That rain-splattered skylight from our recent blog has, within the last hour, been covered up with new snow! And the temperatures are back around 20F, so we may keep the snow for a while. It's a nice change!
This past Sunday, January 6 - Epiphany - we had a nice crowd, "crowd" meaning perhaps thirty people instead of fifteen.
After worship and coffee hour we walked with one of the American teachers in the congregation to an Indian restaurant down on Cathedral Square and had some very nice, crispy nan bread and spicy chicken. More than we could eat, of course. It was good that we had to walk home afterward.
Because this was the week we had designated as a get-away week, I walked over to the train station to chat with the international travel folks about a trip up to Riga, Latvia: how many trains per day, departure and return times, etc.
"No Train."
Excuse me? I'm sorry, I didn't mean is there a train right now, I just meant in general what's the schedule?
"No Train."
No train tomorrow? What about Tuesday or Wednesday?
One last time, in her best imitation of a Soviet border guard: "No Train."
And then I realized the danger of using a travel guide published in 2005 - things change. I finally actually looked at the timetable on the wall, and, indeed, there was "no train" to Riga. A few international trains - St. Petersburg, Moscow, Minsk, Warsaw, Kaliningrad. But no train to either of the "sister" Baltic capitals, Riga and Tallinn. A shame. But then, I'm from a country that has just a little bit better passenger train service than Antarctica!
I walked the length of the station to the domestic side and asked a rather more cheerful young woman about a train to Klaipeda, the western Lithuanian sea port and gateway to the Curonian Spit: three trains a day, no problem. A little under two hundred miles, a little under $40. each, round trip.
Monday morning we packed our backpacks, caught a bus to the station (five minutes), and took the 9:41 train to Klaipeda.
Part of the reason we chose Klaipeda was because it's on the Baltic and near the Spit (details in a moment), but another reason was just to get out and see a bit of Lithuania. Unfortunately, the view from the train was not inspiring.
Partly this was just due to its being winter, with no leaves on the birch trees, the fields and gardens bare, the atmosphere a gray monochrome. (Wisconsin in winter, from a train window, might not inspire either.) But it also seemed that the countryside is still in its long transition from the old regime: the cottages and little farms seemed to be in poor condition, fences broken, roofs swaybacked, fresh paint and trim non-existent. I imagine that in the summer there could be a certain charm, but our glimpses through dirty train windows didn't hold our attention very often and we contented ourselves with books, dozing, and unsuccessful eavesdropping on Lithuanian cell phone conversations for the five hour journey.
Klaipeda was charming.
Their Christmas tree was still up, and it looked like it had been ringed with lots of little stalls selling treats of the season. This was in the square in front of the drama theater, above, where, from the balcony, Hitler, in 1939, declared that Memelland (German name for this portion of Lithuania) belonged again to East Prussia and Germany. (I could quote some history, but, if you're interested, you can easily google it.) In short - this little bit of seacoast has been tossed about by history for a long time - even as far back as 1200 or so, when the Teutonic Knights established a fort here to support their campaigns into pagan Lithuania.
We stayed in the very new and nice Memel Hotel, and did a little bit of chilly exploring of the small old city. And found some very good spinach pasta in a restaurant near the junction of river and harbor. The next day the extremely kind hotel staff helped arrange a rental car to be delivered to the hotel for us, and we had a little adventure on the Spit.
The car ferry was about $20 for over and back - a ten minute trip each way.
And then we were on the Curonian Spit, a skinny, 50 mile long sand dune that separates a lagoon from the Baltic Sea. For the past two hundred years or more the inhabitants have been planting as many trees as they can to hold the sand from the wind and the water, but the Spit continues to lose out to the waves of the Baltic.
Here we are on the lagoon side:
and the Baltic side:
The road to the beach (mostly foot traffic) is lined with pine trees laid on the sand to retard erosion:
Only the northern half of the Spit is Lithuanian; the southern half is part of Russia, part of the region that was once East Prussia and is now Kaliningrad. We had no visa for Russia, so we stopped a mile short of the border and found, in the mostly deserted tourist town of Nida, one cafe which served us some soup and crepes.
We can imagine, looking at the lovely but empty houses, shops, cafes, and harbors in several little villages on the Spit, that in the summer the place is hopping! It would be beautiful! (But we imagine the water temperature wouldn't be much different from our Lake Michigan - at least on the Baltic side.)
At the northern end of the Spit we got a good look at the port of Klaipeda:
We enjoyed the "puzzle piece" buildings across the water - they're actually some distance from each other but they fit so nicely.
And we were glad the return ferry waited till Vilnius Seaways had passed in front of us!
I dropped Liz at the train station, took the rental car back to its parking lot, and walked back, across the river, to the station. We endured the five hour evening trip back to Vilnius - seats facing backward - but when it's dark outside and you can't see the receding scenery, you're not quite as likely to get that sick feeling. Anyway - it was fine, and a twenty-minute walk home from the station cleared our heads and took the cramps out of our legs.
Glad to have seen Klaipeda and the Curonian Spit, and glad to be back home.
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