Forget those quotes about journeys mattering more than destinations. Unless the drive is worth staying awake throughout, a destination becomes less attractive if I have to spend far more time travelling and queuing than actually enjoying the place itself. (For me, this ratio is 3:1) Lithuania’s Hill of Crosses (Kryžių kalnas) was unique enough for […]
V and I stood in front of the slate-grey door of the Sugihara House. We had trudged through the snow to get to this modest house, the only museum in Kaunas that was open on Monday, and our hopes of learning a chapter of its history rested on this excursion. I rang the doorbell; thankfully, […]
This is Gediminas. He was the Grand Duke of Lithuania in the 14th Century. He founded Vilnius too when, following a dream, he built a castle on the spot where Cathedral Square now stands. The wolf on the plinth alludes to this.
Waking up at 4 a.m. is one of the hardest things to do, but it was necessary if I wanted to catch the sunrise in Nida. After all, Midsummer had just passed in Lithuania. Once I shut the door behind me, I was glad to trade my room mate’s snoring for the sound of waves lapping the shore. The breeze […]
Imagine a place, right in the middle of Europe, where the sands of time have buried fishing villages under great dunes. Sahara-like landscapes a stone’s throw from the border with a Russian oblast, on the coast of the Baltic sea. Wooden villas once inhabited by literary writers like Jean Paul Satre and Thomas Mann, carved with […]