Arriving in Vilnius – One Day Like Two

After waking up and getting off the bus, I hurriedly change into my winter coat, it’s 7:30 in the morning and about 7 degrees.  I find the bus easily, buy a ticket from the driver without speaking and sit down for 40 more minutes. Listening to the continuous announcements and reading the signs in the street I start to get a feeling for this language that doesn’t really sound foreign to me although I don’t understand anything.

It still is really strange for me to speak English in the street in Eastern Europe. I usually go to Latvia where I never need it or I stayed with people who speak the local language and were fluent in English or German themselves. It feels more appropriate for me to ask simple questions in Russian although I don’t really know more than some sentences. Enough to find my host’s house, anyway. After a warm welcome and some tea I leave for a first day of sightseeing and getting to know the city. Only once it crosses my mind that my (now I have to say former) class mates start the clinical years of their studies.

I spend most of the day walking up and down the streets of the old town. The sky is grey, but it’s not cold and it doesn’t rain, so the weather is nice enough to just take in the city by walking, it’s also small enough to more or less walk the Old Town’s edges in a short time. And I feel I would fall asleep if I sat down after the night on the bus. I’ve been to Vilnius for three hours before when I changed buses on my way from Riga to Bydgoszcz two years ago. It was so hot then that I couldn’t enjoy the city. But still it’s not completely new to me and it also doesn’t feel foreign. There really seems to be something like Baltic everyday culture, it surely doesn’t feel Latvian, but not all that far from it. The main difference seems to be that houses are a bit lower than in Riga and the decorations are of another style. Sometimes it even reminds me of pictures of Southeast Europe. Also there seem to be more churches. Maybe I’m just more aware of them as they are catholic and more decorated. In spite of the grey weather I get the impression that this is a lively city with a lot of bigger and smaller things going on, strong creative energy and quite a lot of young people around.

 

Archbishop's Cathedral

 

In the afternoon I am joined by my host Virginija and two French girls who just arrived at her house, too. So I get some more walking this time with some insider information about both landmarks and small details that I would not have noticed or at least not understood on my own. She shows us the “Miracle” stone in front of the cathedral, this is where the Via Baltica of the Singing Revolution started that eventually brought freedom to the Baltic countries, a development that was hoped for in the way you hope for a miracle throughout Soviet occupation. Now there is the tradition in Vilnius that you have to stand on this stone and turn around three times and make a wish. It will be fulfilled. We’ll see.