Vilnius

Imagine starting Europe travel with the Baltics. You would think it’s easier to start from Germany or Italy where it is easier and cheaper to fly. But then think about it. The Baltics is perfect. I can start from the farthest in the European Union on the Eastern side, and slowly cover central and then southern part of Europe. By December, the Scandinavia will be done, thus taking care of Northern Europe (Ofcourse Iceland and Greenland has to wait until summer). Western Europe is somewhat covered with footprints left in the UK, Ireland and Belgium.

Now then, coming back to the Baltics travel. While the idea was to cover Vilnius in 2 days and Riga in 2 days, I ended up spending 3 in Vilnius and 1 in Riga. But the experience was amazing. I guess there’s a reason why clusters of countries are called something, eg, Baltics, Scandanavia etc. They seem to have something in common. The most distinct and common feature about these 2 cities is the transport system. They have trolley busses which caught my attention. These are busses which run on electricity with 2 poles sticking out of their top and connecting to overheard wires pretty much like the Metro except that these run on the road rather than rails. You buy tickets from enclosed glass kiosks located at every bus stop. It was amusing to have the counter assistant (all of them women and all of them unable to speak English!) open the windows of the little kiosk, give you the ticket and quickly close the glass window again, before you think of a question. Once inside, you punch the tickets, using an old punching machine inside the bus. The more modern ones have ofcourse a boring, regular, computerised system that punches time and date on the ticket. It must have been one hell of an exercise to get all the maze of electrical wiring in place and another exercise to keep the bus from veering off the designated line!!

It was All Souls day that Saturday and DP decided that it was a good day to visit her family in the countryside. She was going to place some flowers in her grandmother’s and brother’s grave on her way there. The drive to the house was simply beautiful. Imagine rows and rows of apple trees on either side of the road. Trees that had no leaves but were laden with apples – red and green apple trees placed alternatively. There were apples in the trees, on the ground, on the road, on top of roofs of houses under them… they were everywhere. Nobody wanted them. There were just too many of them. It was like being in Kerala where nobody could be bothered to pick up the coconuts or the mangoes falling off trees!

Before we got to the house, we decided to do a small detour to the Trakai castle. Quaint little houses appeared as we entered the small town. And then I saw it. Right in the middle of a lake, straight out of a fairytale book was this magnificient red castel with stone turrents. The Trakai castle will 2nd in the list of the most beautiful architecture I’ve seen. The first place ofcourse still belongs to the Taj Mahal. Trakai is surprisingly well maintained and has some interesting exhibitions. Most interesting of them was the postmark or seal exhibition. Apparently each royal person had his her own distinct signature seal and they also came in different handle designs. Some of them were intricately designed images and were beautiful. They also had on display, several thousand coins set as if spilling out of an old earthen pot.
Btw, you can rent the concert hall inside the castle for weddings for a price. What a perfect setting for a wedding! I could have stayed on forever but there was a lunch appointment that was waiting for us. I left the castle with a sigh but kept looking back at it until I got into the car and we drove out of its view.

At DP’s parent’s place, a sumptuous lunch table was laid out for us. It was sort of a joint family with the parents-in-law, daughter-in-law and kids living together. DP, her cousin and me were the visitors. We discussed India, travel and plenty of other things over a lot of home-made Lithuanian alcohol. After that, we went to DP’s son’s farmstead where we saw him feed his big horses. All would have ended well, if I wasn’t daft enough to forget my camera at DP’s parents. I just hope the postal service delivers it in one piece. Fingers crossed!