(John) Our bus from Vilnius, in Lithuania, left at 4:30 pm. Three and a half hours straight through to Riga, Latvia. We spent our last day in Vilnius constructively. We spent some time at the KGB museum that was excellent. It is actually called the Genocide Museum, but it is housed in the former KGB building that had the prison in the basement. The displays were well laid out and there was a lot of information in English. It was fascinating and the prison was chilling. Sam and I followed that up with the Jewish Holocaust museum, as in one of the books we had read recently there was an account of war time Lithuanian anti-semetism and collaboration in the murder of Jews, and we wanted to learn more. The KGB museum had not touched on the subject, but had directed those interested to the Jewish museum. We weren't disappointed. I was impressed with the detailed displays, the overwhelming evidence and the sheer power of the presentation. A distinction was drawn between educated, Nazi officers whose anti-semetism was based on racist beliefs and illiterate Lithuanian pogromists who had been taught to fear the Jews. The former was unforgivable, but it was obvious that the Jewish community in Lithuania had forgiven those Lithuanians who had participated willingly and unwillingly in the holocaust. Jews in Lithuania as everywhere in Europe had nowhere to hide and those that helped expected to be killed for doing so. As a result they were almost completely wiped out. One display lauded heroes. People who had risked their lives to harbour Jewish people trying to escape and people who had attempted to ease the suffering or reduce the numbers sent to the gas chambers or the death pits in the forest. One was a Nazi officer, shot for treason because he had been ordered to send 80 Jews on a work detail. He had sent 180, trying to pass it off as a mistake and giving 100 men the opportunity to escape. The museum was astounding. It was small but a powerful witness to Nazi atrocities.
From the holocaust museum we went to find Lesley and Mhari on the main square. There is a paving stone in the square that marks the end of the human chain formed in protest, that in 1981 linked Tallinn in Estonia to Vilnius. Impressive.
There wasn't much else we wanted to do in Vilnius to do, so we all walked back to the hostel, ate some food, cleaned up and lugged our packs over to the bus station. We found the right bay and waited. Right on time the bus arrived, looking big and comfy. We got on just as it started to rain. It poured all the way. We did not see much and from what we could tell through the wet gloom there wasn't much to see. In Riga, it was raining hard and we had to unload in the open. We have been finding it pretty easy finding our way around but we were stumped today. We had to get money from an ATM, which we managed quite quickly, then we had to find out how to buy a bus ticket and how to find the trolley bus or bus to our hostel that was a few kms out of the centre, We found an information office. The lady there helped us out and sent us on our way, We bought the ticket but walked endlessly in the rain looking for the right bus stop. We ended up back at the info office. She phoned the hostel they told us to forget the bus and take a train. So we walked what seemed like a long way, I think my pack was getting heavy. We found the train station manged to buy tickets, find the platform and board the train that was waiting. It waited for a while, about 25 minutes. Eventually we were on our way and ten minutes later we arrived. Just as we got off the train the heavens opened and we walked in a huge downpour the 200 metres from platform to hostel entrance, We were dry though, good rain jackets and a couple of umbrellas we bought in Krakow, work well for us. It had taken 4 hours to get to Riga from Vilnius on the bus, a distance of about 350 kms. It took us two hours to get from the Riga bus station to the hostel, a distance of about 5 kms. Sad, but true.
The hostel is a business admin college. In the summertime they use the residence for tourists. We had expected a four bed dorm to ourselves shared toilets and showers, a well equipped kitchen, a cafeteria open all day till 8:00pm, wifi and a computer lab. We got almost all of it. Except the well equipped kitchen, There was a kitchen. The residence was huge and there were eight kitchens, each had two or three stoves with ovens and hoods, two sinks and counters. There was no other equipment. No fridges, no pots, no plates, no forks or knives, We found one spoon. The ovens had no racks and some had rotting food in them. This was a bit of a problem for us as we had hoped to be able to self cater for our 4 night stay in Riga. There were three big supermarkets at the end of the street, we thought we had it made. We tried the cafeteria in the morning: it was great and the food was cheap. So we shrugged our shoulders and said -no problem we'll just eat here. We got back on Friday evening in time to eat dinner and found it was closed - for the weekend, Now we were mad. The weekend staff lady was able to lend us some plates and some cutlery from the staffroom and she let us put our milk in her fridge. We did find one small enamel pot but nothing we could use for cooking for 4 people. So we revised our plan discovered the cheap dumpling and pancake restaurants in Riga, ate cold food at the hostel and mentally practised the scathing review the hostel was going to get when we left. Unfortunately where we are now has no internet connection. So we may not be quite so bitter by the time we can post it. We will probably have softened and focus on the positive things, such as the friendly staff, the quiet room, the hot shower and the fact that we were able to print our boarding passes for our flight out in the computer lab.
Currently, we are in Rouge, pronounced Roogger. Didn't we look stupid when we tried buying the bus ticket. It looked like the sensible way to get to Rouge was by bus from Riga to Tartu, then bus to Voru, then mini bus for the final little hop. But the bus from Riga to Tartu cost 18 Euros each. From Tartu to Voru was 5 Euros. We didn't like the 18 Euro part so looked at getting a train. That only took us to Valga just across the border into Estonia, It left at 6:30am arrived at 9:45 then we would have a 7 hour wait for the bus to Voru. It was a more direct route but it would take all day and would get us there late with a chance that we might arrive in Voru too late to catch the local bus to Rouge. We did it anyway, got to Rouge for half the price of the other route, had a lovely day in Valga, a nice bus trip to Voru, time there to grab some groceries and catch a bus to Rouge. Whereupon we easily found our way to the campground and were shown to our cabin in a beautiful campground on the deepest lake in Estonia to find that we have use of a kitchen with equipment and a fridge. Yay! We win.
When you get back soon, at Matlock I left dad's copy of "The Third Reich at War." It's a thorough account of the Lithuanian - and European - Shoah that the Nazis unleashed upon the Jews (and Slavs, and Gypsies, and the mentally ill, and 'Asocials' during the years from 1939-1945. It makes for depressing holiday reading, though.
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