also find men in the trees, a man in a river, a few soldiers and horses with little spears in their sides, people hiding behind trees near the camps, etc. We also played a game on the layering of armour during the time period; such a noisy machine in such a quite building. The museum also had a sarcophagus, given to Lithuania by Germany. I find that interesting, since sarcophagi don't come from Germany...

And, of course, once a Masonic Youth, always a Masonic Youth, I found the selection of Masonic aprons. They are from St. John's Lodge, 18th-19th century. I had hoped for an idea of their wearers, but the picture I took only gives a name to one of them and other than the name's Slavic origin, I can't read it.

After checking out of the hostel, we were off to find the rest of our group. When no one answered their phones, we went off to lunch. Along the way, we passed this crepe restaurant. Personally, I find the arms a bit creepy.
We were looking for some traditional Lithuanian food, and although the restaurants that tout traditional food on the exterior of the building are usually sucking vortexes for tourists, we went in anyway, glad to find once we were seated that the prices weren't bad.

I had a milkshake (how I've missed my milkshakes and smoothies!) before receiving my shredded potato stew with pig ears. Yup, pig ears; when in Rome? Surprisingly, they were exactly what you'd expect in taste. The cartilage was the disconcerting part; crunchy wasn't really what I'd had in mind. Over all, though, very good. I'd eat it again.

Following the "stew", I had Lithuanian cheesecake and tea. The restaurant was in a most interesting part of town, judging on the various people and things that occurred outside the window. There was even a man who walked by several times just waving through the window.

We were supposed to meet up with our friends at the main square, and they were passing the restaurant as we finished eating. Getting their attention, they came inside. We proceeded to swap for lunch. They ate, and we went off to explore. (None of them tried the pig ears; their loss.) We found our way to a park, where Lucia sat on a monument/art installation/who knows. It didn't have a description and didn't say "Don't sit on this," and if it doesn't say "don't" it might as well say "Do." 

The park also contained a giant chess set, and I cannot leave giant chess sets unplayed with. We didn't play an entire game, but when we did move on Lucia and I had captured twice as many pieces as Jordan so... we win.

We started heading back toward the restaurant, meandering to continue killing time. We found an open gate that lead to a parking lot with the most interestingly graffiti-ed building. 

Once we were all back together, the meandering continued. We passed a KFC and several McDonalds. The interesting thing I've seen at McDonalds both in Vilnius and Riga is a walk-through. So weird, I had to take a picture of it. Reminded me of the WA/ID Grand where NV & CA sat in car-formation as Mrs. Jacka "drove" through Taco Bell. Mmm, Taco Bell...

We attempted to take a picture for Phillip's birthday, since
he wasn't with us. It didn't work.

Take 2. Now there are more people missing. Dang it!

You can tell it's a Bizniz Pelikan because of the briefcase.
Otherwise it could have been a Party Albatross, or a
Shoplifting Toucan.

Me & Seimas (Parliament).

All right, since Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, it has embassies! So, I know there's one I didn't take a picture of (and we passed it several times, but whatever); here are the others!

Greece

Turkey

Ireland

Oman