Art, religion, and the further adventures of Ron’s phone

We did a day trip to the Curonian Spit, a 61-mile sand dune spit that is shared by Russia and Lithuania. I can promise you that we never got closer than 1.5 miles from the Russian border but Ron’s phone, as we know from its April solo trip to Paris, Atlanta etc., is an independent type and somehow got itself into Russia (see T-Mobile Welcome Note above!) even as my phone (much more timid) stayed squarely in Lithuania. Here’s our view of the border, with the trees you can see sitting in Russia:

We went down onto the beach to check out the Baltic Sea and I was momentarily smug – thinking, hey, I’m such a traveler that I already saw the Baltic Sea this year but something didn’t compute because the Baltic Sea that I saw in Romania and Bulgaria in July was a lovely, placid Mediterranean-looking pool and here is Ron, trying not to be blown off the walkway and dragged out into that angry ocean.

Once I was back on the bus, a quick look at my GPS made it clear that I saw the Black Sea in Romania, and, in a lesson to Ron and it’s close enough, even though the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea share many letters, they are very different waters. The wind was so strong that I couldn’t actually make it down that ramp you see.

Our OAT bus also stopped at The Hill of Witches on the Curonian Spit. The Hill of Witches is an outdoor sculpture gallery from 1979, when folk artists gathered to carve characters from Lithuanian folklore. I’ve come to realize that – although I didn’t understand the appeal of the Louvre – a walk through a lot of whimsical yard creations reminds me of my solid ability to appreciate fine art.

Here’s Alan, determined to get in the way of our art photo shoot:

We’re headed up to Latvia now. En route, we made a brief stop at the Cold War Museum. It’s located at the former Soviet Union’s ballistic missile launch and still contains one of the four 27-meter deep missile shafts. As it was a top secret site, it’s located out in the middle of nowhere, but the bucolic landscape is a stark contrast to the power that was contained inside – enough nuclear power to destroy the entire European continent. The site was operational from 1962 to 1978 – when discovered by US intelligence. Here’s an aerial view and then one from inside – the missile shaft, which held a 23-meter high R-12 missile, with a thermonuclear head that was 4 meters high. (Pics not mine)

Pause here for this one semi-relevant story, so you call all get to know our amazing OAT guide, Aida, a little better. Aida tells some great bus stories – about current Lithuanian life, her family, life under the Soviet rule and more. And in one of our meandering conversations today, she revealed that – as a youth in the Soviet world – required to learn some soldiering in high school – she turned out to be quite gifted at assembling and disassembling Kalashnikov machine guns – 11 seconds for one and 13 seconds for the other, although she can’t remember which was which:) Aida was excited to see these guns at the Cold War Museum so we could visualize her talent:

And I shouldn’t make fun of her, because one of my tour-mates caught me looking inexplicably thrilled to be in a missile bunker:

We’re quite the gifted OAT bus – we’ve got the machine gun expert, a quilter, Ron’s needlepoint mastery, and an artist who does colored pencil sketches of the most incredible pictures and is carrying greeting card minis (see below!) And also we’ve got a crochet-master – who is making me my very own scarf as I type this. Stay tuned for my scarf in an upcoming post.

All right, we’ve clearly covered the art that this post title promised. But the religion? We made a quick stop at the Hill of Crosses, which is a Catholic pilgrimage site. The site gained extra significance during the Soviet occupation as Lithuanians used it to show their allegiance to their Lithuanian identity and religion. The Soviets bulldozed it at least 3 times. Here it is today – with over 150,000 crosses: