Roadtrip

With the NATO Summit descending on Riga this past Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday, it was high time to hightail it out of town. JS and I went on a road trip!

We started in Latvija visiting a couple of cities that neither of us had been to. Ventspils and Liepaja are both coastal cities... probably bustling with life in the summer when their beaches draw crowds from all over Latvia and probably other places as well. But on a cool winter day, when the winds are blowing in off the sea, the streets were deserted. Ventspils was especially, eerily quiet.

Ventspils and Liepaja are both nice cities but without summer on their side, neither left much of an impression on me. Ventspils had a castle. Liepaja had a war prison. Both full of history that would make you cry.

The day we left Liepaja it was nice there. But as we kept driving the fog got thicker and thicker until JS was driving with visibility reaching not far beyond the front end of the car. I slept for part of this, but when I woke to the dark (yeah, it was 4 or 4:30) and saw the effect that the dark coupled with the fog had, I decided to stay awake and do what I could to help the situation. Helping does not include I learned, yelling about staying on the road, watching out for the braking car in front of us, or slowing down so I could see some damn road signs so that I could do my job as navigator. But all that aside, we made it to Druskininkai in one piece, and weary, but not actually angry with each other. We found the hostel. Found a grocery. Bought more food than we could eat. Ate, and went to bed.

The next morning we visit Grutas Parks, also known as Stalin World. This park includes all monuments of Stalin, Lenin and many other Communist leaders collected from all over Lithuania. Can I just say, there were more statues of one person than I would ever want to see, and the scary part is that these were just the statues from Lithuania!!! Seeing something like this opens your eyes to understand only minorly what it might have been like to live in this time. It was another foggy and somewhat chilly morning in Grutas Park, and I can't say I was sad to leave.

After leaving Druskininkai we headed to Trakai. Another city with another castle. This one is special because the castle is built on a peninsula, so it's really out there in the middle of a lake. Funny thing is, Trakai is a small city... but JS and I could not find the proper place to visit the castle! Doing our best to decipher signs written in Lithuianian (which for those of you who don't know, is similar enough to Latvian that I could decipher lots) we still managed to pull into and park in a place that had restricted parking reserved for castle employees only. And then we even had the audacity to leave the car, get out and walk around a part of the castle, that I'm pretty sure isn't even open to visitors! When we figured out we were in the wrong place we left. But I have to say, several people saw us, and no one said a word.

When we found the castle, which was NOT as easy to find as you might think because of the FOG we were happy to see that it was indeed in the middle of the lake and pretty cool. It has been rebuilt and restored extensively, so was pretty cool to visit. Funnier yet? While at this particular site, Latvian was the language we heard most! Turns out we weren't the only ones who thought to escape the Summit to Lithuania!

After seeing the castle, we tried to leave Trakai. It wasn't really so hard, except the first couple of turns... which had us turning the wrong direction onto a one way street only to hear someone honking at us, and turning just in time to see that it was a police officer, probably shaking his head at the foreigners. Thankfully, JS didn't complete the turn, and the police drove on. Driving to Vilnius was a pleasant less-foggy, more-daylight type drive. It was also much shorter.

Vilnius it turns out is a very nice city as well. But I kept walking around it saying, "It reminds me of a place I know!" Riga and Vilnius are VERY similar in my opinion. Old town is practically identical, except that Vilnius actually has some hills and stuff. And Vilnius has more churches... hard to believe I know, but it does. Vilnius, like Riga, is full of history....old buildings, a castle, very old churches, cobble-stone streets, and museum and monument one after another. Although, outside Old Town, Vilnius was decidedly less Soviet. Whether it's always been that way, or they have simply recovered more quickly, I don't know... but that was nice as well. Vilnius also has it's fair share of one way streets and construction going on, which made for interesting driving on our way back to our hostel from the movie we saw one night. Ok, ok, I take responsibility for leading JS to drive up the one way street this time. It was my fault. I didn't actually realize what that little red arrow on the map meant at the time. But rolling through the stop sign when another car was coming from the other direction with no stop sign, thereby inducing me to yelp and stomp on the "passenger side brake pedal" was totally his fault. Totally. But I'm sorry I made him jump. And then get pissed at me. Oops. *blush*

In Vilnius we visited the Genocide Museum. It is housed in an actual KGB building, the basement floor of which has been untouched since the KGB evacuated in 1991, aside from putting up a couple displays to make it more like a museum. It's frightening though really. You visit a place like that. And you hear what happened in every cell. The torture. The lack of respect for human life. The murder. You see what they slept on. What they wore. Where they were solitarily confined. Where they scratched their names into the walls, most believably with their fingernails, lest they be never found and forgotten. And then you go upstairs and you read the stories of the individuals who actually survived these things. And those who didn't. You see their belongings, collected and displayed. And you want to believe that this all happened years ago. In such ancient history. And then you realize that it didn't. That this is recent histroy. And worse yet, you can imagine, that similar things are still occuring around the world, some that we hear about and others that we don't. And you leave such a place, not really knowing what to do with yourself.

We left Vilnius after climbing to the top of the castle which afforded us a view of the nearest buildings shrouded in fog. JS swears that on a sunny day, you can see til the city limits. Ah well, maybe next time.

On our way home, because that is where we were already headed, we stopped at the Hill Of Crosses. Another truly inspiring sight. A quite large area (JS has the book... I forget exactly how big, but quite large indeed) covered, simply stacked with crosses. This hill has a history dating back many centuries...but even just it's contemporary history is amazing. Lithuanians used this hill as a symbol of faith and hope. And as a place to honor their fallen. Over the years, the hill and all its crosses were bulldozed 4 times by the Soviets, who saw it as a highly inappropriate display (gosh, we don't like it when someone shows the world how many people we're killing, HUH?). But the Lithuanians came back every time, and even through guards and other barricades, continued to rebuild the Hill of Crosses. The crosses range from twice my height to tiny, tiny ones... but it is estimated that 50,000 crosses now adorn the spot. Some have names on them, others poems and others stand blank a silent intention in its being. JS and I didn't add any crosses, although these days people of all faiths travel from near and far to visit this site. It was something to see.

The rest of the ride home was free of upsets or adventures. We had a slight scare at the kilometers upon kilometers of semi-trucks parked at the border that we thought we were going to have wait behind. And then were delighted to find that our passage was only delayed a few minutes unlike some of the trucks who had already been waiting days or weeks. Something to do with NATO. If we hadn't gotten through the way we did, I'm fairly certain that even if the line had been moving, we'd still be sitting there now, and I would not be coming to the end of what will surely be my longest blog entry to date.

Welcome back to Riga. Welcome back to work. Good news? The Summit gave us Mon-Wed off... which means, we have a two day week, and another glorious weekend is upon us. :)