Where are you, Vilnius?
Trip Start
May 24, 2005
1
21
25
Trip End
Ongoing
Vilnius,
Lithuania
Saturday, August 6, 2005
'What's that?'
'Dunno. It's grey, it's big, it might be that thing that was marked on the map with the X...Oh, maybe not'
'Well, that looks like something... but the map's too sodding wet to tell what's what.'
'Aha...it's the...no, no, it's not what I thought it was. Maybe if we turn round and walk the five miles back up this road, and turn left, we'll find the spot we started from and then...'
As she uttered the last words, the heavens opened again and a slating, slicing downpour obliterated the entire city....
One image: in between showers we found ourselves standing in front of a pile of huge, hollow concrete blocks, sprayed with graffiti ("don't shoot!")and decorated with twisted, dark metal crosses and icon-holders. A tiny woman, hardly visible beneath a huge umbrella, slowly, carefully separated leaves from the stalks of pale flowers, poking the stems into a jam jar of green water. Even when she turned to face us, she didn't really see us. As she moved away, we saw a placard of faces - young students and professors - killed by Soviet troops in 1991 as the tanks closed in on the demonstration for Lithuanian freedom.
