Caught a bus all the way from Sigulda to Vilnius with a very short stop in Riga. We passed through lots of birch, larch and pine forest as well as fields of wheat and potatoes.
Lithuania was once a part of the USSR too and the last Soviet troops pulled out in August 1993 and the currency changed from rouble to litas. They joined NATO in 2004 and a month later became a part of the European Union.
It is famous for basketball, baroque churches and a potato stuffed dish called zeppelins (cepelinai). Cepelinai is very filling so it's no wonder the working peasants ate it.
The city is full of little squares and our hostel was just off this square in the middle of the city. The weather was sunny most of the time so there were lots of restaurants with seating along the sides of the street.
We did several different city walks and at every intersection you could see the spires of many churches, there are dozens and dozens of them. It was the last pagan country in Europe but today is 70-80% Roman Catholic with strong Russian and Lutheran Orthodox minorities. The city is also a Unesco-listed Old Town.
The walk took us to the old Jewish Quarter which had once been the most prominent Jewish community in Europe until the Nazis wiped them out with some help from the Soviets. We also visited the Museum of Genocide and the Old KGB headquarters. It was horrific to read of the way the people were starved of food and interesting to read about the resistance movement.
We visited the university which was founded in 1579 and run by Jesuits for two centuries. The Russians closed it in 1832 and it reopened in 1919.
Uzupis is an interesting district, in 1998 the resident artists, dreamers, squatters and drunks officially unofficially declared this the Uzupis Republic. It has its own tongue-in-cheek president, anthem, flag and constitution. It comes a live on April Fools' Day with border guards and a huge party!
