Vilnius, Lithuania, April 2013

Oh my God, if I had to choose one place to go back to as soon as I can, it would definitely be this one. Vilnius, I think I fell in love with you..

Vilnius, I'll be back.

Vilnius is a surprising town. After visiting Tallinn and Riga, I did not expect our third destination to amaze me more, but it did ! It basically was everything I like in a city : different kinds of buildings, many churches, parks and amazing points of view on the city, a deep sense of History, a vivid interest for Art, museums, colors and great places to have tea&read a book. (And of course, food and drinks were even cheaper than in both Riga and Tallinn, which I thought was impossible.. )

That day, I got up early and went for a tour of the town with other Erasmus people, before the actual guided tour. The city was cold and quiet, but I enjoyed the architecture and the art street we could find in hidden parts. With the guide, we took more than three hours to go from places to places and check Vilnius's landmarks. We saw, for example, the street where Marie Trintignant was killed by Bertrand Cantat, and learned that we could always see at least one or two churches from every street. 

The guide told us about a restaurant where tourists don't usually go, first of all because the owner do not speak a word of English. Well, that place was pretty amazing, and crazy cheap ! We ate traditional homemade food&beer, which was delicious and got us full, for less than 3,50euros each. Then, I went to the Holocaust exhibition, about the history of Lithuanian Jews, which was awfully sad, but very interesting. The museum was a small green house, and we entered for free.( http://www.jmuseum.lt/index.aspx?Element=ViewArticle&TopicID=164 ). Lithuania, and in fact all Baltic countries have a difficult History concerning the Jewish population. Hundreds of synagogues were destroyed by the Russians or the nazis, thousands of people died in awful conditions, in ghettos or abandonned and bombed houses. I took some notes, to read a bit more about that when I get time.

On a more joyful note, we went to have tea in an amazing little place full of old second hand books, vynils, which was selling cake&tea, and also was a bit of a cybercafé. Then, we climbed two different hills through the trees and old stones to get an outstanding view of Vilnius..

Just look.

Click on the picture.

Up the hill

Advert for readers

Looks like me..

Organic Tea in Lovely Bookshop

Town's entrance

Aha

Street Art

Small Market & Church

Literature Street, where important writers have their stone.

Beavers in town ( not a porn movie,)

And last but not least,  I still have to tell you about the most surprising part of town. In Vilnius, there is an island, and on this island, an independent Republic of the Artists exists, and IS a real thing. But more on that later, gotta go read a book and drink some tea ! 

to be continued