JNN hostel Vilnius

... br>We decided to check out a traditional Polish communist eating place, the complete opposite to where we'd eaten the previous night. They are called 'Milk Bars' and are basically really cheap canteens. All the meals were about 50p and 1 pound, and everyone had massive plates of chicken and potatoes. The woman at the till didn't speak any English so we just had to order something random from the menu in Polish...Tom ended up with plain pasta in oil and I ordered kluski ...

... floor depicts the partisan resistance movement for independence. The basement is about KGB police. IT actually recreated the KGB office, prison cell and let toursit take a glimps into the prison slife under KGB. The KGB used bugging devise to eavdrop on foreign tourists and citizens of Lithuania SSR to prevent any negative comment against the Soviets. The prisons shows confinement room, tourture room with padded walls the prevent ...

Eleven days after my arrival in Lithuania I found myself in Vilnius again. This, however, was going to be only a short stay, so before I even left the bus terminal, I had first bought myself a bust ticket for the next day's bus to Rîga. Bus service here in the Baltics was very good and buses usually ran frequently regardless of the route. But international ones could from time to time be fully sold out and I wouldn't risk it with the one I wanted to board tomorrow. So I first struck that ...

... what lay ahead for them in only a few years ... The museum itself was a mix of the very few Jewish items that have survived from the original historic Great Synagogue. There were photos & stories and even paintings done in different eras. You couldn't help noticing how many of the death dates of the painters was around 1942 or 43. Then we came down a floor & quickly looked at the few items that were there, but on that floor there were detailed boards, in Lithuanian & in ...

... and originality, UNESCO added it to its World Heritage List in 1994. No wonder. Growing and re-shaping its face over the course of many centuries, city's history and ever-changing cultural influences had kept on adding most of Europe's greatest architectural styles to it, so nowadays you can see them stand side by side and complement each other just fine. Practically just a stone's throw away from there, following the "Lonely Planet" downtown map, I found the Vilnius University, one ...

... far as Vilnius movie scene goes, "Skalvija" in A. Vienuolio gatvë was one of rare still living relics and threads leading back to Soviet times. "How about movies?" I suggested. Ruta agreed on the spot. We checked the "History of Violence" schedule and saw that we had enough time to take a walk, have a pizza and be there before it started. That was our final plan now. Not far from there we found a CD and DVD shop, run by a slim and aging rocker. I spent some time rummaging through what ...

... didn't feel like going out. Besides, I couldn't go with Ruta anyway. So I had all the reasons to stay put. "I'll try to rush it," she said. "So we can go out somewhere this evening." "Don't worry," I said. "Just take your time." And take it she did. When she returned home, it was dark. Of course, it didn't mean it was way too late. On these latitudes it gets dark in winter sooner ...

... du centre de la capitale lithuanienne !! Donc nous voila entre dans les pays baltes avec un 1er changement de fuseau horaire ! Bref on se pose dans une cite universitaire ouverte au gens de passage genre celle de Gdantsk et hop un petit reperage en ville, visite en touriste puis apres une biere ou 2 dans la rue on va se poser dans un bar qui retransmet un match de la coupe d'europe de basket : Lithuanie-France !!! Bon la france s'est ...

... than the ones we saw in Gdansk or Krynica Morska. In our 2+ days in Vilnius, we usually got back to our dormitory between 2 and 3 AM, and even though we had a 40 minute walk to the Old Town, we felt completely safe and secure walking the streets late at night. We stayed out late and ate late. Some bars were open until 5 AM and still serving food. There seems to be a big push to bring a big tourist boom to Vilnius and all of Lithuania for 2009. Come see it before the crowds get here.

Vilnius (population 600K), the capital city of Lithuania, is a 5-hour bus ride from Riga. The hostel is conveniently located some 300 yards from the bus station. I spent a whole day exploring the sights of the old town with a Japanese guy (that I previously met on the Tallinn to Riga bus), the Japanese way - a lot of sights to cover, a lot of photos ...