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*** LITHUANIA 2011 - Weeks 3~5 *** |
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 CAMPING
IN LITHUANIA 2011
- Nemunas Delta, Klaipėda, Curonian sandspit, Kaunas,
and the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas) in Vilnius:Our first week in Lithuania was dominated by water, not the Baltic Sea this time, but the waters and lowlands of the River Nemunas delta and the extensive lagoon enclosed by the Curonian Sandspit stretching along the Baltic coastline.
Crossing the River Nemunas at Jubarkas, we followed the river along the eastern
border of Kaliningrad-Russia out to Šilutė and the Nemunas Delta Regional Park
where the Nemunas ends its long journey from its source in Belarus, not flowing
out into the sea here but forming a vast, shallow lagoon trapped behind the
Curonian Spit sandbar. To reach our first night's campsite at Ventės Ragas, the
tip of land projecting into the northern side of the lagoon, meant a 20 km drive
out along minor lanes across the lush green flatlands of the delta. This
low-lying area is prone to seasonal flooding, producing a distinctive landscape
of water-meadows and marshes grazed by dairy cattle. Rich in fish and insects,
the delta supports large numbers of storks, cranes and cormorants, and is a key
stopping-off point of the Arctic~Africa migration route. The sky was heavily
overcast with a chill gale whipping up the grey, choppy waters of the lagoon,
and only an outline of the Curonian Spit sand dunes visible on the misty
horizon. Despite being Midsummer Day, hot soup was in order that evening with
the cold wind buffeting our camper.
The following morning dawned clear with bright
sun, and in conversation with a Lithuanian family camped nearby we learnt our
first words of Lithuanian; they also alerted us to the forthcoming 6 July
national holiday celebrating the coronation of Mindaugas the country's founding
king in the
That evening the wind got up again from the NW and watching it whipping up the lagoon, we had a perfect impression of how the Curonian Sandspit would have been formed along the Baltic coastline trapping the lagoon behind it, and how the islands of the delta would have built up. The almost 1,000 mile long and sluggishly flowing River Nemunas brings down huge quantities of alluvial silt as it approaches the sea, but the strongly blowing prevailing wind from the NW would slow down the outflow causing sand and silt to be deposited here building up the sand-bar barrage with the lagoon and delta-islands behind it. Here before our eyes was the classic ever-increasing process of delta-formation. As the sun set across the lagoon, we watched the most magnificent of sunsets with first a bright orange florescence lighting the western sky trailing its golden tail across the water, and later after the sun had set, spreading a lasting salmon-pink afterglow along the horizon above the Curonian Spit (Photo 4 - Sunset across the Nemunas lagoon).
We drove round to Rusnė, the delta's largest island and little more than a low-lying sand bank with a few scattered settlements, enclosed by the two branches of the Nemunas River. We stopped in Rusnė village and walked over to the dyke which protects the river's main channel; here the Nemunas forms Lithuania's border with eastern Kaliningrad-Russia. On the Lithuanian bank, girls sunbathed, children splashed in the river and a lone fisherman stood in the shallow water. In contrast on the far bank, Russian territory was eerily deserted with nothing to see but an isolated guard-tower (Photo 7 - River Nemunas at Rusnė forming the Lithunian~Russian border). We drove north towards Klaipėda, Lithuania's major port-city. Camping Pajūrio set among pine woods on the northern side of the city is a new and well-appointed campsite, its young English-speaking staff being particularly welcoming and helpful. In the intense heat of the brief Baltic summer, the dappled shade of the scented pine trees was especially welcome. The #4 bus serves the nearby beaches and is a convenient means of transport into the city. The camping is sited alongside the main railway line and heavy freight trains trundle past to and from Klaipėda docks, many of these conveying minerals, timber and oil exports from neighbouring land-locked Belarus with their hopper wagons labelled in Cyrillic script. Klaipėda was founded in 1252 by the Livonian
Order Germanic Knights as the fortress-port of Memel, as a base from which to
subdue the neighbouring Lithuanian tribes. The city filled with German colonists
and became a Hanseatic League member, growing rich from the export of Lithuanian
timber. It later passed under Prussian control and became a frontier post
between Imperial Germany and Tsarist Russia which controlled the rest of
Lithuania. After German defeat in WW1, Klaipėda was seized by the newly
i The bus took us down into the city, dropping us
in the cobbled Old Town at Tiltų gatvė by the square opposite Švyturys Brewery
whose products we had been enjoying all week. We had arranged by email in
advance to visit the brewery as is our custom, but to our disappointment, the
minimum numbers specified for a tour were not achieved and it was cancelled.
After lunch at the attractively restored waterfront (Photo 8 - River Danė
waterfront at Klaipėda), we walked along the embankment to find the
commemorative arch which
Further along the spit, a track leads through the pine woods to the edge of the protected area of dunes which can be crossed on a wooden board-walk. We followed this up into the hills and valleys of sand to the crest some 50m high. A simple wooden cross marks the site of the former village of Nagliai which during the 17th century was moved several times to escape the ever-encroaching advance of the sand which swallowed homes. The battle against the sand was finally lost and the village abandoned. The board-walk finally ran out as we climbed higher into the dunes up the steep valley of sand lined with impacted crusts of embryonic sandstone. After what seemed a long and exhausting plod up the yielding sand to the skyline, we reached the high point to look out eastwards to the Curonian Lagoon and on the far side the Nemunas Delta. To north and south, the dunes stretched away like a Saharan wilderness (Photo 12 - The Grey Dunes of the Neringa Curonian Sandspit); it was a truly breath-taking panorama of sand.
Before returning to the mainland, we drove
south along the spit for 4kms to add yet one more sighting of the
Kaliningrad-Russia border to our collection. Once beyond the beach car parks,
the road was eerily deserted as we approached the formidable-looking border-post
in the forests. We had been surprised at the number of Russian cars seen
speeding along
We feared that at a weekend there would be queues for the ferry back to Klaipėda but with the weather so very fickle, we were able to drive straight aboard to return to the mainland. We camped at Klaipėda for a final night and the following morning there occurred one of those startling chance meetings which defies belief and restores your faith in a benevolent deity. Paul was just returning from the showers when he was taken aback to hear the first English voice since leaving UK. "Actually an Australian voice" corrected the tall, willowy gent. It turned out to be John & Judy Macfarlane from Queensland, whose account of their camper adventure to the Andes of South America we had so admired (click here to read their account of this adventure). We had since exchanged emails and had suggested a rendez-vous while they also were in the Baltics this summer. Their last email had been lost, but here by this remarkable coincidence we both were, and we spent a very happy hour exchanging experiences. We moved inland some 150 miles to visit
Lithuania's 2nd city Kaunas, using the high standard, EU funded A1 Klaipėda~Vilnius
motorway. En route that afternoon we planned to visit the museum at Kaunas'
Ninth Fort, the last of a ring of fortifications built by the Tsarist régime at
the end of the 19th century to protect the Russian Empire's western frontier
from aggressive Imperial Germany. In fact it was easily stormed by German troops
in their 1915 eastern campaign. During the inter-war years newly independent
Lithuania used the fort as a political prison, and with the Soviet occupation
the NKVD had used the fort to hold Lithuanians prior to deportation to Siberian
labour camps. But the fort's most notorious period was its use by the Germans
from 1941~44 as a holding prison and killing ground for the mass murder of
50,000Jews from Kaunas ghetto and from as far afield as France, Germany and
Austria. As we approached Kaunas, the Fort-Museum was visible from the motorway,
but approaching it was a real conundrum. Others had remarked on 2 noteworthy
features of Kaunas Ninth Fort: one was the maze-like access roads, the other was
the surly Soviet-style behaviour of the wardresses. We cracked the first with
the aid of Google maps, and
Kaunas in the lead-up to WW2 had some 35,000 Jewish citizens, like Vilnius some 35% of the population, who had settled here since the days of Grand Duke Vyautas' religious tolerance in the 15th century, living mainly in the suburb of Vilijampolė. There was little social integration with Lithuanians and only occasional outbursts of anti-Semitic violence. But the June 1941 German invasion unleashed a ferocious wave of anti-Jewish violence: Lithuanian gangs ran riot in Vilijampolė, wantonly murdering Jews. In July 1941 all of Kaunas' Jews were herded into a sealed ghetto in Vilijampolė, and from that point Jews were rounded up arbitrarily for shooting by the Germans. The enthusiastic involvement of Lithuanians in the murder of Jews and anti-Jewish excesses astonished even the German commander of the brutal Einsatzgruppe whose function was the extermination of Baltic Jews. Regular mass killings of Jews continued at the Ninth Fort until April 1944 when the ghetto was burnt to the ground; surviving Jews were deported to death camps and few survived to witness the Red Army 'liberation' of Kaunas in August 1944. Against this horrific historical background
involving not only Germans notorious for their systematic barbarism but also
Lithuanian active participation in the mass murders, a fact that contemporary
Lithuanians try to air-brush over, we parked by the remains of the Ninth Fort A doorway led through the brick wall into the
museum housed in the dark, dank and grimly grey underground chambers of the
fort. A series of displays told the story of the fort's history with particular
emphasis on the WW2 mass murder of Jews. One room was devoted to those deported
from France for extermination here, with a wall covered with graffiti by those
about to be murdered: 'Nous sommes 900 français' inscribed Abraham Wechsler from
Limoges. Other rooms gave evidence of Lithuanian attempts to hide Jews and
provide false
Extricating ourselves back onto the ring road, we
found Kaunas City Camping created by the city authorities from a car park in the
outer suburbs. Despite overwhelming traffic noise, a real attempt had been made
to mitigate the harsh tarmac environment, cheered also by the
Bus #13 runs from outside Kaunas City Camping the
4kms into the city centre, but be warned: they are infrequent and you need to
consult the timetable provided by the campsite warden. Kaunas, sited at the
confluence of 2 major rivers, the Neris and Nemunas, was originally a key border
stronghold defending the medieval kingdom against frequent attacks by the
Teutonic Knights. After the Battle of Grünwald in 1410, when a combined
Lithuanian-Polish force under Vytautas soundly thrashed the bothersome Knights
and destroyed their military power, Kaunas with
It seemed appropriate to begin our visit in the
rather workaday suburb of Vilijampolė, across the Neris bridge form the Old
Town, where amid the grubby apartment blocks we found the buff-coloured memorial
with the simple words in Lithuanian and Hebrew On this spot stood the gates
of the Kaunas ghetto 1941~44. We stood here at this forlorn spot, on a
miserably overcast morning, pondering what this scene would have been like in
1941 at the time of the ghetto. Back across the Neris bridge to visit the Old
Town, we reached the Kaunas Cathedral, a bulky red brick structure from the
reign of Vytautas the Great. The interior was almost gaudy with Baroque
extravagance, not least the high altar bedecked with white marble statues
Nearby the broad open Rotušės Aikštė (Town Hall Square) was lined with 15/16th
century pastel coloured merchants' houses, its centre dominated by the ornate
Town Hall (Photo 18 -
Old Town
By this time it was pouring with rain and we
plodged through the puddles to catch a trolley-bus along to the New Town. But
finding a bus stop was yet another challenge, and by the
We continued along Laisvė alėja, now almost deserted in the pouring rain, to reach the grandly silver-domed Church of St Michael the Archangel which crowns the boulevard's eastern end. Built originally by the Tsarist régime as an Orthodox church for the Russian garrison in 1890, the neo-Byzantine church has survived despite changes of régime and denomination. Today it kept its secrets hidden behind locked doors. We did eventually find a trolley-bus stop to return to the Old Town for our bus back out to the campsite with the rain still pouring. All in all this had not been the most memorable of our city visits. Our over-riding recollection of Kaunas was the unremitting rain and huge puddles of lying muddy water lining every roadside which passing traffic simply drove through showering unwary pedestrians ourselves included.
The following day, the Lithuanian national holiday
of Mindaugas Day, we gladly shook the dust, or rather the mud after all the
rain, from our boots and rejoined the A1 motorway heading towards the capital,
Vilnius. And of course as we left Kaunas, the rain ended and sky brightened.
Turning off through Trakai, with its turreted castle visible across the lake,
which we had visited last year (click here to see our 2010 log), we wanted to
make a return visit to the Paneriai forest and the memorial to the mass murders
of Vilnius' Jews in WW2, in a further attempt to see the small museum which had been
closed when we were there last year (click here
for the our 2010 visit and the black story of the Paneriai killing pits).
Turning off through the industrial estates, we drove along the lonely lane to
the tiny settlement of Paneriai alongside the railway marshalling yards, and out
to the memorial set in the
We spent a relaxing afternoon revisiting Vilnius'
charming Old Town (click here to see
the log of our 2010 visit). From the Seimas, we walked along the wide
boulevard of Gedimino Prospektas which is lined with grandiose 19th century
palaces now used as commercial and administrative buildings. Part-way along we Along at the Old Town, we passed Vilnius Cathedral (Photo 25 - Vilnius Cathedral and bell-tower) and the stately statue of Gedimino the legendary founder of Vilnius, before walking past the Presidential Palace and Vilnius University, and along Pilės gatvė (Castle Street) to the grandly open space of Rotušės aikštė (Town Hall Square) (Photo 26 - Rotušės aikštė in Vilnius Old Town). We had to pop into the chapel above the town-gate to say hello again to the Madonna of the Gate of Dawn (Aušros vartų Marija) who sits piously in her sacred silvered icon. We were convinced she tipped us a surreptitious wink as her admirers prayed fervently by her altar (Photo 27 - Madonna of Gate of Dawn sacred icon). And so back through the more mundane city streets with Russian lorries trundling past, to the Geležinkelio stotis (railway station) for our return train to Rūdiškės where Mr Braun was waiting to take us back to Camping Harmonie. We had spent a delightfully wearying if at times frustrating 2 weeks visiting the better known parts of Lithuania, and now passed a relaxing day at Camping Harmonie to catch up with everyday jobs, revelling in the verdant peace and birdsong of this idyllic place. The beautiful landscaped gardens surrounded by dark pine forest reveal the years of hard toil which it must have taken to carve the aptly named paradise of Harmonie out of virgin forest (Photo 28 - The peaceful haven of Camping Harmonie set in pine forests near Rūdiškės). This magnificent campsite must rank as the finest place we have ever camped at in 45 years of camping, and the hospitality offered by the enigmatic Wim Braun ranks even higher. Next week we move into the more rural parts of NE and NW Lithuania to explore remote areas of lakes and national parks seldom visited by those from the West; we are truly looking forward to getting away from the tourist spots into the back lanes of rural Lithuania. Join us again in 2 weeks.
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We had an early start on the day we crossed the
Lithuanian border at Ogrodniki (Photo 1 - Crossing the Lithuanian border to begin our Baltic
States trip in earnest) into Lietuvos Respublika, losing
another hour as we passed into the East European time zone for the long drive
ahead across the flat farmlands and forests of Western Lithuanian out to the
west coast. Suddenly the comfortable familiarity of Poland came to an end as we
faced the challenge of this seemingly alien Baltic language and its
unpronounceable place names, new supermarkets like Iki and Maxima, and a new
currency, Lithuanian litas to get used to as we did our first provisions stock
up in the small town of Vilkaviškis. 
mid-13th century, when all shops would be closed. Storks soared
constantly overhead, not just singly but at one point we counted a flock of 18
of the huge birds. In the still air this morning, the lagoon was still-calm and
down at the shoreline below our camp over the reflections on the glassy-smooth
surface, we had a magnificent view looking along the distant white dunes of the
Curonian Spit across the lagoon (Photo 2 -
Curonian Sandspit from Ventės ragas
across the Nemunas lagoon). Walking along the lane to
the lighthouse at the tip of Ventė Ragas, we watched pintail ducks, black headed
gulls and cormorants on the lagoon with swallows swooping overhead and storks
returning to their nests with food for their growing young. Near to the stumpy
lighthouse (Photo 3 - Curonian Spit dunes
from Ventės ragas lighthouse), the ornithological
station has large snaring-nets to enable ringing of migrant birds; each spring
and autumn, 100,000 birds pause at the Nemunas Delta on the migratory passage.
From here we had further views across the lagoon of the Curonian Spit's white
dunes where we should move next and the network of sand-islands of the Nemunas
Delta. The lagoon at its deepest point is only 2~3m in depth and the delta
land scarcely 1m above water level.
Before leaving the Nemunas Delta, we wanted to
get a feel of what life was like in the delta villages. Turning off along a dirt
road where the map showed a spot height of just 0.5m above sea level, we reached the
tiny settlement of Mingė which straddles both banks of the Minija River, one of
the channels into which the Nemunas divides as it forges a passage through
the delta. No bridge connects the two halves of the hamlet, and locals still get
around by boat; the Minija forms the 'main street' earning the place the
unlikely sobriquet of 'Lithuanian Venice'. In the height of summer the marshy
water-meadows were grazed by cattle with farmers cutting hay; what would it be
like in winter when spring tides regularly flood the delta cutting off villages.
This was a fragile landscape and an even more precarious existence for the few
people trying to make a living here. The bumpy lane ended at the riverside in Mingė where a yacht marina brought some tourist income (Photo 5 - A quiet summer morning
at Mingė in the Nemunas delta). We walked along the
peaceful river bank to admire the riverside cottages, many of which clearly were
now converted to holiday homes (Photo 6 - Fishermen's cottages
and River Minija at Mingė).
ndependent state of Lithuania in 1923. The city retained its German population
and in the 1930s, emboldened by Hitler's aggressive foreign policy, local Nazis
demanded reunification with the Reich. Unsupported by the West, the Lithuanians
were unable to resist and on 23 March 1939 Hitler claimed Klaipėda as his first
eastern conquest. With Soviet occupation in 1945, the city became a strategic
port during the Cold War. Nowadays post-communist Klaipėda, as Lithuania's 3rd
largest city with a population of 200,000, is an economically thriving city
attracting foreign investment, and although smaller than they were, the
shipyards and docks still serve as a major Baltic port.
celebrates
Klaipėda's re-unification with Lithuania in 1923;the modernistic arch with its
severed end is inscribed with the words 'Esame viena tauta, viena žemė,
viena Lietuva' - We are one nation, one land, one Lithuania (Photo
9 - Commemorative arch to Klaipėda's 1923 re-incorporation into Lithuania).
The area surrounding the original fortress of Memel seemed to have been
sanitised to create a 'tourist attraction' so we avoided that, choosing instead
to walk along the far side of the river to where the passenger-ferry crosses to
the Curonian Spit, to peer into the surviving area of dockland and shipyards,
Klaipėda's economic life-blood and clearly still a working port of sizeable
proportions (Photo 10 -
Klaipėda's dockland and shipyards). The cobbled
Old Town provided pleasant ambling and the restored town houses of Turgaus gatvė
(Market Street) recalled the street's former glory. The History Museum of
Lithuania Minor had marginally interesting exhibits tracing the area's history
from prehistoric to modern times, particularly the photographic record of 1930s
life in newly independent Lithuania and Hitler's seizure of the city in 1939.
But on a hot afternoon, the air-conditioning gave welcome relief and was an
even greater attraction. During the day we had been unable to achieve either a
visit to Švyturys Brewery or even a photograph, but that evening after a hot day
in the city, we were at least able to enjoy a welcome glass of their
beer at a delightful garden-bar by the railway tracks behind the campsite.
The following day we crossed the Nemunas Lagoon
by ferry for what had been planned as several days out at Nida, the small
fishing village at the far end of the Lithuanian section of the Curonian
Sandspit. At the ferry terminal, no amount of protestation would dissuade the
girl from classing our camper, George as a large vehicle and charging 112 lits (£30) rather
than a car despite the 4WDs in the neighbouring queue clearly larger than our
small camper being charged only 22 lits for a return fare. We paid up reluctantly for
the 5 minutes crossing (Photo 11
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Car ferry across to the Curonian Sandspit). The
Curonian Sandspit, also called Neringa after the sea-goddess who according to
local legend created it, is about 100kms in total length but divided half-way by
the Russian-Kaliningrad border. Formed over millennia by the action of tides and
wind, the sandspit deposits now separate the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic.
This sliver of fragile sand-land no more than 4 kms wide forms a line of dunes
50m high in places and is covered with pines and birch planted in the 19th
century to stabilise the dunes. The prevailing westerly winds off the Baltic
make this an impermanent landscape as the sand is driven up the western slopes
causing a gradual eastward drift of the spit's central ridge. The spit is now
under the control of the Curonian National Park to protect the dunes and their
environment, and they charge an entry fee to visitors. Part-way along we paused
to buy žuvis rūkytas (smoked fish) from the road-side stalls for our supper, and
just beyond climbed the
wooden observation platform to view the enormous colony
of cormorants who feast on the lagoon's fish; an adult bird can consume some 300
gms of fish each day.
Reaching Nida, the fishing village just before
the Russian border, we were unprepared for the shock of prices charges at the
National Park campsite: 50~60 lits/night (£16) was normal but the National Park
exploited its monopolistic position to charge an unprecedented 100 lits. Our
planned stay of 4 nights was immediately reduced to 2 and in the equally
expensive bar-restaurant, we collapsed into a Švyturys beer to recover from the
shock. Despite the poor weather and misty cloud, the following day we explored
the Pardinis Dunes which stretch along the coast above
the lagoon towards the
Russian border. In poor light we climbed up to the twee sundial obelisk at the
50m high point, which distracts the car-borne tourists and serves as a marker
for those who venture out on foot into the wasteland of the dunes. In gloomy
light, we followed faint tracks of bare sand through the grey-green covering of
moss and lichen which binds the dunes, heading towards the dune-woodland of the
fenced protected area close by the Russian border. In these murky conditions,
one might have debated the wisdom of venturing out into this area of wild dunes,
but we had the distant sighting of the obelisk as our guiding marker for the
return route (Photo 13 - Parnidis Dunes at Nida
stretching away towards Russian border). And our reward
was to find patches of the delicately coloured purple and yellow wild
dunes-violas (Viola litoralis) growing bravely on bare patches of sand,
just like those seen in Sicily growing on the grey barren lava dust on the
slopes of Etna (Photo 14 -
Viola litoralis growing on the sand of the Parnidis Dunes).
Having reached the fence of the protected area of dunes, we turned back just as
the first spots of rain started to fall.
Next morning, the weather had improved and
before leaving Nida, we explored the trackless area of dunes on their eastern
face where they fall in the form of sand cliffs some 50m into the Curonian
Lagoon. From a board-walk, footprints of other walkers indicated a route across
the trackless sand leading to a wooden fence bordering the top of the dune
cliffs. Hesitant about damage caused to this fragile sand-scape, we ventured a
short distance along, looking out across the lagoon (Photo
15 - Sand-cliffs of the Parnidis Dunes).
From this magnificent vantage-point, we could make out the outlines of the Ventė
Ragas shoreline where we had stood last week. But storm clouds were gathering
again with distant rumblings of thunder and we retreated to avoid a soaking.
the spit. With the rain now pouring, a few cars queued on the
Lithuanian side and the barrier occasionally raised to allow a Russian car to
pass through (Photo 16 -
Lithuanian
border-crossing into Russian enclave of Kaliningrad at Curonian Sandspit). We gladly withdrew from this tantalising and xenophobic enclave of alien territory surrounded as it is now on its entire
landward side by EU/NATO states.
looked forward to meeting the second; we were not to
be disappointed.
casemates, earthworks, tunnels and gun-batteries which serve as the museum. At
the ticket office the first of the grim-faced wardresses sold us tickets and a
photo permit; then a second unsmiling harpy inspected the tickets before
grudgingly admitting us. These sadly comic figures must have been preserved in
vinegar from the Soviet era. After a brief look at the photographic and
documentary exhibition detailing the German occupation and the even worse reign
of terror and deportations during the Soviet occupations, we walked over to the
monstrous Soviet era memorial, a 30m high jagged concrete outcrop which like all
such memorials of this period was dedicated simply to 'the victims of fascism';
Soviet ideology failed to acknowledge the specific Jewish suffering. Nearby
however more sober post-1991 plaques commemorated the 50,000 Jews murdered here,
but again omitting to mention the ready involvement of Lithuanians in the
killings (Photo 17 - Soviet-era and
post-1991 memorials to WW2 atrocities at Kaunas Ninth Fort).
One memorial honoured the trainloads of Jews deported from France for murder
here, organised and rounded up of course by collaborationist French civil
servants and police (not mentioned). Nearby were the trenches where German
Einsatzgruppen and their Lithuanian collaborators had murdered so many of
the 50,000 Jewish victims who were exterminated at the Ninth Fort.
papers, but again no acknowledgement of the active part played in
the murders. Another room recalled the curious episode of the Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, posted to Kaunas in 1939 as consul. 1000s of Jewish refugees
from German occupied Poland flooded into the city, only to discover the Soviet
occupiers of Lithuania refused them transit visas unless they held valid visas
for a final destination. All diplomats of other countries bordering on USSR had
left Kaunas, and the Japanese government refused Sugihara permission to issue
regular Japanese entry visas. He went ahead anyway and issued hand-written visas
for Dutch colonies in the far east enabling 1000s of Jews to escape. After the
war he was sacked by the Japanese foreign ministry for his irregular but
life-saving initiative. As we walked around the exhibition, we were closely
stalked by one of the Soviet-style wardresses who clearly wanted us out to get
home early; we dallied to ensure our moneys worth, as a thunderstorm made the
gloomy cells even more eerie.
helpful welcome
received from the English-speaking warden. In discussing with him about our
visit to the Ninth Fort, he described his family's sufferings during the Soviet
era with grandfather, uncle and father spending years of exile in Siberian
labour camps. In talking however about German barbarism during WW2, he added
'But we Lithuanians also made some bad mistakes', maybe a veiled acknowledgement of
collaboration in mass murders; we greatly admired him for that.
access to the 2 river
trade routes grew wealthy from commerce. Several centuries of prosperity
followed with the city also developing as an important religious centre. A major
point in Kaunas' development came with the Tsarist Empire's decision to make the
city the key to their western defence in the late 19th century: in addition to
the ring of forts, the Russians totally redeveloped the city centre around a
long straight boulevard now Laisvė alėja (Freedom Avenue). After WW1, with the
Poles occupying Vilnius, Kaunas served as provisional capital and seat of
government for newly independent Lithuania., and during the 1930s, it acquired a
number of showpiece buildings in the grandiose architectural style of that
period. Since 1991 Kaunas has benefitted from post-communist economic changes
and is now a major commercial and industrial city. With a population of 420,000
it is the 3rd largest city in the Baltics.
Hall in Rotušės aikštė (Town Hall Square) at Kaunas).
The high tower is named The White Swan for its elegance and the building
now serves as a popular wedding venue; we were just glad it was not Saturday. On
the far side of the square along Aleksoto we found the Perkūnas House, an
elaborately gabled Gothic red brick merchants' meeting hall built on the site of
a temple to the pagan god of thunder Perkūnas (Photo
19 - Gothic Perkūnas House, a medieval merchants' hall at Kaunas).
The cobbled street descended towards the sluggishly flowing River Nemunas, last
seen at its delta, and we walked up onto the bridge to photograph the elegant
14th century Gothic church built by Vytautas (Photo 20 - 14th century Vytautas
Church on banks of River Nemunas at Kaunas). After a
brief lunch at one of the attractive café-terraces in Vilnaus gatvė, we
visited the Lithuanian Folk Instrument Museum, tucked away in a back street
rambling house. Founded by a musicologist with an interest in Baltic ethnic
culture, the collection displayed an amazing array of traditional Lithuanian
instruments: pipes and horns (birbynės), bagpipes (dūdmaišis) and
Baltic zithers (kanklės). The lady attendant seemed pleasantly surprised
to have visitors and even more surprised they came from England.
time we reached the
broad pedestrianised Laisvė alėja, we gave up and continued walking in the rain,
past the City Gardens where in 1972 a 19 year old student had burnt himself to
death in protest against repressive Soviet rule. We summoned up the minimum of
enthusiasm in the pouring rain to pause at the statue of Vytautas the Great
erected in 1932 to commemorate the 540th anniversary of the Great Duke who had
had extended Lithuania's empire to its greatest extent. The rain eventually
eased as we reached the grandiose buildings of Kaunas' Military Museum. We had
no wish to spend time inspecting endless military hardware, but we did
want to see the display recalling the Lithuanian heroes Steponas
Darius and
Stanislovas Girėnas. Born in Lithuania and raised in the USA, they learnt to fly while serving in the US army during WW1. They had attempted to fly non-stop from
New York to their homeland of Lithuania in 1933. Their small plane the
Lituanica crashed in a Prussian forest just short of their target killing
both pilots as crowds gathered at Kaunas airport to greet their triumphal
return. The remains of the plane are now displayed in the museum, their
portraits figure on the 10 lits banknote (see left) and most towns and cities have a street
named in their honour. We reached the museum at 4-30 but an attendant barred our
way; 'Come back tomorrow' he commanded, slamming the door with the same
officious manner seen with other such museum attendants. While, it seems, the
rest of the Lithuanian public labours under market economy stringency with the
threat of unemployment hovering, such public officials seem caught in a time warp,
apparently thriving with their protected salaries oblivious to the fact of
régime change 20 years ago.
forest at the lane's end. Rain was falling heavily
from a leaden sky and thunder rumbled threateningly over this evil place adding
further to the ominously eerie atmosphere. Those who have been to Paneriai will
understand the feeling. The rain eventually eased and the sun broke through as
again we walked down the pathway to the museum. This year we were in luck: the
door was open and the lady attendant (probably an unpaid volunteer judging by
her welcoming manner) invited us in. Panels of photographs and documents
recalled the dreadful evils committed here between 1941 and 1944 by Germans and
their Lithuanian collaborators. However evil their acts, the Germans
systematically compiled carefully typed lists recording details of their
victims. 100,000 human beings are estimated to have been individually shot in
the back of the head as they knelt beside the pits and children's skulls were
smashed against trees: 70,000 Jews were force-marched from Vilnius ghetto for
extermination by these pits in the dark forests of Paneriai, together with
20,000 Poles including priests, and 10,000 Soviet POWs. By 1943, in an attempt
to cover up traces of their crimes against humanity, the Germans organised
squads of corpse-burners to dig up the partially decomposed corpses for
burning. After months of this hideously gruesome work, some of the
body-burners escaped in 1944 to join the partisans; 11 survived the war and
their testimony contributed to revealing details of the Paneriai atrocities. In
silent contemplation at what hideously inhuman barbarians could have wantonly
committed such acts, we read the museum panels which told the story of the
massacres, and once again walked the circuit of the now sanitised killing pits (Photo 21 -
The killing pits of Paneriai); even the sunlight filtering through the trees
could not relieve the pall of evil that still hangs over this dreadful place.
Thankfully we drove away from the now silent forest of Paneriai vowing that we
should never return again.
We camped that night at Camping Harmonie, set in an isolated pine forest
clearing near to Rūdiškės, and kept by Mr Wim Braun an ex-pat Dutchman who
20 years ago carved out the campsite from virgin forest land. As part of his
service, Mr Braun takes and collects his guests to and from the railway halt at Rūdiškės for the Lietuvos Geležinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways) train into Vilnius
(Photo 22 - Early morning train
from Rūdiškės into Vilnius).
The line initially passes through forests dotted with tiny settlements, before
the more urban landscape after Paneriai on the approach to the city suburbs. The
main reason for coming into Vilnius again this year
was to visit the Seimas, the Parliament of the Lithuanian Republic, which had
been arranged in advance by email. From the central station, the trolley-bus
lurched and jolted around the Old Town to drop us in the wide boulevard of
Gedimino Prospektas close to the rather graceless 1980s building of the Seimas (Photo 23 - 1980s building of the
Lithuanian Seimas (Parliament). Having eventually found
a reception point, we reported for our 1-00pm appointment as official visitors
from UK, to be greeted with puzzlement: neither the lady nor her computer had any
record of our visit and we were asked to wait. Eventually we were escorted to
another entrance where the official examined Her Britannic Majesty's passports,
clutching in his hand a paper bearing our names and embossed with a large and
very official stamp. We were admitted and welcomed by Ms Asta Markevičienė, a
senior official of the Seimas PR Department who had arranged our visit; she
introduced us to Benjaminas (Ben) Petraitis who was to be our guide.
The Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas meaning a
meeting or assembly) originated in the 15/16th century as an advisory council of
nobles summoned by the Grand Duke; Lithuania had a written constitution and
codified body of laws earlier in its history than most European states. But the
1795 Partition of the Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth and annexation of Lithuania
by Tsarist Russia interrupted the development of parliamentarianism for 130
years. With Russia's withdrawal from WW1 in 1918 , the Lithuanian Council
adopted the Act of Independence for the newly constituted Republic and the first
Seimas elections followed in 1922. Parliamentary government was interrupted in
1927 by the authoritarian régime of Antonas Smetona and again by the Soviet
occupations of 1940~41 and 1945~90, during which time the country was supposedly
governed by the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet, a body of communist party hacks who
took their orders directly from
Moscow. With the drive for independence from
USSR, the Council under its president Vytautas Landsbergis adopted on 11 March
1990 the Act on the Establishment of the State of Lithuania solemnly declaring
the end of foreign occupation and revival of independent statehood with the
Seimas as its democratically elected parliament. This received lukewarm
attention from the West, and was simply too much even for Gorbachev who
responded with a crippling economic blockade, sending in the tanks. The
Lithuanian public responded with openly defiant civil unrest and 13
demonstrators were killed at the Vilnius TV Tower in January 1991. Citizens
manned barricades around the Seimas to protect their newly formed democracy, and the blocks of concrete are now preserved outside the parliament as a
memorial, still bearing the anti-Soviet graffiti Lietuva Laisvė (Freedom
for Lithuania). Fearing a bloodbath, Gorbachev, now dominant over the old guard
Kremlin hard-liners, withdrew the military leaving Lithuania suddenly and
joyously an independent democracy under the Seimas. The 1996 Seimas announced its
Westward oriented foreign policy with the goal of EU/NATO membership which was
achieved in 2004. Under the 1992 Constitution of the Lithuanian Republic, the
unicameral Seimas is composed of 141 members elected for a 4 year term. Meetings
of the Seimas are chaired by the Speaker who is elected by parliament from its
members. The current Speaker, the first lady to hold the office, is the
much-respected Irena Degutiene elected in 2009.
We began our tour in the gallery of the Seimas'
bright and well-lit plenary chamber which is equipped with electronic voting
system at each of the members' seats, with the gold, green and red Lithuanian
tricolour suspended above the Speaker's chair (Photo 24 - Plenary chamber of the
Lithuanian Seimas). With Ben's impressively fluent
command of English, we were able to discuss with him during our visit, aspects
of the history and working of the Seimas, constitutional matters and current
political issues such as the position of the Polish and Russian minorities in
Lithuania. During our tour, we had the honour of formal introduction to Mr
Česlovas Juršėnas, one of the 4 Deputy Speakers who is the only member to have
served in all 4 parliaments since independence. We also saw the dimly-lit
chamber of the former Supreme Soviet where Mr Landsbergis proclaimed the 1990
Act of Independence. We concluded our visit back at Asta Markevičienė's
office where she presented us with a beautifully illustrated history of the
Seimas, a treasured souvenir of our visit. Through the medium of our web site,
we extend our thanks to Asta and Ben for giving us such a VIP
welcome during our visit to the Lithuanian Seimas; through the time which Ben so
generously gave us, we gained a valuable understanding of both the workings of
Lithuania's new democracy from the crucial period of its 1990s rebirth and the
contemporary political, social and economic issues facing the country. Labai
ačiū.
stopped at the main Post Office for stamps. While most enterprises in modern
Lithuania, even banks, after 20 years of market economy have been compelled to
adopt a more service-oriented approach to their customers, it seemed that
institutions still under state control have preserved both the conventions and
staff attitudes left over from former days. The Post Office had dozens of
counters and you might think that customers could choose the shortest queue to
buy their stamps. But no! First you must collect a number, then wait for that
number to be displayed above the one counter selling stamps; then you must face
the unsmiling visage of the harpy and wait for her to complete her
oh-so-important paperwork before deigning to serve you. Had régime change in
fact really happened 20 years ago, we wondered!
