Baltics24: Day 12 – Riga – Vilnius

A long day on the road. We booked a transfer tour from Riga to Vilnius with Traveller.ee, so we were up and ready before 9am, having a breakfast of the last of the smoked pork and other random bits. We met Laura (pronounced more like lauw-ra rather than lora) and soon a group of eight of us were on the road (several USians, a Chinese/US/Swiss, a Kiwi, and an Argentinian/Kiwi). Lithuanian Laura was very entertaining from the outset, full of the dry, ironic, slightly self deprecating humour that is prevalent in the Baltic region. Her potted history of the Baltics was a hoot, especially with the deadpan delivery, around how Baltic history only really began in the 13th Century once the Pope realised there were these pagan tribes that hadn’t been converted, so he launched some crusades and that’s when everything started. From there the region has been fought over, divided, pillaged, converted, etc for 800 years, and for Latvia and Estonia, the current period of 33 years is the longest they’ve ever been independent nations. Lithuania enjoyed a couple of hundred years of independence as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth before things went pear-shaped in the latter half of the 18th Century.

Our first stop on the tour was the site of the Salaspils Camp, a forced work/hard labour/dumping place for undesirables established by Germany in WWII. While not an extermination camp nor full-scale concentration camp, the camp was still a place where the German military and Latvian collaborators were responsible for some pretty brutal behaviour, from forced work, through starvation rations, forced adoption of children, overcrowding, through to public executions. In the 1960s the Latvians (with Soviet permission) turned the area into a memorial, with 8 huge statues, a large entry wall, and a continuous heartbeat sound that plays non-stop to signify the heartbeat silenced during the camp’s operation. A sombre place, in spite of the sunny day, a monument that hopefully inspires all of us to never again be silent while others commit the wholesale murder of civilians, minorities, protestors, intellectuals, and the innocent.

From Salaspils we headed to the Rundale Palace, an 18th Century palace designed by the same architect as St Petersburg’s Hermitage, the vanity project of a German duke who first had the favour of Russian Empress Anna before losing it all when she died, leading to him being shipped off to Siberia. In the following centuries the palace served as a hospital for Napoleon’s troops, a hospital and administration centre for invading Germans in WWI, a school, and as a grain store, before Latvia spent a number of years restoring the building and grounds to their former glory. The palace also has an extensive garden, with several hundred varieties of roses, herbs, hedges, trees, and a labyrinth (though only about 5cm high, so not a huge challenge to get to the centre of). Our tour included a ticket to see the garden, while an extra ticket was required for the palace, however it’s possible to visit the palace cafe and toilets without the extra ticket, which is what I did, checking out the interesting sculptures in the basement, while also having a delicious slice of the biscuit dough-like treat, this one chocolate flavoured, that I can’t remember the name but did find it somewhere, so will try to work it out. Next to the gardens was a small stand with icecream, and it being quite hot was doing a roaring trade. I had the very delicious pomegranate and raspberry flavour.

We crossed the border into Lithuania, much to Laura’s excitement. It’s still kind of weird crossing international borders without even having to stop. We did stop at a local restaurant for lunch, where I had pork neck, well cooked with potatoes and salad, with a glass of local Lithuanian beer which was also quite tasty.

The Hill of Crosses, basically Lithuania’s take on Gnomesville. Standing on and around a small hill are over 500,000 crosses in various shapes and sizes. Over many years of occupation, the soviets attempted to bulldoze the site, but each time those plucky Lithuanians would just rebuild bigger better stronger faster than ever. Eventually even Pope John Paul II visited the site and a very large cross was raised. Nowadays they sell crosses next to the carpark, so people can but and place their own, and then place this on the hill.

Then it was a bit of a drive before our last stop, Lithuania’s second city Kaunas, home of apparently Lithuania’s most hated roundabout, as well as the temporary capital of Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s when Poland annexed Vilnius. Kaunas has an interesting old town, full of interesting sculptures and history, including a church that the soviets repurposed for a basketball court.

Then we got to Lithuania’s current capital, our destination Vilnius. After saying bye to Laura we headed up a gentle hill to our accommodation, which is interesting but lacks the personality of the Sherlock. We grabbed a late supper of potato cheese balls and dark beer at a possibly Belorussian themed bar, interesting of itself as apparently Lithuania and Belarus have a lot of dislike going on. The potato balls were great, if a little underseasoned, and the beer was full of nice roasty flavours. We grabbed some groceries at an automatic mini-mart, it has cameras everywhere, and will then detect everything you’ve bought. Just a bit weird.