Trakai, Ponary, and our first exposure to Vilnius ~ Sunday, June 22, 2014

Walking toward the island castle in the mist

Our new bus driver arrived promptly, and we loaded our luggage and headed toward Vilnius in the rain.  Leonardas won our hearts by turning on a Russian music video (after 20 minutes we begged him to turn it off), allowing us to eat in the bus, entertaining us with creative driving maneuvers, and talking animatedly in Russian with Prof. O’Sullivan throughout the trip.  He also agreed to let us spend one hour in the Trakai Castle, while he went and fetched us the famous local main-dish pastries, kibinai.

From here you can see them making kibinai

The Trakai Castle was built on an island in the 14^th century by a Lithuanian grand duke.  It had glorious red stone walls, drawbridges over moats, and turrets.  The Soviets restored it as a gift to Lithuania after World War II, and it is a popular tourist destination.  Some rooms had exhibits of Victorian-style china, coins, and purses, while others contained paintings.  We raced through the rooms and squeezed up the narrow flights of stone stairs.   Our visit to Trakai was over far too soon.  We gathered at the bus stop and welcomed Leonardus and his precious booty, kibinai stuffed with lamb, pork, chicken, or cheese.  

Just outside of Vilnius we stopped at Ponary, or Panierai. 

one of the Jewish memorial stones

Making our way through the rain we went into a little museum and were greeted by an old and eloquent guide who pointed to the museum exhibits and told of the horrendous events that occurred here.  Panierai was a village alongside a rail line, and nearby were large pits built by the Soviets for oil storage.  The Germans used the site for mass murdering 100,000 people here and using the pits as mass graves.  Later they tried to hide their crimes by forcing prisoners to cremate the dead.  About 70,000 of the victims were Jews from Vilnius and the surrounding areas, many who had been imprisoned into the Vilna Ghetto.  The rest were soldiers and civilians who were non-Jewish Lithuanians, Poles, Romani, and Russians.  We stopped at the stone memorials and sculptures honoring the victims.  It was melancholy and beautiful, the forest and grass damp from the misty rain.  A moment of grace occurred when a moose appeared on a path between the trees nearby the students.  Noticing us, it disappeared into the woods.

Back on the bus, it was a short, quiet ride to the capital city.  The hostel was not yet ready for us, so we left our luggage and walked into Old Town Vilnius.  The air was cool and clean, and people were playing games in the midst of the street shut off from the traffic.  We could see that we would enjoy our last four days of our trip in this pretty and lively town.

fried onions, sour cream, and butter on top
of potato dough and a bit of stuffing

That night we had a group dinner featuring the national Lithuanian dish, cepelinai.  It’s sort of like a dumpling, but with moist, thick, bland outside, and inside is a mystery meat (or, in the case of the vegetarian version, a mystery cheese).

Perhaps the 2.9 million Lithuanians love it, but let us just say that for most of us, it was the first and last time cepelinai will pass our lips.

An Užupis wall tile commemorating a poet, writer,
 and diplomat from these parts who refused to identify
himself as either a Lithuanian or a Pole

And, to top off the day, we went to yet another cemetery.  It was in the charming section of Vilnius known as Užupis.  Prof. O’Sullivan’s friend Aurimas took us on a tour of this artsy neighborhood which has declared itself a separate, independent republic.  “Everyone has the right to be unique,” “Everyone has the right to be unhappy,” “Everyone has the right to love and take care of the cat,” and “Everyone has the right to celebrate or not celebrate their birthday” are among the 39 articles of their constitution.







Wire, ceramic, tile, and stone sculptures are placed between the trees, on the buildings, and in the square.  We loved their quirky humor.

Aurimas insisted that the pretty, wooded cemetery established in the 19^th century was not a site to miss. It appeared strangely normal, filled with graves of people who mostly lived and died like they were supposed to.

We returned to the hostel.  Some students stayed up to watch the World Cup, others collapsed onto their clean beds.

Suwalki and western Lithuanian Jewish memorial sites ~ Friday, June 20, 2014

The gravestone of a learned Jewish man 

Our day began with an early departure from Gizycko.  We drove eastward into the small town of Suwalki, rich with history, where we found the pre-war Jewish cemetery.  While we waited at the gate for the key to enter, a local boy from a nearby home approached us in the rain and very excitedly shouted “Hello!” and ran back inside. He repeated the process every few minutes, delighted to have company.  Adam provided us with a history of Suwalki from its first Christian settlers until its current state. In the last hundred years, Suwalki has been the possession of Germany, Russia, or Poland.  This cemetery contains graves of seven different religions.  The Jewish one was the most in ruin – it was destroyed by the German army in World War II.

Running in the rain towards the wall 

We accessed the Jewish cemetery, which was mostly an overgrown field, by walking through its neighboring Russian Orthodox cemetery in the down pouring rain.

The wall of broken tombstones 

We huddled under rain ponchos and umbrellas behind a wall plastered on both side with fragments of Jewish gravestones that appeared to have been harvested from the ground and combined into one massive memorial.  The Jewish section also contained a memorial to the Holocaust victims but there were no post-war graves.

Jonathan quietly thinking "I could climb this." 

After we left the cemetery, we made our way to the border.  Our first stop in Lithuania was in the small border town of Kalwarija.  Here, with the help of some of the town’s locals, we managed to find the old Jewish ruins with only one photograph and no address.  These were three abandoned and ruined buildings, at least one of which had been a synagogue in a once-lively Jewish community.  It was a dark reminder of the events that the Jewish people faced at the time, and there does not seem to be any chance that the Jews will return to Kalwarija to renovate it. 

Now it was time for a brief lunch break and an exchange of currency.  We learned that ATMs dispense large bills that restaurant cashiers are not able to break.  They demonstrated remarkable patience as many students placed their orders and walked outside in search of smaller bills.

The beautiful bend 

Our next stop was in the nearby town of Marijampole.  Here, we searched for the memorial at the mass grave in the bend of the river.  We relied on our maps to reach the monument, but were unable to find it until a woman in her house came outside in curiosity.  Prof. O’Sullivan spoke with her in Russian. Before we knew it, this kind woman was walking us down the monument and leading the way. It was a short hike down the hill.  Professor Myers read a first-hand account from a witness of the mass murder of about 7,000 Jews and 1,000 people of other backgrounds.  They were rounded up by the German Einsatzgruppen (soldiers of the assassination squads) who arranged for Lithuanian high school and university-aged students to carry out the murders.  We all found it so disturbing that the murderers were people our age!  It was hard to be in the place where so many had been massacred.  Prof. Myers translated the message on the memorial stone, and we gazed around at the lush grassy area, dotted with cottages, along the beautiful river bend. 

Kaunus Old Town Square 

Our day concluded with a drive into Kaunus, the former capital of Lithuania that contains many tall and nice buildings.  After settling into our hostel, we embarked on a short walk to Old Town. In the city’s main square, which is home to many old churches, we learned town’s historical significance before our group dinner.  This was our introduction to the Lithuanian cuisine, which included a main course of a chicken breast stuffed with a grilled plum, vegetables, and for dessert a delicious vanilla ice cream with a raspberry topping.

This very long day included beautiful scenery, two cemeteries, ruins, a solemn mass grave site, and the big city of Kaunus.  We slept well in preparation for the next day’s full tour of the city.

We're Here!

(L-R): Donal, Dylan, Mily, Jeanette, Glenda, Jack, Lovia,
 Courtney, Jody, Aleisha, Jeremy, Adam, Daniel, Krystle,
 Anthony, Jonathan, and Joseph

Our flight to Warsaw was on Lufthansa, on a huge plane that had two stories with individual movie players for each passenger.  Everyone could get up and walk around, and some students snoozed, others took advantage of the free movies.  German airline allow alcoholic beverages.  Since it is against CSUN rules to drink, of course none of the students imbibed the wonderful beers or wine!  After a stop in Munich, where we checked into the European Union with our passports and enjoyed the free beverages and discovered yet another style of bathroom (the circulating cloth hand dryers were a novelty to this young set of students, not so for the elders!), we took the short flight to Warsaw Chopin Airport and met up with another student and our Warsaw guide, Kasia.

Watching the World Cup, Brazil v. Croatia

After settling down at the hostel, we took a walking tour (led by Donal [Prof. O’Sullivan]).  We walked along a street with beautiful and full of old-looking historic churches, gates, statues, buildings, and gorgeous vistas.  It seemed like a fairy tale!  We spent the evening enjoying scenic Old Town Warsaw. 

University of Warsaw main entrance

Some people watched the World Cup in a bar, others ate authentic Polish food in outside restaurants and were eaten alive by mosquitoes!

Old Town, getting dark

Babakan - historic gates of Old City

 Cultural differences we noticed:

1. All that public transportation, so readily available, was astonishing.  We took a public bus from the airport directly to the neighborhood of our hostel.  Can you believe that University of Warsaw has no student parking lots??  Just trams leading up to the arches at the university entrance. 

2. Polish society is very white.  The black students among us got special attention: on two occasions, people asked very politely if they could be photographed with the black students.  The rest of us just either blended in (we thought!) or felt obviously darker, smilier, or obviously American. 

3. The night life in the area we were in was very different!  People stay up later and eat later.
 They seemed far more laid back: no one is in a rush in the restaurants, and people were outside in “patio dining” restaurants enjoying the cool evening air.

Then we all went back to the hostel for an attempt to sleep before Friday’s busy schedule.