Vilnius

I'm way behind on my posting, so we'll just put things up in a random order. We visited Vilnius for a quick weekend about a month ago. It is, of course a city rich with Jewish history, but we'll be exploring that part on a longer forthcoming trip.

The train ride, actually about two hours, is doubled by stops at two border checks (Belarusian and Lithuanian), although other than that the checks are pretty routine and the officials friendly.

We found an 'old town' with churches, restaurants amber and linen shops, narrow streets and a western European attitude. The churches were beautiful as well as full of history, the amber and linen were exquisite and a bargain and the restaurants and pubs were great fun. Trying out our primitive Russian skills here led to a discovery that in general things Russian, including the language aren't that popular here.

The trip back in a friend's car at night, with the Lithuanians just waving us through and the Belarussians, in their Belarussian way, making some arcane bureaucratic adventure out of the process while we waited outside the window in the cold, was spiced up by a mysterious beautiful blonde in a Mercedes who managed to breeze through and roar off, much to the disgust of the waiting truckdrivers. Truckers have it hard here. They have to wait for hours in long lines at both borders.

We were there on Palm Sunday, so the church on Cathedral square was both crowded and colorful. A side trip to the huge Acropolis Mall enabled us to get a couple of Prescription drugs that weren't available in Minsk, and to enjoy the ice cream, crowds and the huge ice skating rink in the mall.