Statues in the Snow

Good Morning! Labas rytas!

Another snowy morning! The streets and sidewalks are starting to look and feel like December once again.

Following our "a new thing every day" program we took the bus yesterday north across the river to the Kalvariju turgus, the old open market.

It was a very snowy day, so there weren't so many sellers, but still it was busy. I took a couple pictures inside the meat hall

which was basically the sausage and bacon market. A lot of pigs perished. I expected that someone would tell me to put my camera away and I wasn't disappointed. But at least I got a couple pictures.

 We bought some beautiful eggs, some craisins and apricots, and some dill for our supper last night - we had purchased some smoked trout at the duty-free shop in Helsinki and so last night we enjoyed smoked trout with dill and sugar snap peas on penne pasta. Excellent! And we watched a DVD of "The King and I", one of several we've borrowed from the US Embassy.

Yes, these cars are parked and the drivers are gone. Too busy to bother will parallel parking!

I've been strangely attracted to the "Green Bridge" and its statues. They are straight out of my Moscow days, done in the socialist realism style.

There are two sets of figures on each side of the river. This one is about education,

and this set is obviously military - it's the one set of figures that has had its identifying plaque removed or torn away. Since the statues date from the Soviet days, perhaps it's not a coincidence that the military statues have lost their sign. (And there is a slight provocation in the hammer and sickle emblem within the spear point atop the flag.)

The other two sets are "labor and construction" and "agriculture." Though they are Soviet era statues, because they are not blatantly anti-Lithuanian - in fact they were designed by artists with Lithuanian names - and because they make the bridge a real work of art, the statues have not been vandalized, except for that missing plaque.

One other snowy statue -

"Zemaite" - the Lithuanian novelist and story-teller, 1845-1921. In her Russian-occupied country it was not permitted to speak Lithuanian, but she came to know people in the countryside who spoke it anyway, and as an adult she spoke and wrote her stories in the forbidden language. The statue dates from 1970, interestingly, a time when the Soviets (Russians) were still in power.

More New Things

Good Morning! Labas rytas! ("reetas")

Let's start out with a cute dog -

waiting for its master or mistress -

outside McDonalds on Gedimino prospect. There's even a McExpress walk-up window. But no McDog window at sidewalk level - too bad. 

It's turned just a bit colder today, Feb. 18, the Monday of our last full week in Lithuania. A few gentle flakes in the air.

Last week was a bit of this and that as we came down from our great week in Sweden.

With friends we went to "Les Miserables," powerful and moving, of course, although I tend to like musicals on stage instead of on screen. Seems like a more natural habitat for musicals. (Liz totally loved it. And I liked it a lot.) Even though we had a Lithuanian friend as our guide, we wandered all around the movie complex, up and down, trying to find our particular theater. And then it even took a little while to get out when it was over. Seemed like that Escher print with stairways to nowhere.

A week ago Sunday we had lunch with Per-Erik, who comes to Lithuania from Norway for about one week per month to supervise a business he owns. He's been a member of the congregation for many years now, and you may remember that he gave us a very helpful extended tour of Vilnius soon after we arrived. We had Mexican food at Tres Mexicanos

which has a great location very close to the cathedral.

For some reason, the administration of our senior center has started locking the kitchen/laundry room downstairs. We've had to go to them each time we've wanted to do a load of wash or bake a pizza (no oven in our flat). So I finally discussed this with them - in extremely broken Russian - and they said, well, why not just take the key and go get a copy? Pazhaloostah! So I did. Found a key symbol hanging over an archway over on Traku Street,

 and opened a little door back in the courtyard where I found a sign that I think said "back in 10 minutes." Anyway, the locksmith quickly appeared and made me a key for 10 litas. So now we can wash and bake whenever we wish.

On Ash Wednesday I went down to the Italian bakery - the grumpy girl has been replaced by a much more pleasant woman - and got a brioche for Liz and a "kraffen" for me -

a cute little delivery vehicle

for a pile of whipped cream! With scrambled eggs and bits of bacon - this is what I call Lenten sacrifice! (Yes, I know you're supposed to eat these things just on Fat Tuesday, but I couldn't help it if they were still available on Ash Wednesday!) (These nasty treats seem pretty universal - had a very similar "semla" in Sweden and ate lots of "krapfen" in Salzburg.)

Later that morning we headed down past Cathedral Square to the old arsenal, which is now the National Museum.

Here's King Mindaugas (ca 1203-1263) in front of the museum, which is fairly small and modest - at least the part that was open to us - but contained some fascinating displays, including the various smoky rooms of a prosperous(?) peasant's home, traditional national costumes, a large re-creation of the battle of Tannenberg in 1410 (the final defeat of the Christian Teutonic Knights), and lots of wooden crosses, roadside shrines, and painted wood carvings of saints of all kinds.

Speaking of saints (besides St. Elizabeth!), we've discovered that St. George is the patron saint of Lithuania - here he is atop Marks and Spencer's department store -

and St. Christopher is the city of Vilnius' saint -

a statue mounted on a wall across from the Parliament.

As I was wandering around on Friday it seemed that a lot more Lithuanian flags were flapping than usual, so I asked one of the information offices and they said that the next day, February 16, was Independence Day - dating back to 1918 as German forces withdrew. In actuality, as I understand it, this independence existed mostly in northern Lithuania, because Polish forces entered the country at this point and occupied Vilnius and areas to the south up until 1939 and the arrival of Nazi Germany. (Lithuania also celebrates Restoration of Independence Day on March 11 - dating to 1990 and the country's declaration of freedom from Soviet occupation, even though total Soviet withdrawal took more than another year.) A small country with a very complicated history.

On Independence Day there was a lot of activity at a square along Gedimino prospect, in front of the statue of poet Vincas Kudirka, 

author and composer of the national anthem, a man who spent time jailed by the Russians for his enthusiasm for his native language and country. His picture is on the 500 litas note. He died of TB in 1899 at the age of 40.

In front of the statue was a demonstration calling for an end to "political terror in White Russia (Belarus)", Lithuania's neighbor not very far to the east.

All up and down the avenue wood was piled up for evening bonfires. As it turned out, that evening we stayed in our flat watching a movie, and it was only at 10 pm that I remembered the bonfires -

but when I got down there, all that was left was a few feeble embers. And the crowds were gone.

A parable about Lithuania:

For years one of the symbols of Lithuania was this horse and rider - note the tail curving down.

But the new pose, since 1991,

has a tail pointed straight up. Viva Lithuania!

Sweden

Hello Everyone! Laba diena!

Some afternoon sun has broken through our overcast. It's beautiful!

We came back to Vilnius last Friday afternoon after several days in Sweden.

A Reader Advisory - today's post is pretty much about old friends, kids, grandkids, and so on. So it may not suit your taste - but you're welcome to take a look!

We flew Finnair from Vilnius on Monday, February 4, through Helsinki and on to Arlanda (Stockholm) airport. We were met by Per Forslund, and he took us to his parents' home in Uppsala, about 50 miles north of Stockholm.

Eskil and Gertrud Forslund are some of my dearest old friends, dating back to Peace Corps days in Ethiopia, 1966-68, when they were missionaries in the same village, Mendi, in western Ethiopia. Our families have stayed in touch through the years - Liz and I came to Uppsala in 2007 - and it was wonderful to see them and their children once again.

That first evening Per brought his family over for supper with us.

Per and his wife, Paula, with daughters Magdalena, 12, and Amalia, 15. (To the Swedes reading this: I beg forgiveness if I get spellings and ages wrong!)

Per is a captain for an air charter company flying out of Oslo (he does a long commute from Uppsala!) and Paula, after getting her degree last year, is an international student advisor at Uppsala University.

We enjoyed some delicious meat loaf, potatoes, vegetables and salad, with cake, homegrown blackberries, and vanilla sauce.

This was the first time we had met Paula and the children.

On Tuesday Eskil took us on a walk in the neighborhood and showed us the construction site for the apartment building they'll be moving into - as soon as it's completed - perhaps by the end of the year.

It snowed the whole time we were there -

perfect Swedish winter weather!

Anna, Eskil and Gertrud's oldest, lives about three hours away in Motala, but she took time off to come up for a visit on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Anna with her oldest son, Markus, who's a student at Uppsala University.

Anna and Ingvar's second oldest, Anders, has just left on a four-month journey, with a friend, in southeast Asia. And Peter and Rebecka are still at home. Ingvar is a surgeon at the university teaching hospital in Linkoping, and Anna is a nurse at a senior center there.

That evening, Tuesday, we had dinner again at Eskil and Gertrud's, with Anna and Markus, as well as the Forslunds' youngest son, Lars, his wife, Emma, with son Melvin, 10, and baby Himla.

Both Lars and Emma are in the construction business (though Emma has been on maternity leave) - Lars is a carpenter and general craftsman and Emma is a bricklayer and tile setter.

They have a really lovely home not too far away,

along with another small house on the property. Markus lived there for a while before moving to campus.

On Wednesday we walked a short distance over to Karin's house (Forslunds' other daughter - two years younger than Anna).

Karin and Anna.

Karin is a midwife, and she and Per-Inge, an engineer, have two children, Erik and Frida.

On Wednesday afternoon we said good bye to Anna

and that evening the four of us went to the Mesob, a great Ethiopian restaurant.

We ordered the Mesob Mix, a huge platter of doro wat (chicken stew), tsiga tibs (BBQ beef), yatkilt wat (vegetable stew), etc., with lots of injera (a unique Ethiopian flat bread). It was an evening to remember. And I slept well - maybe it was the ice cream at home which cooled my insides!

Thursday morning I took an early, snowy walk, then came back and shoveled - perhaps the fourth time. It just kept coming down! We had the usual huge breakfast -

yogurt or filmjolk with corn flakes and jam, bread, crackers, cheese and meat, fish (for those so inclined), hard-boiled eggs, etc.

And then we headed down to Uppsala cathedral -

which we know very well but always enjoy seeing again.

 A special focus of my visits to the cathedral is the tomb of Nathan Soderblom, Swedish archbishop from 1914 to his death in 1931. In 1925 Soderblom convened the first Universal Conference on Life and Work, in Stockholm. The agenda of the conference centered on bringing all churches together to try to prevent another war like the one that had devastated Europe a few years before. This group eventually united with the conferences on Faith and Order to form the World Council of Churches. Nathan Soderblom was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1930.

That morning I had seen a photo in the newspaper of a taste competition involving some delicious-looking pastries, so Gertrud bought some and we had them for lunch -

a semla - a cream puff-like creation especially connected with Mardi Gras - like the Austrian krapfen we found in Salzburg.

Thursday night we had another nice meal - goulash and rice.

Per-Inge and the kids biked over - Karin walked. It was amazing to see so many people out on bikes, riding through several inches of snow. Per-Inge regularly bikes to work, no matter what the weather.

Friday was an early breakfast and off to the bus station for the trip to the airport and flying back to Vilnius. At our intermediate stop, Helsinki, we weren't sure if we'd be able to go on to Vilnius - the captain of our prop plane, an ATR-72, kept telling us we had to wait for another runway sweeping. But finally, about an hour late, after the usual de-icing, we took off and were home by about 7 pm.

What a blessing to be here, so close to good friends, and to be able to go see them.