Hill of Crosses
Trip Start
Aug 18, 2007
1
17
44
Trip End
Ongoing
Siauliai,
Lithuania
Friday, September 28, 2007
Going to the Hill of Crosses was somewhat unexpected. I was put in touch with an American girl who is an intern at the Baltic Times: a newspaper covering the news of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in English for ex-pats and other people interested in the region. (www.baltictimes.com). We were originally in contact because she had information about a potential job for me. I also told her that I was in need of some English speaking friends because being isolated was driving me mad. She invited me to go to the Hill of Crosses the next day as part of "a big group".
I woke up a little bit late and frantically got ready and ran out the door trying not to be late to the meeting point. Usually the meeting point is about 30 minutes walk from our house, but I managed it in about 20 minutes power walking past shocked onlookers. "It's a bird, it's a plane...NO its Adam-man the fast walker" they were saying. The sweet sound echoed in my ears for days. In the end everyone else was late anyway and I had made it on time. I sat down in the bright sun at the cathedral and read my book until they arrived.
The big group that was meeting to go to the Hill of Crosses ended up being me, Kim (the American) and Sandrine (a French polyglot extraordinaire with 6 or 7 languages). They didn't want to hitch because they thought it was too dangerous - everyone thinks this before they try it I guess. So I submitted to the pressure and we took the bus there. Because everyone was late we missed the bus and the next one there only went an hour later. So we took our time making our way to the bus station. We decided to take a two legged journey there because the short route buses ran much more often than a direct bus from Vilnius to Siauliai. After meeting at 9am in Vilnius, we finally got to the Hill of Crosses at 2:30pm (distance of maybe 300km).
Now having read the travel books about the Hill of Crosses, I had my expectations. The photos show a vast valley of crosses that seems to stretch for miles. When I got there it was at first a bit disappointing because it was nowhere near as extravagant as the books portrayed. All the same it was still something to behold because you can see that each cross was individually placed by someone different. There were big statues that people had made and donated and then there were tiny crosses the size of your hand. Of course there was then everything in between and made of different materials like stone, wood, metal and even glass/plastic. One particular cross confused me because it was covered in the Star of David and was quite large. It mentioned the Jewish victims of world war two, but this was not a Jewish monument. But enough about it, there is more to be gained by looking at the photos.
There were many weddings there at the Hill of Crosses where the bride and groom would place a cross to show their devotion to Christ. It all seemed a little bit plastic and fake however and then I saw where they were buying their crosses. There was a line of stalls along the carpark that we had missed on the way in. They were selling ready made crosses of different sizes and prices to those who wanted to place on the hill. They were also selling other pieces of rubbish like cigarette lighters and dolls and yin & yang symbols on keychains. The most ridiculous piece of paraphernalia was a cigarette lighter that played a song from an arcade game called Dance Dance Revolution. When you opened the lighter it played the song 'Butterfly' I have no idea how that J-pop song ever got into a lighter and even less of an idea how it made it to the Hill of Crosses in Lithuania. Well, I guess anything sacred can be corrupted by greed and money.
Just near the bus stop where we got off for the Hill of Crosses there was a cow in a paddock. Lining the paddock were apple trees. The American girl, Kim, showing her inexperience with the world outside of her context found it dirty that we should eat apples off the ground that had recently fallen from a tree. She was also disgusted by the cow shitting on the ground. For me these two things seemed very natural - I mean the apples that you buy from the shop have been sprayed and probably genetically modified and grown with fertilisers that make them huge and unnaturally sweet. I think this is just an example of the problem with big cities and the way we live at the moment. Everything comes to us prepackaged in plastic and if we don't open it from it's air-sealed bag, we think it is dirty. The fact is however, that these things exist naturally in nature and you can't get it any fresher (especially the cow dung).
The girls were going to take the bus back to Vilnius at 7pm and I was going to hitchhike home. They told me I was crazy and I promised them that I would make it back home faster and with 40Lt in my pocket to boot! We all missed our bus back towards Siauliai so we had to thumb it back - this was satisfying for me because they had to give it a go and see how I got around. It took a while to get picked up because there were three of us, but eventually this old man in a really beat up old Mercedes came by and got us. He was wearing an army uniform, but was clearly too old and weak to be in any army. Sandrine spoke to him in Russian about where he could drop us off. She told him to drop us at a bus stop that will take us to the centre. By complete chance, this was also the road to Vilnius. What luck! They crossed the road and took the bus in the opposite direction and I waved them goodbye. I got picked up ten minutes later by a Maxima truck. Maxima is the biggest supermarket chain in Lithuania. He took me all the way to Vilnius and dropped me off something like 300m from my house. Not bad at all. I beat the girls home by about an hour. I didn't know if I had beaten them until I went home, had a shower then went out to a restaurant for dinner. On the way to the restaurant I saw them walking past us all tired and haggard from the journey. They couldn't believe their eyes when they saw me all fresh; there before them.
