Kaunas and Vilnius

Wednesday, October 3

Again, we found ourselves driving through periods of rain (and a couple of rainbows) as we left Klaipeda en route to Vilnius. We had a couple of options for possible stops en route and we let the weather be our guide as we made some ad hoc choices.

Kaunas served as Lithuania’s capital during the years between the two World Wars and, though it is a sprawling modern city, it has a lovely Old Town core. We parked on the large central square, a block from the reconstructed castle, and bordered by three churches.  After a stop in the TI, we took a walk along a cobbled pedestrianized street through the heart of the Old Town, and then back to the square along one of the two rivers that pass through Kaunas.  The rain was gearing up (again) as we completed the circuit and began to fall in earnest when we got to the car.  It was also pretty chilly and I added enough layers to resemble the Michelin Woman.

The rain became more intense as we neared Vilnius, so we decided it would be a good afternoon to visit one of the museums on our bucket list for the city.  The Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights spreads over three floors of the former headquarters of the Gestapo and later the KGB in Vilnius.  The museum is devoted to chronicling the torture, imprisonment, deportation, and murder of thousands of Lithuanians by the Soviets.  Exhibits include displays and artifacts from the work camps and prisons in remote reaches of the USSR, the armed and unarmed resistance movements on the home front, as well as the organization of the KGB, its techniques and methods of surveillance and terror.  The basement of the building is the former KGB prison and it was both chilly and chilling.  Prisoners’ cells, interrogation rooms, a solitary confinement chamber and a padded cell bore silent testimony to what went on there.  In the execution room, more than 1,000 were shot or less expeditiously dispatched before being carted away to mass graves.  Let’s just say that the museum was drier but not less depressing than the gray weather outside…

At the end of the afternoon, we checked into our apartment – yet another winner; our three nights in Vilnius should be very comfortable.