Christmas Days, Part 2

Hi Everyone! Laba diena!

Continuing with our Christmas days -

On December 15 we had our first cultural outing. (I mean, you have to be cultural in Europe, right?)

But first, we couldn't resist a relapse into good old German/Austrian/Sheboygan food - the Bunte Gans German restaurant. They were full, but found a table in the bar for us, and it was a perfect spot. Tall biers, sauerbraten, pork schnitzel, and a fantastic apple strudel with vanilla sauce and cherries. Ask Liz - she'll sing its praises!

And then the "culture" - a chamber music concert at the Vilnius Philharmonic. Contemporary - Paul Hindemith and later, including a bizarre and amazing piece by a composer who was there and took a bow afterward. Not easy listening, but very well done.

Our little International Church community has been even smaller during the holidays with folks going home for the Christmas break. So Sunday, the 23rd, was a very small service - just 12-15 of us in the chilly sanctuary. But we enjoyed some beautiful playing by a guest organist and guest cellist. (Whenever there is special music scheduled for the Lithuanian service at 11 am, we benefit by having their music at our 9:30 am service too.) The guest organist was the daughter of Vytautas Landsbergis, the man elected as parliamentary chairman on the day, March 11, 1990, when Lithuania declared itself once again free from the Soviet Union. (Astonishing to brush up against history like this.) And the cellist was (is) her son.

After the service we were taken to a restaurant where you can eat American pancakes and syrup. Since I get excellent American pancakes at home, I chose the blini (crepes) instead, and so did Liz.

And then we went to a Mozart mass at nearby St. Casimir's church. This is the church which the Soviet occupation turned into the Vilnius museum of atheism. Ironically, it was standing room only for the earlier mass which was just concluding when we arrived (I think it was in Polish) and then just as crowded for the Mozart mass - a beautiful, fairly short piece which featured a large boys choir.

In the old days (the 70s) I visited these atheism museums in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, and so on. The museums really didn't say much about atheism, but mostly just ridiculed superstitions about black cats and walking under ladders, praying to do well on a test or to win the lottery, etc. Sometimes they made some very good points about religious extremism. But to me it was criminal to desecrate a beautiful church in order to do this. Build your own museum - don't take away our church. But that's not how it was.

Anyway, it's good to have a church back to being a church again, both St. Casimir's and even our Lutheran Church, which, you may recall, was a combination warehouse and basketball court from the 1940s till 1990.

Our friends here have taken very good care of us. On the day before Christmas we were invited to an apartment where about  ten of  us gathered for a nice dinner. And then on Christmas Day, after our small but really nice Christmas morning worship, we went back to Steve and Rebecca's - that beautiful house across the river (above).

Here are a few pictures from a lovely and lazy Christmas afternoon:

Part of the joy of these occasions is, of course, how international they are - we were from the US, Canada, Lithuania, and Russia (Kaliningrad). And the coincidences you discover - one of the students at the table is a graduate student at Ohio University in Athens, where our son-in-law also is finishing up his PhD work. (Our new friend is a biologist and Dan is in the humanities and theatre, so there probably isn't much chance their paths would cross.)

I've noticed that in Vilnius there are some Christmas activities that actually don't start till Christmas - what a nice concept!

This "bubble" appeared in the Town Hall square just the weekend before Christmas and is now humming with customers.

Gingerbread and hot wine are popular, as well as the bread bowls filled with mushroom soup.

These snowballs (?) popped up a couple days before Christmas -

And the children are enjoying playing in the fountain of lights.

Maybe the most popular thing is the Christmas train. Note the elf in green on the left.

It seems like families wait for an hour to take a very crowded little trip around the Old Town - but it's the thing to do.

These Christmas days and now on New Year's Eve the sidewalks are packed with strolling couples and families. Maybe it's a city thing - getting out of the apartment for some air. That's what gets us out at least. Liz looks across our one-room flat at me and says, "I can't stand it! Get me out of here!" So we've been joining the Christmas crowds. And with the recent thaw most of the sidewalks are not the death traps they were a week ago.

Peace and good will, everyone, on this New Year's Eve, the seventh day of Christmas - already one month and four days since we arrived.