July 21, 2013
July 21, 2013
Our hotel, while not as nice as the Sheraton in Warsaw has a perfect location. We are in the middle of the Old Town of Vilnius, Lithuania. Our room overlooks St. Casimir Church. I can tell it is a royal church due to the crown on the dome. Our day starts with a bus tour of the city with a local guide. The city is a mix of architectural styles. Outside the center, most are Soviet-style cement block apartment buildings with a few new ones thrown in. The ugly crumbling condition of the Soviet Era buildings is the most glaring indicator of the failure of Socialism. Afterwards our guide escorts us on a walk down the center of Old Town. The Old Town is small but has oodles of churches, both Catholic and Russian Orthodox. Lithuania was the frontier where the two churches battled for the the Pagan souls of Lithuania. Catholicism won out because a royal wedding united Poland and Lithuania.
Many years ago the Lithuanian empire was the largest in Europe. That didn't last long. Everybody wanted a piece of the Baltic coastline for trade. Lithuania suffered the same fate as Poland. It lost out to stronger neighbors. Just before lunch we drove west of town to visit Trakai Castle, the first royal fortress. It was built on an island in the middle of a lake to defend against the invasion of German Knights. Trakai is one of the most impressive fortresses we have visited and has even been used by Hollywood. For lunch we have a quick meal of Kibinai, the local version of a Cornish pastie.
Back in Vilnius, the bus drops us off at the KGB Museum. It is in the old headquarters of the local Soviet Political Police. The upstairs historical exhibits are mostly about the efforts of some Lithuanians to resist occupation. The draw though is the detention and torture cells in the basement, and most unsettling, the execution room complete with hose and floor drain for easy cleanup. I read several Russian history books prior to this trip. For me the most interesting were the sections on the Bolshevik Revolution. Lenin and Stalin started out altruistically as intellectuals determined to improve the lot of the average person with Socialism. Unfortunately like most idealists, they were stymied at every turn by the reality of human nature. They just couldn't understand why people stopped working hard. They turned to coercion out of desperation, never accepting Socialism as a failure. Our local guide characterized it as, "We pretended to work, and the government pretended to pay us". I think Ronald Reagan summed it up better when he said, "It is not that my liberal friends are ignorant, it is that they know so many things that aren't true.
From KGB Headquarters, we walked down Vilnius' main drag to the town center. Here we went in the neoclassical Vilnius Cathedral. During Socialist times, the government tried to stamp out religion and converted this church to a concert hall. Ironically Poland and Lithuania are among the most religious areas of Europe today. The harder the Socialists tried to eliminate religion, the stronger it grew.
Next door to Cathedral Square is a steep hill with the old Vilnius Castle atop its peak. We take a short funicular train to the top for a great view of this many-spired city. Foot weary we head back to the hotel passing another couple unique churches. We stop in Town Hall Square for a beer break and end up having dinner there also. The young waitress practicing her English on us, recounts the tale of her grandparents. Their village was obliterated and the surviving residents sent to Siberia. Her story was far more moving than the KGB Museum.
Our hotel, while not as nice as the Sheraton in Warsaw has a perfect location. We are in the middle of the Old Town of Vilnius, Lithuania. Our room overlooks St. Casimir Church. I can tell it is a royal church due to the crown on the dome. Our day starts with a bus tour of the city with a local guide. The city is a mix of architectural styles. Outside the center, most are Soviet-style cement block apartment buildings with a few new ones thrown in. The ugly crumbling condition of the Soviet Era buildings is the most glaring indicator of the failure of Socialism. Afterwards our guide escorts us on a walk down the center of Old Town. The Old Town is small but has oodles of churches, both Catholic and Russian Orthodox. Lithuania was the frontier where the two churches battled for the the Pagan souls of Lithuania. Catholicism won out because a royal wedding united Poland and Lithuania.
Many years ago the Lithuanian empire was the largest in Europe. That didn't last long. Everybody wanted a piece of the Baltic coastline for trade. Lithuania suffered the same fate as Poland. It lost out to stronger neighbors. Just before lunch we drove west of town to visit Trakai Castle, the first royal fortress. It was built on an island in the middle of a lake to defend against the invasion of German Knights. Trakai is one of the most impressive fortresses we have visited and has even been used by Hollywood. For lunch we have a quick meal of Kibinai, the local version of a Cornish pastie. 
Back in Vilnius, the bus drops us off at the KGB Museum. It is in the old headquarters of the local Soviet Political Police. The upstairs historical exhibits are mostly about the efforts of some Lithuanians to resist occupation. The draw though is the detention and torture cells in the basement, and most unsettling, the execution room complete with hose and floor drain for easy cleanup. I read several Russian history books prior to this trip. For me the most interesting were the sections on the Bolshevik Revolution. Lenin and Stalin started out altruistically as intellectuals determined to improve the lot of the average person with Socialism. Unfortunately like most idealists, they were stymied at every turn by the reality of human nature. They just couldn't understand why people stopped working hard. They turned to coercion out of desperation, never accepting Socialism as a failure. Our local guide characterized it as, "We pretended to work, and the government pretended to pay us". I think Ronald Reagan summed it up better when he said, "It is not that my liberal friends are ignorant, it is that they know so many things that aren't true.
From KGB Headquarters, we walked down Vilnius' main drag to the town center. Here we went in the neoclassical Vilnius Cathedral. During Socialist times, the government tried to stamp out religion and converted this church to a concert hall. Ironically Poland and Lithuania are among the most religious areas of Europe today. The harder the Socialists tried to eliminate religion, the stronger it grew.
Next door to Cathedral Square is a steep hill with the old Vilnius Castle atop its peak. We take a short funicular train to the top for a great view of this many-spired city. Foot weary we head back to the hotel passing another couple unique churches. We stop in Town Hall Square for a beer break and end up having dinner there also. The young waitress practicing her English on us, recounts the tale of her grandparents. Their village was obliterated and the surviving residents sent to Siberia. Her story was far more moving than the KGB Museum.
posted by Mike and Aimee at 1:12 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home