I have fallen in love with Vilnius. It’s a city of 541,000 with a terrible history of Soviet occupation that has emerged from that era as an elegant jewel. The living is fine here – so friendly, so clean, so safe. There is absolutely no honking, no blocking of intersections, and everyone yields to pedestrians. And here is how the Lithuanians feel about Ukraine – this banner is on the City Hall skyscraper:
I’m pasting these two pictures below that are not mine – just to try to give you more of an image of how beautiful the city is:
But let’s get back to Ron. Ron believes very strongly in the concept of “close enough”. It is perfectly acceptable to call Vilnius Vil-nil-nius. Likewise, the KGB Museum here can also be referred to as the KBG museum because it involves all the same letters. If you are one of Ron’s female children, it is perfectly acceptable to call you the name of any other female child of his. That’s close enough.
It’s hard for me to trust him to be in charge of anything given his dismissive attitude towards actual facts and yet today – on Day One of our Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) tour – Ron decided to lead a group of our unsuspecting tour mates on an unplanned walk from the lunch stop back to our hotel in the rain.
I was at the tail end of our group of 6, Ron was striding ahead, and no one had enough information about Ron’s poor GPS (I guess he could also call them GSP, PSG, SGP etc.) skills to be wary. It’s a good thing he actually managed to get us to the hotel or we would have been the group outcasts, for sure.
OAT is a huge hit with me so far. It seems that one of the corporate philosophies is to mix the with locals, ask questions, stop, investigate. That’s one of my main goals as we travel and my touristic intervention attempts are always met with Ron’s derision. But now I’m safe and in the majority!
Our OAT guide, Aida, will stop and ask questions anywhere! It’s truly awesome. Yesterday, we stopped at a little teachers’ strike and got to ask questions about the strike focus, classroom size, and special ed education. Here’s the teacher we talked to, with Aida asking questions:
Here’s Aida – giving early tour instructions in the lobby…along with…surprise…our neighbor from home, Alan! We love it when people meet up with us in Europe!
Aida brought in a local university student – Liepa – who told us about her studies, her student housing, and the Lithuanian testing system to access the universities. She also told us a fantastic story about her initial meeting with an American – an interesting/terrifying story about being approached by a young man, who under the guise of Lithuanian cigarette research, offered her a diplomatic exchange of an American cigarette for local cigarette. I was certain the American’s true motivation must have actually been Lithuanian coed undergrad dating research but Liepa didn’t seem to think so. She smoked the cigarette and lived to tell the tale. Here she is – she charmed us all:
Okay, three more things before I head out to the KGB/BGK/GBK museum. First, Ron and I wandered into the Money Museum, right near our hotel and I came across the coolest display: an enormous world map. When you press each country button, the map lights up, shows the country, and then shows relevant country facts.
And then they had this bill from Zimbabwe, which makes our inflation look perfectly acceptable. This is a note from 2009, when inflation hit 230,000,000 percent, making this note worth about 40 US dollars. Zimbabwe retired its currency in 2009 and uses the US dollar now. One businessman reported that, by 2009, you had to pay for your coffee when you ordered it, but before you drank it. If you tried to pay after you drank the coffee? Well, the price went up while you were drinking due to the astronomical inflation.
And then here’s the first toilet picture of the trip (sorry, SDS). It’s the stall at the restaurant OAT booked for our lunch. A toddler play area/toilet! See why I love Lithuania?
Travels with Valerie 