Vilnius!

There are SO MANY English people here. I am in a room with 7 other people, and everyone is English, Scottish, or Northern Irish. Apparently the UK people now can get real cheap flights to Riga, and now start their vacations there and they either go up to Scandinavia or down to Prague. Oh, and at this hostel there were some really annoying people. I came down to use the computer one night, and some people were having some religious conversation. I really could tell that this one girl liked to talk a lot, and sounded like she was from New York. I didn’t want to ask her if she was jewish and from New York (I was more than 50% sure anyway), but within 5 minutes someone else had to ask the inevitable. Well yeah. She was a Jew and from New York. She also went to Harvard. She works for Let’s Go! In Latvia… Now I know why some of the tour guide books just blow… its people like that who write such stupid crap in them. Anyway, it was the (i guess sterotypical) New York Jew talking about religion with this one girl from L.A. who turned out to be a Mormon, and they were both talking to some Irish Catholic girl..... steer clear. Wow that was hard to listen to. The hardest thing about Mormon converts (yeah.. mormon converts....) is to listen to them explain to you why being a Mormon is such a good idea and that the religion is so true.

Vilnius: Vilnius does not look anything like a national capital city. It seems more like some random churchy place. The first day I got here I went to some Jewish museums. Again, museums here seem to be not all that important. The Holocaust museum was some green house behind a minor street. I did not go in it. When I think of Holocaust museums, I want nightmares. I skipped the Jewish museum and went to the Museum of Genocide Victims, which is a museum in an old KGB prison. The last time they were actually used to prison people was in 1989! Most of the rooms still have furniture from when it was KGB property. They even have prison cells in the basement that have not been changed. It was very informative and to actually be in the prison was something that really can’t even register with me. The fact that people were tortured and killed in the very same spot is just unbelievable. Later I visited the Parliament building and the National Library of Lithuania – the building was still new and they still have cement blocks and razor wire on the side of it as a reminder of Soviet tanks trying to come back into Lithuania as they declared their independence. Most of Vilnius is still going under constant reconstruction since their new independence. Maybe we should to back in 20 years and see how rich it has become since joining the EU in 2004. I visited Uzupis, the Drunk/Artist/Squatter republic of Lithuania. I didn’t see many homeless people, but it was something else to be there. It was not like the main city at all. I found the Constitution of Uzupis, the 41 points that drunk people (or on drugs) founded. Really random stuff like “everyone has the right to or not to celebrate their birthday.” I later walked around the main square in Vilnius – again everything was under reconstruction or it was waiting in line. There really wasn’t too much impressive about it. The National Museum of Lithuania again wasn’t too impressive, but beat the crap out of the Polish National Museum. They had a lot about Christian stuff, and a lot of swords and coins from their history about 600 years ago- that was cool. Later I walked up to the Gedimino Tower up on a hill above the town square and cathedral. It was reconstructed after the Soviets left, and the view was nice. Then I later walked up another hill to the three crosses that were supposedly there since the 1700’s, after some Jesuits were killed by pagans. The soviets of course knocked them down, and they were later replaced. Again, the view was better than the crosses, but it gave me some good exercise getting up to the top. As all this was happening, I could tell that the weather was getting worse. Once I got back to the hostel, the rain really started, and then there was a thunderstorm. I didn’t bring a rain jacket or any jacket or umbrella, so I did not want to leave the hostel. I didn’t. Vilnius is a very touristy city as well, although I don’t know why. It seems that the people who go here are all Catholic groups who want to see 3000 churches. I’m not too interested in that, but I guess I picked the wrong part of Europe then. I was supposed to go to Trakai today and see a castle on a few lakes, but it’s Monday now and all museums and that castle is closed, and it’s raining. Not too sure I want to go that far to be in the rain and visit a closed castle. I will be seeing castles in Riga.